August 11, 2026 · COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY · 9,944 words · 15 speakers · 98 segments
Okay, well, good afternoon and welcome to the House Communication Technology Committee hearing on quantum computing and the economy. I want to thank Penn State for the opportunity to be here today and talk about this subject matter, which we all know is going to become more and more and more extremely hot topic in the short term rather than long term. Before we get started, I'd like to start by introducing each member who is here with us today. If we start on my right, just go down and say where you're from, your district, and who you are, please.
here we go we're having communications representative eric nelson westmoreland county
representative andrea verobish blair county representative katherine wallen adams in
cumberland county representative nikki rivera lancaster county representative gary day lehigh
County good afternoon everyone state representative Robert Ledbetter
representing the hundred and ninth district Columbia County representative
Joe Diorsi York County represent Jim Prokopiak Bucks County hundred four district
Thank you, and thank you both for attending. I'm Joe Cirisi, Chair of Montgomery County. You know, as we talk about this subject matter, we look at what's to come and the advantages and disadvantages of quantum computing. And there's a lot of advantages. There's economic advantages. There's advantages in the way that we'll be able to calculate things that we might not be able to do before, the way we were able to look at things. But there's a massive other side of this, too, in the cybersecurity world and how we deal with this. And today we're going to touch on a few of those subject matters with some of the experts that are here in person and some of those that are online. We also have a few people online if you want to introduce yourselves. I can't really see who's online. Waxman is in a UFO somewhere. But if you guys want to – who's online? I can't see that. Waxman is there. Yeah, I don't know if you want to say something quick. Go ahead, Ben.
You go first. This is Representative Ben Waxman from Philadelphia County.
Representative Joanne Stair from Schuylkill in Northumberland County, 107th District.
Thank you. Thank you. And I'd also like to give some time to my co-chair, Gary Day.
I'd like to say a few words. Chairman, thank you very much for doing this. Many people think in the summertime the legislature is off, and as far as from the truth, we have a lot of work in our districts. but having a good chairman like yourself staying on top of the things that we need to know about, informational sessions are there to begin the legislative process and policy in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I appreciate the work and the decisions that you're making to have this committee, a working committee, even through this summer. I want to say thank you. And as much as we all know that AI is moving so quickly quantum computing is right next after that And hopefully these will be technologies and infrastructure that makes our Commonwealth our country and the world a better place And I appreciate all the people you've amassed today, the professionals, and the location that you've selected. When I was – earlier in my career, I would talk about all the institutions in the Commonwealth, and we have great educational institutions, but I'm particularly pleased to be here at Penn State here today. I'm a proud Penn State graduate. My wife is as well, and my three children are as well, and we choose this institution. And I'm glad you chose today to be here to take advantage of the people we have here, the location we have here, to advance this great informational session so that we can make great policy in the Commonwealth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. And, you know, this is where the future is going to be determined with our students who come out of these institutions of higher learning and how we handle this technology moving forward. Our first panelist is with us. Matt Branzemir. Branzemir. Okay, well, I don't know how to speak.
Associate Professor at Penn State and Head of Quantum and Multiple Physics Department here at Penn State Applied Research Lab.
So thank you for being here. and we look forward to your testimony. Testing? Okay, there we go.
Yeah, hello everyone. I'm Matt Bronsma from Penn State Applied Research Lab. I'm the head of the quantum and multiphysics department there at ARL. So I've been in the quantum science field since 2013 when I was a PhD student, and after that I worked at ARL, eventually branched off and started my own department. And a lot of the work we do is the government coming to us and saying, there's this new technology, is it useful, what's about it? So this is very appropriate for what my group does, and that's over all areas of physics, not just quantum. Quantum is our main thing, but we do a lot. So I've been asked to put together these slides. I don't know if you guys can see them because they're behind you. Okay, they're printed out. Perfect. So these slides, they're basically just an overview of the cybersecurity landscape in regard to quantum computing, where quantum computing comes into play and why it's important to pay attention to. And it's just a high-level overview, so I'm happy to answer questions whenever. So feel free to just interrupt me. Can we go to the next slide? So just where I'm from, I'm sure a lot of you are aware of ARL. We're a UARC, a university-affiliated research center. We're kind of a trusted government agent. We do a lot of applied research for the government in basically all areas of science. And we take in about a third of all of Penn State's research dollars. So we're a pretty big institution. Next slide. So this slide is kind of just a – these are the three, like, broad pillars of quantum science and various benefits in each one. I'm not going to go through all the benefits. I'm sure you've heard all of them before in some way, shape, or form. But you know where we living in right now for this particular talk is the quantum computing side and the quantum comms side in regards to cryptographic protocols and how quantum computers can break them Next slide So just kind of a broad overview of encryption in regard to cryptography So, you know, this comes into play when you have two users who want to communicate with each other, but they want to make sure that the information being transferred is not going to be intercepted or read by anybody else. So the way that that works at the most basic level is they each have a shared key. The key is used to encrypt the message, which is basically to scramble it. So if it's intercepted on the way to the other party, it looks like nonsense. And then when the other party gets it, they have the same key to use to de-scramble it or decrypt it, and then they can read it. And that's called a symmetric key protocol. That's kind of troublesome to use in a lot of different real-world applications. So we use what's called a public key protocol. So next slide. So the way that this