My response to the White House executive order on QC
I’ve been getting emails from journalists asking me to comment on the new White House executive order on quantum computing. Alas, I don’t have time for a long response or interviews since I’m at a beautiful science camp in the California mountains, and heading soon to STOC’2026 in Salt Lake City. But I gave anyone who asked me the following statement, which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog as well.
“I hope that at least some of the new funds made available from this Executive Order will go to basic, curiosity-driven academic research — the kind that led to the idea of quantum computing in the first place, and to the main quantum algorithms and other advances that everything builds on today — and not only to large organizations that have gotten good at capturing federal funds by repeating the requisite buzzwords.”
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Comment #1 June 23rd, 2026 at 11:03 am
indeed, research into algorithms that can run on such machines should be a big chunk of what should be supported. Similarly research into practical programming aspects for such machines.
Also they should have a bit chunk for preparing and securing computer systems and communication and financial systems for post-quantum cryptography.
There is so much in this area that needs government support over the next 10 years as we transition to post-quantum computer systems.
Comment #2 June 23rd, 2026 at 5:36 pm
So our President Trump is showering the tech nerds with praise, funding AI and quantum computers, gushing about our AI future…
While the Democrats are luddites, condemning AI and everybody who uses it, pearl-clutching about the dangers of technology, calling Elon Musk and Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel evil incel techbros, gutting gifted programs and magnet schools across America…
I wonder which side is the popular kids, and which side is the nerds 😊
Which side are the luddites, and which is for technology and human progress?
Comment #3 June 23rd, 2026 at 6:19 pm
Elliot #2: Get serious. Democrat vs Republican simply can’t be mapped onto nerds vs popular kids in any straightforward way. Nerds have never fully been at home in either political tribe, and they certainly aren’t today.
Yes, the Trump administration does have a bug up its tuchus about both quantum computing and AI, and all else equal, that would seem beneficial to those of us who actually work in quantum computing and AI!
The trouble is that, at the same time, they’re also burning down the whole basic research enterprise that provided the origin and foundation of both fields. As one of many examples, they slashed the number of NSF graduate fellowships by roughly half — something that’s catastrophic for the next generation of scientists, as no other program fulfills the same role.
Thus, it’s reasonable to worry whether the real goal here is to enrich the grifters and buzzword spouters within quantum computing and AI — the popular kids of those fields, if you like, rather than the nerds. Especially when, for example, there seems to be a massive vendetta against Anthropic, specifically to punish that company’s leadership for having anything as nerdy as beliefs or principles that it puts ahead of self-interest.
As I said, I very much hope that my fear proves misplaced, and that yesterday’s EO ends up being a net positive for quantum computing research.
Comment #4 June 23rd, 2026 at 7:09 pm
Scott,
I was under the impression that the graduate cuts were aimed at students getting PhDs in “queering Shakespeare” or “whiteness in America” or trangender poetry. I did not know that it targeted serious scientific work. Is this actually true about the NSF, or like most media coverage about Trump is it an exaggeration? I work in tech, not academia, so I wouldn’t know.
In any case, I don’t agree with every policy coming out of the Trump administration. I agree with some Democrat policies and disagree with some MAGA policies. What matters infinitely more than specific policy positions is whether they see me as a valued human being and a contributing member of society. MAGA treats me like a human, and they say my work as a software engineer on AI/ML is good for the country, and that I’m valued for being smart and contributing to society. They appreciate great inventors and scientists in American history, men I can relate to, and want to teach about them in school. They tell me there’s nothing wrong with being straight, white, and male, and nothing wrong with being a geeky techbro. They support gifted and talented programs and STEM magnet schools. They sympathize with my social and dating problems I’ve had in life and acknowledge that hypergamy has made dating harder for men like me, and they tell me there’s nothing creepy or bad about learning to hit on women.
The Democrats think I’m a disgusting, weird, creepy tech bro. They think I’m a socially unskilled loser with narrow technical abilities, and tell me all the work I do on building technology is antisocial and destroying the world. They hate gifted kids and want to slash stem programs and standardized testing and make high school about sports and popularity. They say kids like me who were advanced in math are problematic and privileged, while dumb kids who play sports are admirable especially if they’re minorities. They tell me my ancestors were horrible, everyone with my skin color is born with sin, that I’m disgusting for being straight and white and male, that all the scientists and inventors I admire in American history were white privileged problematic villains. They tell me I’m an entitled creep for complaining about dating and social life as a geek.
