The race for a viable quantum computer is perhaps the most exciting in science today. Getting there will take a global effort. The complexity of some of the hurdles are arguably more challenging than those that were solved at the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful atom smasher. Disparate networks of researchers, entrepreneurs, capital and governments will have to compete and collaborate all over the world.
Yet too much commentary, especially in the UK and Europe, fixates on where quantum innovation and commercialisation is happening.
This often manifests in short-sighted talk of a “brain drain” to the US. Recently, for example, a group of UK-based quantum technology academics moved to California to found a start-up called PsiQ, leading to claims that tech giants are “sucking the brains out of Europe”. This is nonsense.