works, this is kind of just a metaphor to help explain it. It's not perfect, but I think it does a good job. So if you can click, this is like a – you guys don't have the animations, I guess, because it printed it out. So can you click, whoever is controlling the slides? Okay, so the way that this works is if user A wants to talk to user B, you can imagine user B having some kind of a lockbox, and then user A is going to deposit a message in the lockbox. So click again. So the way this works is user B kind of shares locks with the outside world, and then user A can grab one of those and encrypt their message. All right, click. All right, so he grabs one of those locks, encrypts the message, sends the message through the channel, or deposits it in the lockbox. Can you click? And then user B, when he wants to read the message, he has his own private key that he can use to unlock the lockbox, and he could read it. So this doesn't require the key to be shared with the outside world. It requires these locks. So click. I think that's the rest. So then you can imagine that if you have these locks, there's a relationship between the lock and the key. And if you're smart enough, you could figure out what the key looks like, and then you'd be able to unlock the lockbox, right? In the real world, in cryptographic protocols, that relationship is very complicated math, just to put it simply. It's a – there's no way for a classical computer to figure out that relationship between the lock and the key. So if you click – so yeah, you can't – regular computers don't have the computational horsepower to figure out what that relationship is. And that's basically why they're secure, that they're so complicated it would take a computer something like thousands of years to figure it out. But a quantum computer can figure that out for reasons – No. Okay. Where did that come from? Somebody got the key. Somebody got the key. Or a dog got it. Oh. And just by the nature of the way quantum computers work allows it to figure out that relationship much easier than a classical computer. When that happens it able to recreate its own key and then get into and read the message I think as I mentioned before most protocols use this public key system It's used for everything that's secured, digital signatures, banking, any kind of sensitive information transfer. It's very important. And anybody who has the ability to kind of crack that relationship can impersonate systems and forge digital signatures and get into secure information. So it's a pretty big problem. Quantum computers, as they stand right now, cannot do this at the moment. And it's kind of one of those things that's coming. People believe it's just, you know, it's in the mail. and so a big problem these days is what they called harvest now decrypt later where basically bad actors can just intercept information that is encrypted and they don't they can't read it because they don't have the key but they think okay well when we can decrypt it we'll decrypt it later once quantum computers can come out and they're large enough and they don't have enough noise to actually work well for this, we can decrypt later. So harvest now, decrypt later is a big area in research and how to kind of develop defenses for that. Next slide. So, I mean, just at a very broad, zoomed out explanation as to why quantum computers can do this is, you know, if you imagine a classical computer trying to crack a cryptographic protocol, you can think of it as, I'm going to try this, and then that doesn't work, and then I'm going to try this, and then that doesn't work, and then doing that over and over again, it's just too laborious. It would take far too long, and that's why they work. A quantum computer can basically try everything at the same time just to simplify things. And kind of the graphic I have here is you can imagine a maze. There's lots of different paths that get from point A to point B, but there's only one path that actually gets you there. And if you're trying to navigate the maze, you have to kind of try each path at the same time, and it takes a long time. And you can imagine a quantum computer would be able to try all the paths at the same time. And then it's not quite that simple. You have to kind of manipulate the interference of the wave functions to amplify the correct path, and that's kind of an active area of research and getting them to work in a way that is superior to classical computers. But that's basically why they work for this application is that they're much quicker in the computation. And I think that's the last slide. So I'm happy to take questions or comments. Oh, we have one more. That's right. So this is important because now people are basically saying let's just assume that this will come eventually. So a quantum computer will become large enough to break these cryptographic protocols. How do we defend ourselves for when that happens? Because when that happens, basically the whole Internet's trust system goes out the window, and you have to migrate to something else. The solution for that is if you think about that analogy between lock and key, is to make that relationship even more complicated to figure out such that a quantum computer still has trouble cracking it. That's a big area of research is the post-quantum era, making these keys more secure so that even quantum computers struggle with them, and that's currently going on right now. So when you do that, hopefully the goal is to keep everything the way it's working now, keep it more secure going forward. And I think that's the last slide. Happy to take questions or comments. Thank you.
Go ahead, Representative O'Reilly.
So how long in the future?
When can we expect quantum computing to begin decrypting what's been harvested? Yeah, that's a tough question to answer. Are we, like, years or decades? We're definitely years. So there's a lot of limitations to quantum computers as they stand now. One of them is number of qubits, which is basically computational capacity. qubits are the quantum version of bits and they're non-trivial to set up and maintain there's noise between them so there's a lot of technical challenges to get the quantum computers to a place that they are hardware capable of doing this the best i could say is is i think there were many years away a decade or more is what i would say but there's there's debate about that and depending on who you ask.
Representative Day.
Do you want to go? So assuming when they are functional, physically functional, would we use quantum computers to defend against quantum computers? Is that one of the things, or do we just have to replace the public key?
No. In the post-quantum era, the defense is to just implement more complex mathematical relationships between the public key and the private key. So that's really a classical defense, not really a quantum computing defense. It's just make the problem so complicated that even a quantum computer can't figure it out.
But if the quantum computer is the strongest thing out there, how are we going to create tougher mathematics that's tougher than the toughest?
