Trump administration outlines quantum, AI initiatives in $6B science push

The Trump administration has announced over $6 billion in science initiatives, including a $215 million quantum computing competition and $2.4 billion in industry commitments for artificial intelligence tools and computing resources. 

On Thursday, the Department of Energy identified eight scientific applications to guide its Quantum Genesis Q Competition, which offers up to $215 million in planned funding to companies developing fault-tolerant quantum computers.

First announced in September, the funding includes milestone-based awards and incentive prizes for companies that demonstrate increasingly powerful quantum systems. The research priorities span chemistry, materials science, subatomic physics and applied mathematics.

Advances in fault-tolerant quantum computing could have implications for blockchain-based assets that rely on public-key cryptography. On Sept. 23, three EU financial watchdogs warned that the development of more powerful quantum computers could undermine cryptographic systems used to secure blockchains and financial transactions.

For these crypto assets, sufficiently powerful quantum computers could potentially derive private keys from exposed public keys, allowing attackers to steal funds. However, no quantum computer capable of carrying out such attacks currently exists.