So which side do I pick? The side that says they like me, or the side that is always screaming in my face about how worthless I am?
This is a very simple choice for me. Regardless of specific policies, I will always choose the side that tolerates me over the side that spits in my face.
Comment #5 June 24th, 2026 at 12:46 am
Elliot #4:
you actually think that MAGA values you?
dream on.
Comment #6 June 24th, 2026 at 1:58 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQnY2WONwqE
It it not just that the absolute temperatur T occurs in Landauer’s principle
E >= k_B T ln 2
Error correction for quantum computers needs fast classical compute, so a classical computer working at 4 Kelvin could really help, at least for those super fast superconducting qubits.
Comment #7 June 24th, 2026 at 9:07 am
Elliot #4:
The NSF annual budgets and priorities are on their website. You may find if interesting to compare the budget request for 2026 to the ones from 2015 to 2025.
The NSF does not fund humanities, so in particular can’t cut funding to “queering Shakespeare” or “transgender poetry”. It is in fact pretty stingy for what isn’t hard science: in 2025, out of a budget request of 10-ish billion, it planned to appropriate:
1) 1.6 billion for math and physics,
2) 1.6 billion for geosciences,
3) 1 billion for CS and related,
4) 900 million for technology, innovation and partnerships (whatever this means),
5) 800 million each for biology and engineering,
6) 300 million for “woke stuff” such as “social, behavioral, and economic sciences”.
See also comments of Bret Devereaux on this (https://acoup.blog/2025/02/14/fireside-friday-february-14-2025-on-grant-funding/) and the other Scott A. on Ted Cruz’s “woke science list”(https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/only-about-40-of-the-cruz-woke-science and correction at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-369) for related justifications.
Anecdotal evidence I gathered from actual mathematicians suggests that the disruption in the US was pretty bad, and would have been worse if NSF people had not tried their darnedest to mitigate the impact. Also, there seems to be many more applications to non US-based positions, which makes life miserable for postdocs everywhere and the people who have more work to choose a postdoc.
Comment #8 June 24th, 2026 at 9:33 am
I’m not entirely sure if this is the correct blog entry to publish it under, so feel free to keep it in moderation, but I predict Trump will nationalize Antropic and it will be at least partially related to Anthropic leasing compute capacity from Elon Musk. I might be wrong on this prediction, but I want to get it out early so I can later point to it to prove I actually thought so before it happened.
Comment #9 June 24th, 2026 at 9:45 am
Genzen #6, looks very similar to the IARPA-funded C3-project of yesteryear, which was also motivated by low-power low-footprint replacements for supercomputers of the time. Technological improvements were impressive, but I haven’t heard much about practical applications. One blind spot is that although the energy associated with one switching event is tiny, it takes place at 4K and you have to lift the dissipated heat to 300K to be able to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Thereby the heat power must be multiplied by at least the Carnot efficiency, but in practice by thermodynamic efficiency of the refrigerator which is much worse.
Classical computation needed for the quantum error correction is indeed a new application, where the vicinity to qubits is an additional benefit.
Comment #10 June 24th, 2026 at 11:06 am
Mikko Kiviranta #9: Thanks for the information, I didn’t know about the IARPA-funded C3-project. It looks like the results from the C3-project are still alive and kicking, and at least Northrop Grumman went for exactly the application I mentioned: Classical control of superconducting quantum computers>/a>!
Comment #11 June 24th, 2026 at 6:46 pm
Elliot #4
> The Democrats think I’m a disgusting, weird, creepy tech bro.
They don’t. Don’t believe the few vocal people you may encounter online
>They sympathize with my social and dating problems I’ve had in life
Only to get your vote. They don’t give a sh!t about anything else.
> hypergamy has made dating harder for men like me,
That’s not true (see below).
> they tell me there’s nothing creepy or bad about learning to hit on women.