Yeah, yeah. That math does exist. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman.
Representative Ledbetter.
Thank you, Chairman. Doctor, thank you so much for your time this afternoon, for spending it with us. A fascinating subject, certainly. in discussions with constituents, Doctor, and I think my committee members and colleagues may share in this sentiment, we've reached this point in society where these terms are thrown around enough so that folks can pretend like they know what they're talking about. But really, there's a mile wide and an inch deep in regard to the knowledge base. So to be analogous, because I certainly share in that census, of limited knowledge here. When we think about technology historically, roads became valuable to society because if you went on a road, you weren't robbed, whereas if you went your own way, you took on that security burden. Banks, right? I can store my own gold and take a stagecoach across the Wild West, but I could get robbed, or I can let Wells Fargo do it, and maybe there's a security component to that. When we examine cybersecurity and the implications on quantum technologies From your research and from your perspective as an educator what are some of the top industries that stand to be disrupted by the quantum technology that we're studying and discussing today?
Yes. So, I mean, the biggest one is some of the ones I've mentioned in the past slide. I mean, anything that involves cryptographic protocols and keeping information secure, I think that that one is the biggest in threat. I mean, there's also a lot of benefits to quantum computers when it comes to simulating chemical reactions and things along those lines, optimization problems, lots of benefits. But the one that's most worrisome, troublesome is the cryptographic landscape and keeping information secure. That's like the top one, in my opinion.
Mr. Chairman, if I just could have latitude to follow up. So, Doctor, in relation to that, our responsibility here as legislators is to be the arbiter between the private sector and the development that happens there and what you're doing here internally in a research capacity. I'd be very eager to get your thoughts on what we can do with regard to regulation to allow those industries to incubate and fulfill that secondary stage from where it goes at the initial stage of the research that you and your teams are doing. But before we as legislators begin to properly regulate, how can we best allow and position our legislation to create that incubation for the industries as this technology evolves?
Yeah, so that's a good question because those are very different regimes, the basic research side. And we stand in the middle. Yeah, it's an interesting place to stand. And AARL, where I'm from, we live in the kind of transition region from transitioning basic research to applied research, and we have transition partners to help that process go. But I guess to answer your question, I think the best thing to do is things like this, where you stay educated on the more basic research side, support the basic research side, because the basic research sometimes doesn't get the acknowledgment. And because we live sometimes in the weeds, in the academic weeds, it's hard to figure out why it's applicable until much, much later. So I think staying on top of what's going on and why regularly is very important and to have events like this.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Sure.
Hi. Thank you so much for this information. It's very interesting. I might be in the wrong spot here. I just wanted to talk more to sort of wrap my head more around how this would work and what this would look like. How vulnerable are major infrastructures like electric grids, telecommunications, water systems? Like that is what's like making my red flags go off on this. How prepared are we for those types of attacks?
So, in this context, I mean, anything that involves the secure transmission of information is at risk. So if there is secure information about the electrical grid or something that the public shouldn know that leaves it vulnerable I mean really the sky the limit to what is affected here because I think in all those subjects you mentioned there are certainly classified information that the public shouldn't know or confidential information. And so I think it touches upon everything, honestly. Yeah, that's my opinion.
She's hoarding that mic from me again. My question is right along the same lines for the, as you're saying, the battle over quantum decryption, encryption, collecting data. Because the ARL is working with the government, what do you see are those core focus areas that another nation – because this is really nation on nation.
They're not coming after individual families. They're coming after broader systems. So is it the stock market? Is it where do you see those areas of attack? Sure. You know, that is – I'm less versed in the risk analysis for which particular sector because I do kind of sometimes live in academic land, as I've mentioned. But, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is, again, everything I had on that slide is sensitive government information, banking, stock market. I mean, all of that. Pick your poison, I think. So that's really all I can say on that.
In the research that you do, is it, you know, some of those funding come through? Is it primarily federally backed and invested?
Are there state components? You know, do we play a role in the ARL? In my experience and the work that I do, it's all federal dollars for the most part. That's not to say that there isn't a state component in there. Just from my experience in my work it's federally sourced.
Great.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I'll stay in the academic lane, I think, on this question. All right. Just for our general understanding of how quantum technology works, my son is sitting behind you. We've watched the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment. We think we understand. Can you explain that and kind of tie that to superposition and how quantum technology actually has this extra terrestrial ability, if I can call it that?
Yeah, actually that is relevant to, I mean, how the threat here. So I guess to sum things up, quantum mechanics uses superposition. is basically a state of being in multiple states at the same time, and it doesn't collapse until you actually observe the quantum state. And quantum computers are built on maintaining a superposition. There's particular quantum gates and quantum algorithms kept to make sure that the wave function remains intact and in a superposition so that it can probe everything at once. Now when you doing a calculation you have to eventually measure the wave function and it will collapse to one particular solution If you remember the maze I had if you probing all possible paths when you actually go to measure you collapse into one particular path. So there are extra steps you need to do to ensure that that path you collapse into is the right one, because you probe all possible solutions, but you also get all possible answers at the same time. And a lot of the minutia of quantum computing is to manipulate the interference of the wave function so that you cancel out wrong answers and you amplify the correct answer. And you have to do it many, many times and build up a probability distribution, and then you pick the most likely one. And that's a big area of research because Because there's, yes, you can probe all the solutions at the same time, but you have to do the calculation multiple times. You have to manipulate the wave function to get this cancellation effect. And all of that is currently under study in the research world. And it's more complicated than that even. But superposition and entanglement is critical to how quantum computers get their advantage. And there's really no classical analog to kind of mimic that. and that's why quantum computers are kind of in their own class in comparison to classical.
