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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal
s0a wrote 12 min ago:
there is not yet a single approach to quantum computing that is
provably scalable. so called experts may quibble, the uninformed (or
financially aligned) will bloviate, bluster, and talking point us to
death. but it's sadly just true. we're closer to useful fusion power
than useful QC.
aswegs8 wrote 18 min ago:
Is it legal is such a pre-2025 question
stymaar wrote 45 min ago:
For the past year and a half, the US administration have plunged the
country in a rule of law twilight zone: the rule of law still exists,
and there are still independent jurisdictions to enforce it, but the
administration decided they didn't care, and they just overcome any
court dismissal of their orders with a new illegal order that courts
will have to push back a few month later.
Which means that, in practice, the US isn't governed by the rule of law
anymore, but by the whim of the Czar's court.
gchamonlive wrote 18 min ago:
Bernie Sanders warned right when the second Trump admin started that
the country was effectively an olygarchy [1] . I wrote [2] that made
Frontpage here [3] discussing the consequences of an irresponsible
admin through the lenses of consumer rights. It's nice that now we
are seeing more widespread acceptance of the fact that US isn't
behaving like a democracy anymore, even though it's a bit too little
too late
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/79KDKWEOJ1s
URI [2]: https://xd1.dev/2025/09/not-buying-american-anymore
URI [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45277346
ryanmcbride wrote 34 min ago:
Yup. There is no authority that is going to swoop in and hold them
accountable, there is no legal recourse to be had from any court
currently in existence. No one is going to save us but ourselves.
mostlysimilar wrote 37 min ago:
The future of the US depends on these people being held accountable
by the next administration, and structural reforms to make their
abuses harder to do again in the future.
gchamonlive wrote 23 min ago:
Great incentives for a president to do whatever he pleases then
just attempt a coup.
mrits wrote 35 min ago:
Being held accountable in the next administration is pretty much
the opposite of what a democratic society needs. It's a never
ending cycle. Let the court system handle this.
b112 wrote 20 min ago:
The problem is, the current admin has shown how pliable the
courts are. And, this weakens them, in that, there is less of a
belief of impartiality.
Conjoin that with AI able to generate billions of videos, saying
anything anyone wants, and you have a real issue. 99.99% of the
population can't tell or even realises much of what they watch on
youtube is AI, and... it will get less distinguishable, to the
point that no one, at all, will be able to tell.
Not you, I, or anyone at all.
There are already endless AI personalities on youtube, each
building followers. If I wanted to upset the apple cart, I'd
spawn 1000 or more "people", each with a different appearance and
manner of speaking. All would dance to my tune, and all would be
the most honest, trustworthy source possible.
Until, of course, I wanted to upset the apple cart. Then I'd
ensure that all these personalities, insisted that all the court
decisions post-office, are lies, mistruths, and designed to
punish and harm and "take out the right's power".
Imagine if you have someone you've watched for 2 years. On
hundreds of points, they've been blisteringly honest, never
lying, always truthful. Then?
On this one thing, they manipulate you.
Who do you trust? The most honest person you've ever seen, or
the impartiality of the courts?
This is the sort of long game you can play with fake
personalities. No disloyalty. No breaking ranks. No bad days,
or mistakes.
I've fought for a free internet. I've fought for the right to
anonymous posting. To be a voice, without an identity. But?
That time is over, or we won't have a democracy. I've pivoted
180, I cannot see a democratic society with this level of
manipulation continuing.
monooso wrote 23 min ago:
Not GP, but in this context I would interpret the next
administration[^1] holding the current administration to account
as a willingness to use the court system to prosecute actual
crimes committed while in office[^2].
That is by no means a given.
[^1]: Assuming there is one.
[^2]: That is, not petulantly prosecuting those deemed to have
slighted you.
dylan604 wrote 7 min ago:
SCOTUS has already given POTUS immunity in any form other than
impeachment followed by a conviction. The problem with that is
that just removes POTUS from office. It does nothing to punish
for those crimes that were deemed worthy enough of being
impeached/convicted. SCOTUS said that POTUS cannot be held
accountable for things done as official acts of office. So
Congress cannot hold POTUS criminally accountable, but removed
from office to stop the criminal acts. Once POTUS becomes a
citizen they are free. At this point, I can only see where the
newly sworn POTUS would use their new pardon power to end the
question as well.
However, all of this is very far away from the legality of
quantum computing
adgjlsfhk1 wrote 28 min ago:
Courts can only handle cases that are brought.
LadyCailin wrote 52 min ago:
> At this point, however, itâs not obvious how to stop the deal.
Impeachment, but congress has bent over so much that they can taste
their shoes.
lazide wrote 47 min ago:
They like the payment, and yelling about it while actually not doing
anything about it means they get the benefits (as long as their
constituents buy it!) while not having to do the actual hard work on
take on real risk.
When it blows up, they can even say âI told you so!â, often while
profiting from it insider trading wise.