You are probably too young and use slang I don’t understand, but if you mean “having consensual, hetero sex”, of course there’s nothing bad with that. In fact everybody’s own existence demonstrates that!
The “problem” is that humans are mammals in which the female is even more disadvantaged than on other mammals, given the length of the pregnancy and the effort it takes to bring a newborn into self-sufficiency. As such, women tend to be picky in their sexual choices. They have always been like that. Even when “it was easy” because they feared to remain spinster, man still had to court them, often for a long time, with great investment of time and money — and obtain the reward only after marriage.
Decades ago I had a friend who was a real Casanova. He would go with many women. But he had to really “work hard”: he spent considerable amount of time and money going to the gym and making his body very attractive; he spent considerable amount of time and money in clothing, skin and hair care; he spent considerable amount of time and money courting women. He offered to mentor all his friends on the topic. Most men were interested in the outcome, but everyone failed because they did not put the time, money and effort that was required.
Why do I tell you this? Because obtaining your goal is difficult AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN. Blaming some people won’t make you succeed. If you want to succeed you need to make yourself desirable, attractive, interesting. You have to study and understand what exactly you need to be to be liked, which changes with time and it’s different from one woman to another. You have to put the time, effort and money.
Now, to be fair there is one thing where you get it much harder than previous generations. And that is in-person encounters. Back in my day, everything was in person. These days everything is online. Online interactions are not close enough and not subtle enough to foster real attraction. So you actually have to work a little harder, but you can do it. Ditch your smartphone, decide some in-person venues where you may find people you like (e.g. gym, swimming pool, library, bar, club, whatever interests you and you’d be interest to find in a partner). Go there because you like it, be your best self because you want it to be, consider the “finding your person” a cherry on the cake and never mention it. Do the work and it’ll come as it has for everyone who did the work before you.
Signed: a democrat.
Comment #12 June 24th, 2026 at 9:35 pm
On funding for foundational sciences, every policy maker in the US should be worried that we will lose our standing in science and innovation to China. China is spending massively on winning the science and innovation race over the next 20 years.
A large part of the advantage we have is a result of government spending on science during the Cold War in competing seriously with Soviets. Science is the foundation of technology of tomorrow. We have benefitted massively from the spending on science over the years.
Every serious policy maker knows funding for STEM is critical for preserving America’s advantage in tech and business.
Populists on both sides of the political spectrum are anti-elite and are willing to sacrifice the future of ours kids and country for harming what they see as their domestic enemies. Universities should reflect the society and its diversity, politicians should not be interfering in running universities. They can pass anti-discrimination laws and require all component candidates, whether left or right, are not discriminated against at hiring and admission.
Comment #13 June 25th, 2026 at 6:29 am
People like Elliot are in too deep in the american epiphenomenon known as culture wars. It’s not even worth discussing it at this point.
Comment #14 June 25th, 2026 at 8:32 am
#12
That another country than ours is brilliantly innovating and inventing and producing is a wonderful thing. I have never understood why we should want to hold back others instead of reveling in the shared successes of humanity. The urge to envy and to drag down those who are succeeding instead of using them as inspiration to improve is a tremendous failing.
For all our host’s criticism of the “blankfaces” that impede him, I think he does not understand that AI doomers are also blankfaces, standing in the way of some of the most brilliant accomplishments that humanity has ever produced, shrieking “danger” in the faces of those doing their best to carry out that work. They succeeded in destroying nuclear power. They should not be allowed to destroy AI, but they are doing everything they can to try. It is fortunate that software is orders of magnitudes easier to build than nuclear power plants, so I can hope that the blankfaces will fail, but it is not a certainty.
Comment #15 June 25th, 2026 at 1:21 pm
Hyman Rosen #14: Agree or disagree with them, the idea of rationalist AI doomers as “blankfaces” is laughable to anyone who’s actually spent 10 minutes talking with them. Their whole worldview is the opposite of that of an EU bureaucrat who wants to ban things because of invented concerns about water usage or privacy or whatever. The rationalists are relentlessly, even scarily utilitarian, always asking what effects a given intervention will have on the world rather than what rules it breaks. As a result, they consistently reach conclusions that you and I would probably agree are the “correct” ones on economic issues other than AI: for example, nuclear power, building more housing, self-driving cars, and faster approval of new medicines (they’re for all of it).