So to simplify the process, I was thinking this as you were saying that, it's sort of like when you go in and have that die put in when they look for a heart blockage and they find the path where it is. I mean, is that basically what it's doing is it's trying to find the path where the blockage might be and then taking it from there?
I'd say that it's probably not entirely accurate, but there's a lot of paths and there's only one that's blocked so I think that's close enough let's say
and as we talk about this and then we're going to wrap it up and move to the next panel but I just want to say that we've talked about a lot of the scary negatives there's a lot of positives too as we go toward quantum computing of things that we'll be able to do in science and research and development that will really advance us to that next step like computing did when it first became mainstream. So one example, you have one example you could use that you think would be a great one?
I mean, there's lots of examples. The one example, the first one that comes to my head is quantum simulation and simulating chemical reactions or protein synthesis. It's really opening up fields that just were not possible based on the sheer number of possible solutions you can have. and being able to prove them all at once and get solutions is game-changing for sure. So that's the first one that comes to mind, but there's many, many more.
Well, thank you very much for your testimony, and we look forward to working with you in the future.
Thank you. Thanks.
Our next panel is Jen Gilbert.
She's the Deputy Secretary for Technology for Entrepreneurship at DCED.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So I call myself the state nerd. And it fits. So good afternoon, Chairman and members of the committee, and thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you today. And I spent most of my career working in cybersecurity, and I used to joke I was no longer fun at parties because I would scare the crap out of everyone with all the bad things that could happen. And that was when quantum was but a glimmer in our eyes. So I'm kind of glad I'm not working in the space. And I get to come and talk to you about the opportunities of quantum. And we will touch a little bit on the security part. I did submit written testimony. I'm not going to read that. I just want to up level a couple of the points that I made. So number one is Pennsylvania has an incredible opportunity as we enter the new quantum era. Quantum computing has the potential to transform industries that we care about, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, energy, ag, logistics, and national security. and Pennsylvania has something that I believe is truly special. We have seven R1s and they have come together to form a Keystone AI and Quantum Factory. And this is a huge deal. I think on my gravestone I'm going to have it written, she convened the seven R1s. because it was not easy. But rather than having our universities compete individually, and quantum is super expensive. Like each university is not gonna have in the near future a quantum computer. They're very expensive. So having our universities compete, rather than having them compete individually, they're collaborating as a statewide ecosystem, bringing together research, infrastructure, workforce development, commercialization, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, industry, and the Commonwealth. We're actually going up to see IBM next week. Very few states can bring together this depth of research capability in one coordinated effort. So it really is a big deal, and it gives us this great opportunity to compete for federal dollars and also industry dollars. So we want to make sure – secondly, sorry, workforce development. We want to make sure that Pennsylvanians are prepared for these new quantum age jobs. And the quantum workforce, it's going to span the whole spectrum from PhDs down through technicians. And so there is a great opportunity to uplift on all ends of the spectrum and make sure we have precision machinists, skilled tradespeople, people who can service the quantum computers. So the Keystone AI and Quantum Factory also has a working group around workforce development. They're plugged in with labor and industry and Department of Ed to start putting together roadmaps for how we would address the quantum jobs of the future. And then, again, we talked about the security aspect. Like, that is serious. It breaks the Internet, basically. So everything that's encrypted on the Internet, your transactions, will be, like, cracked like that. So yes, I think a lot of it will be state actors, but it also will affect consumers greatly. I mean, today, fraud is a huge—here I go scaring you. Can't get rid of it. Fraud is a huge industry. I think everyone's – half my friend's parents have been defrauded at some point. My mom calls me every five minutes. I got a text from EZPass. I'm like, EZPass won't text you. They don't have your phone number. So fraud will now go on steroids once quantum computing is available and they can decrypt everything. So that is something that we do need to take seriously and make sure that our state data is protected and that we keeping up with it It different than AI so it not like we can say stop building data centers because we want to study it Once quantum is out, it's out. And it doesn't matter where the quantum is. If bad actors have it, everything is susceptible. So I think the earlier question on how do you regulate it now is really challenging because once the compute is out, everything breaks. So that's just something we need to just be aware that we're making sure our state data is prioritized to be protected as a good start from that. So really, again, the Keystone AI and Quantum Factory is really bringing together the top research, not just Penn State, but all of the 7R1s. And so it's an exciting initiative. You're going to be hearing more about it. launched last March and we're building the plane as they're flying it but it is pretty amazing to have all seven of them working together so I feel like we're in good hands at least from a state preparing for this and now I will entertain questions
Thank You mr. chair and I think we it may have been this committee toward the
the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and those universities were sharing space. And so they're working together. When you say the opportunity for business, you know, are they working on projects for private industry? Because I think there was private industry that we're also participating or helping to fund. You know, like we're all about trying to keep our kids here, working here. What are some examples of that workforce opportunity?
So the keystone, it's AI and quantum, and we kind of put it into three major working groups. One is fundraising, how are we going to fund it? The second one is workforce development, and the third bucket is innovation. And one of the problems with AI, so sorry to switch to AI, but this will probably be a problem with quant as well, is if you're a startup and you have a great idea, in order to get funding, you need data to prove your idea. In order to collect data and run your algorithms, you need compute. Compute is so expensive. Like AWS is really expensive. So like I worked at a startup that did AI before I joined the Commonwealth, and we spent 80 grand a month on AWS, and you just go through your funding like that. So the Keystone AI and Pittsburgh Supercomputing does this with available compute, so any extra compute we would make available at cost to the startups in the Commonwealth, if they stay in the Commonwealth. So there is an innovation idea there, and then also how to help commercialize the IP that's being. We have a lot of technologies looking for a problem so we're really trying to bring industry in all of our sectors to the research to help them solve problems so that we can do a better job at commercializing RIP so that's another initiative.
Great.
Thank you Mr. Chair.
Representative Day.
Thank you. I'm going to just put two questions into one to make it easier for the committee in our day today. The third thing you talked about, congratulations on the collaboration. That will be powerful in using all of our R1 universities as a brilliant stroke and getting them together Thank you So congratulations on that Workforce I hoping to see AI education and all these tools that we talking about here today including if we can get quantum into our CTEs. I think that's really important to do to let people choose. I want to go to the CTE because they have that program.
Yep.
But the first part A is are you working with the Department of Education? And maybe tell us about that. The second thing is are there public-private partnerships for cybersecurity like with CrowdStrike or Palantir or some of the leaders in security? So those are the two questions that I have.
Yeah. So I'll do the second one first and then we'll go back. So we are through – so the beauty of getting all seven of the R1s together is for the industry, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. So rather than them having to go around to all, they can come to one. And it gives us leverage, saying, look, you want access to our research, you want access to – and the universities are working on ways to reduce the power consumption of AI. algorithms being developed at Penn. Penn State here, if you haven't toured the nuclear reactor. I'm a child of Three Mile Island growing up in Lancaster County, so staring at the eye of a nuclear reactor was the coolest thing. There's all this research that is solving the problems that AI and quantum could create, and the industry is really interested in partnering. So we haven't…
And paying for it? That's part of your fundraising, right?
Oh, yeah. Especially with AI getting a black eye right now. We're flying out to meet with Michael Dell, or the organization is, and supposedly he's writing a $50 million, $25 million check. So, yeah, they're interested. And the IBM meeting is around quantum. And what we're going in is saying, do you want to participate with this? What are you going to provide? And so, yeah, we're really getting industry. And then on the cyber side, that's kind of next up, but we're going to start engaging with a lot of the big California cyber security companies and get them, you know, working here with us. And then the other one was the kids and getting it into education. Oh, 100%. So, yeah, Department of Ed is very engaged in our workforce development, working on the curriculum. It's a bit of a timing thing, so you don't want to be training kids now if the jobs are ten years away. And so we're looking at that, but we're also looking on what jobs are going to be impacted or what careers are going to be impacted because of AI and quantum, and how do we reskill, upskill, train for the new both AI and quantum economy.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you.
Representative Deorce.
Yeah, so forgive me if this is off prompt or redundant because I want to ask about power consumption. So the quantum computing systems and the neuromorphic chips, how much more, like is there a figure how much more energy they consume to a traditional? Do you know that?
Yeah. I don't. I'm going to have to owe you. I'm sure someone knows it, but I think it is, I think just because it's a lot more compute, guessing it's a lot more, but then the technology is moving into – like photonics is going to be used a lot more in quantum and that has a lower power footprint or lower heat footprint so you don need the cooling A lot of the power around compute is cooling And there a lot I think University of Waterloo up in Canada has a 100 data center running on submersibles where they have the blades in a gel, and so it's silent and it uses like 60 percent less power, so we're looking at things like that as well.
Representative Ledbetter.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jen, thank you so much for being here.
Of course. Always good seeing you.
As you're aware, Governor Shapiro and Senator McCormick have collaborated a couple times now that this committee and my colleagues and myself were able to participate in, whether it was the Technology and Innovation Summit at the CMU campus or just recently the Carlisle Barracks, the Defense and Innovation Summit. When we talk about the investment that the Commonwealth is making, in your written testimony, you speak briefly to the Innovate in PA 2.0, the $125 million program. And as someone who represents a very rural district, as again, you're familiar, agriculture is the number one industry in Columbia County in the 109th. And we take a lot of pride in that. And on the heels of the Defense and Innovation Summit, we also see how food production is a matter of national safety. You need to be able to feed your people. And when we look at the program, the Innovate in PA 2.0 program, we see how startups in robotics, life sciences, energy, advanced manufacturing, and agriculture are listed. Can you speak to a little bit on how those dollars are going to be spread across those categories? And I have a Second question, what advice would you give some of my farmers and some of the agriculture industry leaders in my district to be able to participate in that program?