It’s only with AI that they make a gigantic exception, and it’s because they believe there’s nothing stopping AI from becoming to us as we are to orangutans — at which point it, rather than us, will decide the future of life of earth. This is not a property shared by any previous technology and raises obvious questions about whether humans will survive the transition and if so in what form. Once you grant this one premise — that AI is potentially much more dangerous than nuclear weapons — their policy preference for treating superintelligence like we treated nuclear weapons is an extremely natural corollary. In order to refute them, you need to show why their premise is false, rather than making claims about their personalities and motivations that I know from firsthand experience to be idiotic.
Comment #16 June 26th, 2026 at 2:20 pm
“… they believe there’s nothing stopping AI from becoming to us as we are to orangutans …” At least, orangutans are sufficiently similar to humans so that many humans have significant empathy for orangutans. Think about a conscious entity with an IQ of 100 million and a life expectancy of 80 million years — how likely would such an entity be subject to good empathy with humans?
Comment #17 June 27th, 2026 at 5:48 am
I just can’t make up my mind about this whole AI doom thing. I have read some the arguments. It just doesn’t feel realistic at this point in time. Catastrophic ecological ramifications from populating the earth with energy hungry data centers? Yes. AI making “rational” decisions about who to nuke. Absolutely. What if the problem is neither nukes or AI, but AI making decision about nukes(proprietary algorithms sold to the pentagon by the usual suspects). Von Neumann came to the rational(consistent with the internal logic of total war) conclusion that the U.S. should nuke the soviets before they get a nuclear weapon themselves. An AI would have come to a similar conclusion. Humans may be an idiotic, self-destructive, self-serving species, but the alternative could be much worse.
Comment #18 June 27th, 2026 at 3:19 pm
Scott #15:
Some things about EU bureaucracy are infuriating, but I think your picture of “EU bureaucrats” is a very simplistic caricature (which a lot of American media happily keeps reinforcing). To change your prior here a bit:
1. being an EU bureaucrat is a relatively “elite” job in Europe (with many perks), and these people are typically selected from a large pool of very well-educated, competent, and cosmopolitan applicants;
2. EU bureaucrats have to keep a large majority of the 27 EU member states happy, which leads to slower and more cautious decision-making — this is not like the US where the 50% that happens to be in power (49.8% in the case of Trump) can ride roughshod over the other 50% when it comes to federal matters;
3. for better or for worse, the European population on the whole is more risk-averse than the US, and the EU bureaucracy reflects that (as it should in a democratic system).
Comment #19 June 27th, 2026 at 5:21 pm
Hyman #14 – in your opinion, is artificial intelligence capable of both comprehensively surpassing human intelligence, and being autonomous? (By being autonomous, I mean, making its own decisions and acting on them, for however long it manages to exist.)
Comment #20 June 28th, 2026 at 5:54 am
Ronald de Wolf #18
EU bureaucrats are in fact much worse than whatever the media in america say. The fact that they are cream of the crop educated cosmopolitan elites makes the blankfacedness all the worse. Why spend all this money and human capital to produce a bunch of them when you can do it with GenAI for a small fee.
Comment #21 July 1st, 2026 at 2:23 pm
Scott,
As I suggested over email, your online life would be infinitely easier if you abandoned the sinking ship of the Democratic Party, left the liberals who hate you, and joined the MAGA team. No longer would you be an embattled nerd, hemmed in on all sides, fighting a losing battle. You would have the intellectual safety and protection of being part of a movement. The MAGA people would defend you from the anti-zionists and the socialists and the woke extremists. Sometimes, you just have to pick a side.
Comment #22 July 1st, 2026 at 2:44 pm
Elliot #21: No, the MAGA forces have already made it clear that they want to defund basic research out of spite. Even supposing I could get some personal special dispensation from them — which I can’t — that’s incompatible with creating the sort of environment for me and my colleagues where I’d want to work. If that weren’t bad enough, the MAGA forces also can’t defend me from the open antisemites (Carlson, Fuentes, etc) who are poised to succeed them, just as the DSA is poised to take over the Democratic Party.