So we're partnering also with the Ag Innovation Fund, which is a $10 million fund. And they actually did it brilliantly because instead of funding the startup, they funded the farmer or the provider to buy the technology from the startup. and that encourages the adoption, because I've been on tours where the farmer's like, I'm not using this, because it's scary and complex and perceived to be expensive. So I think they've done it really well. The Innovate, too, without going into the full details, and I'd be happy to meet and go through the full details, But half of it is towards life science, and that includes ag because there are pesticides and disease mitigation and things like that that are being researched and could potentially have funding. There's also a potential for rural health care to get some of that funding as well because that, again, is a big problem in rural areas. on the general tech side what we purposely did was we put in funding for they're called venture studios and they work equally as well in rural areas as you know as spin outs for the big university sector so it's a way of purposely building startup creation and you usually theme them so what What I saw when I took this job is I spent a year going around and there's all these incubators around the state that are empty. They have a 3D printer and they might have a robotic arm and there might be one or two people milling about, but they're not really generating economic output. And so the idea behind a venture studio is you kind of pick a theme. So you could have ad tech as one, and then you decide what problem you're solving, and then you handpick the IP. So you go to whoever has, like, the top IP, whether it's a Pennsylvania university, hopefully, or it might be someone out of state, but you bring in the IP, and then you de-risk the IP, and you get a much higher success rate of companies forming. and my favorite venture studio in the state is in coatsville and they've spun out three companies they're doing it around sensing technology so they have a water sensor a toilet leak detector sensor i can like i would love for anyone to tour it because it's the coolest thing they have the workforce de-risking it are high school students because they don't have any colleges there. So they're using high school students to de-risk. These kids are getting scholarships to Lehigh and Georgia Tech. Google recruited one kid because his name was on a patent. So it's giving these high schoolers applied technology learning huge future opportunity, and it's creating manufacturing jobs in Coatesville. So this methodology was purposely put into the Innovate Fund because it works. And we're going to do a tour around and include rural areas to see how we can start these up. And there will be planning grant opportunity as well as funding.
Awesome, Jen. I'll look forward to building out that conversation more in-depth offline. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much. It's exciting to see what the state is doing and where we can go with this technology.
I saw one of the things that you had in your testimony talked about we're not going to need as many PhDs. So I don't know. I thought about you right away. It's too late now. But I did find that interesting because we don't need to train a workforce that's completely different in the way we do things. So it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 20 years.
Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be exciting. Thank you.
Our third panel is virtual. We have Paul Steiners, who's the Executive Director of Quantum Industry Coalition. And did you say your name? I'm going to say it wrong. Could you say it for us?
Mihir of Oscar.
Thank you. I didn't want to butcher it. I appreciate it. Who's the Senior Vice President of Global R&D at IN&Q. So I turn it over to the both of you.
Thank you. I'll begin. Chair Cerisi, Vice Chair Dey, and distinguished members of the committee, Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the Quantum Industry Coalition. My name is Paul Stimers and I serve as Executive Director of the Coalition. Our membership spans the full spectrum of quantum hardware, software, and applications, and our companies range from startups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Our goal is to maintain and enhance U.S. leadership in the development and commercialization of quantum technologies. Quantum computing represents one of the most consequential technological advances of our era with the potential to bring transformative economic, scientific, and national security impacts. Quantum computers are able to explore vast numbers of possibilities simultaneously rather than sequentially, enabling them to solve certain classes of problems that are impossible for even the most powerful classical supercomputers. Quantum computers are not merely faster versions of classical computers. They do not simply extend Moore's law. Instead they unlock the ability to solve problems that classical computers cannot Quantum computers show extraordinary promise for discovering and designing advanced materials capable of withstanding extreme conditions for next generation energy systems. They can optimize enormously complex systems from logistics and supply chains to electric grids, where the number of variables overwhelms classical approaches. They can model physical, chemical, and financial systems with a fidelity far beyond what classical computation can achieve. We expect that quantum computers can accomplish major milestones in each of these areas by the end of this decade, and a variety of quantum architectures have already begun to demonstrate utility in real-world contexts. The implications for the economy and national security are enormous. The competitive landscape demands urgency. The United States is in a quantum technology race. China and other international competitors are investing heavily in quantum research, workforce, and infrastructure. And if we fall behind, we risk losing not only economic benefits, but also national security advantages and global technological leadership. States that act now to create supportive environments for quantum innovation will attract the companies, talent, and investment that will define this industry for decades. Although Pennsylvania is not currently considered one of the nation's leaders in quantum computing research, development, and commercialization, it has the potential to capture significant economic benefit from the quantum revolution. The Commonwealth possesses world-class research universities with established programs in physics, engineering, and computer science. It has a deep manufacturing base with expertise in precision components, advanced materials, and cryogenic systems. It is home to critical energy infrastructure and a skilled technical workforce. These assets align directly with the needs of the growing quantum industry, which requires engineers, technicians, and manufacturing workers who can build, maintain, and operate quantum systems at scale. Pennsylvania can compete in this emerging industry in three ways. By attracting quantum companies to locate and grow within the Commonwealth. By promoting Pennsylvania businesses that can become suppliers to the quantum computing market. and by developing the specialized workforce that quantum computer quantum technologies require i also want to underscore the importance of updating cyber security for the quantum era as we have heard a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could break most of the cryptographic systems currently protecting sensitive government data financial transactions personal information and critical infrastructure communications harvest now decrypt later means that data encrypted today with current methods may already be compromised in a practical sense if it will remain sensitive for a few more years. A federal executive order has tasked federal agencies with accelerating the transition to post-quantum cryptography, which is as difficult for quantum computers to decrypt as it is for classical computers. Pennsylvania government agencies handling sensitive data should already be actively preparing for this transition. We recommend that agencies begin with education and awareness, followed by comprehensive cryptographic inventories to identify where vulnerable encryption is deployed, risk assessments to prioritize systems based on data sensitivity and longevity, and the development of transition strategies and pilot programs for migrating high-risk systems to validated post-quantum cryptographic solutions. Government agencies should take advantage of this opportunity to move to crypto agility, which will enable IT systems to respond more nimbly to rapidly evolving AI threats The quantum era is arriving Pennsylvania has the assets the talent and the institutional strengths to be a national leader in this transformative technology What is needed now is the policy, vision, and commitment to match those strengths. The Quantum Industry Coalition and its members would be pleased to serve as a resource to this committee and the General Assembly as you consider these important matters. Thank you for your attention, and I welcome your questions. Thank you.
Chairman Sirassi, Vice Chair Dei, members of the committee. I am Dr. Mihir Bosker. I'm Senior Vice President of Global R&D at INQ. INQ is a leading quantum technology company, and I personally have over a decade of expertise and a doctoral background in quantum technologies. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the future of quantum technologies and their implications for our economy and our workforce. I'd ask that my full written testimony be submitted for the record as well. INQ appreciates the opportunity to provide this testimony on transforming industries, creating high-skilled jobs, and strengthening critical infrastructure. And the opportunity requires more than just building powerful quantum computers. It depends on commercializing practical applications that solve real-world challenges. investing in the workforce and supply chains needed to deploy these technologies at scale and ensuring industry and all levels of government are prepared for the transition, as we have heard, to post-quantum security. It also requires an understanding of the economic and societal implications that will come with such a dramatic leap in computing power and technology. INQ already works directly with customers across many industries from engineering and logistics to healthcare and energy to develop quantum applications that improve productivity, address real operational challenges, and accelerate innovation and scientific discovery. And with partners in each of these industry sectors, we are highlighting how quantum computing is already becoming today a practical real-world tool for solving problems that are difficult or impossible for conventional computing alone. Pennsylvania's research universities, advanced manufacturing base, and skilled workforce position the Commonwealth very well to benefit from quantum technologies, because many of your core industries align with the sectors where we expect quantum applications emerging first. Pennsylvania already has a lot of the assets needed to compete really strongly in the quantum economy, including the newly launched Keystone AI and Quantum Factory. Many of the skills required to support quantum, including software engineering, cybersecurity, photonics, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, many that we've heard of today, are already in demand, making quantum workforce development a natural extension of existing technology and economic development priorities when it comes to quantum. Several states, should be noted, have already begun building these ecosystems. Illinois launched the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. Colorado's Elevate Quantum initiative brings together universities, federal laboratories, private companies to develop structured education and training. And in Maryland, which is the home of INQ's College Park headquarters, the state's $1 billion capital of quantum initiative unites the government, the University of Maryland, INQ, and other industry partners to expand quantum research, strengthen educational pathways, develop the workforce, and accelerate commercialization. As we heard quantum technologies present both an extraordinary opportunity and an urgent challenge for strengthening national security and critical infrastructure So as quantum capabilities continue to advance governments and operators must prepare for the transition to quantum-resistant cryptographic standards while also investing in more resilient critical infrastructure today. For example, water and wastewater utility companies in at least seven states have recently reported cyber attacks, some of which disrupted operations. Beyond secure communications, quantum technologies also have the potential to transform other civilian and military applications, for example, through upgraded position, navigation, and timing devices. We all use GPS-dependent devices and services every day, and it's all too often taken for granted. It's a lynchpin of our economic and national security, and secure, resilient alternatives and backup systems are critically important to maintaining those surfaces. INQ fields quantum sensors with the goal of upgrading the positioning accuracy of GPS while enabling resilience in GPS-denied environments. Quantum technology is becoming a foundational capability for advanced manufacturing, healthcare, energy, communications, and national security, and states that invest today in research workforce development, manufacturing, and commercialization will be positioned to attract companies to create high-paying jobs and strengthen long-term competitiveness. Pennsylvania has many of the building blocks necessary to become a leader in this emerging industry, including its world-class research institutions, a very strong industrial base, and a highly skilled workforce. And as other states continue making significant investments in quantum technology and talent and commercialization, Pennsylvania has an opportunity to build on these strengths and help further America's economic competitiveness, national security and technology leadership. INQ looks forward to partnering with the Commonwealth to help translate Pennsylvania's research strengths into commercial innovation, high-paying jobs, and long-term economic competitiveness. Thank you all for the opportunity to appear before you, and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
Questions? So, it doesn't look like there's many questions. A couple of things I think I'll conclude the hearing, but I'll say and ask the both of you as we look at this. You know, we've looked at everyday places where this is going to touch us, and we heard testimony on this is an AI as we look at quantum computing, but it's letting the genie out of the bottle no matter what we do. It is another type of an AI. Once it's out, it's out. so we heard earlier that it would be a few years maybe a decade before this comes out to play between the both of you what would you call some of the red flags of things that we should be investing in in the commonwealth not only as a state but as our educational institutions and our workforce to build what we need to put in place for the barriers and also what we need to put in place to expand industry. Go ahead, Mayor, if you'd like.
Yeah, absolutely. So what needs to be done right now, I think Paul and I both touched on this in testimony, is certainly the transition of communication infrastructure over to post-quantum cryptography and methods that are known today to be secure against quantum computers. That's the, I think, the must have. The other aspects in comparing to AI, the way that I would frame how quantum is actually different and understanding is AI is being used to replace and make more efficient a lot of things that we do every day. Quantum is different from that because quantum is allowing us to solve new problems that we can't even solve on computers today that AI could never solve because it doesn't have access to that computational power. And so when I think about the economic benefits of AI and how we need to prepare our workforce, our economies, I would think about having this new tool and being able to attack new types of problems in chemistry, in pharmaceuticals, in logistics, in transportation, and making sure we are building the supply chain to build this new technology and the workforce that's going to be there to take advantage of this technology to hopefully make our economy more robust, develop new solutions that will ultimately make the world a better place.
I think that's exactly right. I think that quantum unlocks a lot of new capabilities. It doesn't create the same replacement risks that AI does. Also doesn't make itself better in the way that AI can. And I think those are important distinctions. And absolutely workforce development, the kind of educational opportunities that previous panels have discussed and the Deputy Secretary Gilbert was outlining are really important and have been things that my members have been pressing for the entire nine years of our history. I'd also say I know that the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership Centers, including IMC, which represents this particular region, as well as Catalyst Connection and the rest, have been tremendous partners in some of the manufacturing side of all of this and are a great resource as you work to ensure that Pennsylvania can participate on the supply chain side. Thank you. Representative Nelson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. In each of your testimonies you mentioned crypto agility or that the state vulnerable systems should implement crypto agility or take steps to have quantum disruptors These are very new terms for me, but in appropriations and when we go through the appropriations process, Pennsylvania is spending tens of millions, 100 million on continually software upgrades, computer upgrades. What is your assessment? Because I've not heard quantum disruptor and crypto agility. How do you assess Pennsylvania's technology currently?
Yeah. So I don't think we can assess Pennsylvania's technology other than to say that post-quantum cryptography has just begun to become an option. And this is something that has been led by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology as they have developed the capability to have the kind of math that had been discussed earlier that is just as hard for quantum computers to unravel as it is for classical computers. So the opportunity is to start now and move quickly to adopt post-quantum cryptography and also to use this opportunity not just to apply that one patch, but also to re-architect your IT systems such that you can enjoy crypto agility going forward, meaning that you can upgrade and adapt at the speed that the attackers are upgrading and adapting rather than some generations. behind. I would just add to that and say, you know, the way that we describe it is defense in depth, right? So we talked about the blast radius earlier of quantum impact on cryptography being very large There an opportunity now to look at how we send sensitive data on networks and enable a layered architecture where if in the future one of these layers goes down, there's another layer, for example, a physical hardware-based layer that can actually support that. And so I would encourage to look at multiple solutions. and, as Paul mentioned, a defense-in-depth approach that incorporates things like post-quantum cryptography but then also advanced technologies like quantum key distribution to help provide additional security.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Representative Ledbetter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your testimony this afternoon.
My question may be met with some chuckles, but I would like your feedback. I'd like to stress test something. As lawmakers, the term data center has become very incendiary across our districts. But would it be technically valid to start referring to data centers as quantum stations? And if so or if not, would you be able to explain why that would be accurate or inaccurate? Yeah, I'm happy to take this one first. I would say, you know, for many of the reasons that data centers have become incendiary are some of the reasons that motivate technologists to build quantum computers in the first place. Right. You know, we're deploying in data centers, computing scale, power consumption, you know, at a massive scale. And it's consuming a lot of resources. And what quantum computers really can do is solve certain problems that take in, you know, an unimaginable amount of resources, let's say, in a data center format and solve them in a much more efficient time energy or cost That the promise of quantum computers So I think we going to have to come up with a new term for quantum because what we trying to build are machines that are much more efficient at solving the problems we're seeking out to solve, not using an entire data center to do chemical simulation that consumes megawatts of power, but to use a quantum computer that will be much, much more efficient. And it's designed to solve those very important tasks. and and if i could take a moment to brag on ion q uh ion q's uh quantum computers run on wall outlets this is not a tremendous amount of power we're talking about
well i want to thank the both of you for your testimony look forward to working with you uh and thank you again for being here i want to thank everyone that's testified as alex leaned over to me and said have we scared the committee enough um with where we're going in this technology
And while it seems scary and we've heard the horror stories, on every time there's a change in technology and industry, there's the pluses and the minuses. And I think as we understand it more and are able to use it, we'll see where the advantages come into play in our everyday lives. Who would think that 50 years ago we'd be sitting here with something this big that had more technology on it than they used to land on the moon? So it is an exciting time. It is a little scary, as we learn, but for our younger people who are sitting here with us, what they're going to see in their future, we can't even imagine what's about to happen. So thank you all, and thank you all for attending the committee, and this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.