Eric_Bulai wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
This is a novel for a book. In a race where the rules are broken by
some participants, how secure are your own systems when your opponent
can access invisible technology long before the others? This should
make you think.
lazide wrote 48 min ago:
Itâs literally classic prisoners dilemma?
Hint: it doesnât give warm fuzzies.
mounceyboy wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
my favorite conspiracy theory - the govt has already cracked all the
RSA codes but they keep funding QM to show that we're still secure.
ecshafer wrote 41 min ago:
I read once that if we really wanted to be secure, we would have a
crypto library that was open source, AND all changes needed to be
signed off by more than one of NSA, Mossad, FSB, China's agency, etc.
This way if there is a bug they find, any agency has to assume other
agencies have also found the bug.
itake wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
disclosure: I have large (to me) investments in quantum.
---
The US needs to keep leading innovations. We have permanently lost the
ability to manufacture. For China (and the world) to stay dependent on
us, we need to continue pumping out technologies.
Ukraine / Iran / Afghanistan / Vietnam has proved having the biggest
baddest military is not that valuable.
upofadown wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
>That technology overlaps only partially, at best, with whatâs used
in quantum processors.
Dunno, how can you say that for sure when we don't actually know how to
make a practical quantum processor? The bigger issue is that we are
scaling up manufacturing of approaches that have not been made to work.
I remember a meeting where the project manager pointed out that we were
due to send some test boards to a customer. I pointed out that we
didn't have a design yet. The PM then asked why we couldn't send them
some boards anyway. I suggested that since the boards wouldn't work
that we could just cut out some green cardboard and add some component
shapes with a magic marker thus saving significant time and effort.
It turned out that I was not as funny as I thought I was...
prerok wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
Hahaha, hilarious. I could also tell a story or two like that.
I have to say, though, I have no idea what the management is thinking
when they hire such clueless PMs. Even worse, I have seen clueless
product owners who had no idea about the domain we were in. I guess a
recent example could be Ive designing the Luce.
Maybe I am just envious. Maybe I just wish I could BS my way through
life like these characters do.
sublinear wrote 41 min ago:
There's nothing to envy. They're a hired punching bag to put
distance between you and the management.
In most cases, even the PM doesn't know this. They were
specifically selected to not think too deeply. Anything you say
that is brutally correct and they take the wrong way is received as
mean and arrogant. Those incidents give management some ammunition
if they ever want to get rid of you.
123k2a wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
Trump Jr. is one of the government money recipients via 1789 capital
(which had already profited from the groq insider sale last year):
URI [1]: https://www.startribune.com/donald-trump-quantum-computing-inv...
bix6 wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
Trump Jr the guy selling drones to the Middle East after his father
started a war? What a standup guy!
vjvjvjvjghv wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
The Trump family is a fully integrated business. Start a war, sell
weapons. Negotiating peace deals and looking for investors at the
same time.
Sue the government and be in charge of the agency you sue.
actionfromafar wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
That's Sir Mountain Dew Trump Jr to you.
shevy-java wrote 1 hour 54 min ago:
A suspicious amount of betting here - from the top of the current
administration, down to semi-regular people like that US soldier who
profited from his special knowledge recently: [1] 400.000$
So if these are all the Trump-voters then I am no longer surprised.
It's an ongoing cash grab on different levels - the big guns play on
top.
URI [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-classi...
ifh-hn wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
My first reaction, without RTFA, is: hasn't stopped them before, why
would not being legal stop US big tech now?
6DM wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
> "could argue that it has been harmed by the diversion of the funds to
a different field. But that argument would likely take so long to sort
out in court that all the money would have been spent by then."
So if I steal from someone and spend it fast enough, I wouldn't be
responsible anymore and can get away with it? That's how that sounded
to me.
ben_w wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
If I understand legal terminology correctly*, this is what a
"preliminary injunction" is for.
* eh. I'm not a lawyer.
lazide wrote 48 min ago:
The principle of âStandingâ, however, means that you also
cannot sue unless you can show actual harm to yourself.
Yes, these contradict each other somewhat.
dmbche wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
Something about it being the banks problem if I owe them a billion
mrhottakes wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
Yes, that is basically how the justice system works. If you have
enough money and lawyers you can avoid practically any consequences.
kennywinker wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
I donât know enough about the state of quantum computing but this
sounds like IBM dumping dead end research onto taxpayers
downrightmike wrote 27 min ago:
Its all made up computation to fit the problem exactly. No real
progress has been made in decades.
"Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed using sleight-of-hand
numbers that have been selected to make them very easy to factorise
using a physics experiment and, by extension, a VIC-20, an abacus,
and a dog."
URI [1]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/cheating-on-q...
petcat wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
Then why are they also investing $1 billion in the same company as
the taxpayers?
kennywinker wrote 40 min ago:
I suppose itâd be in the details. Like, are they locked into that
investment, or is it something with checkpoints and milestones that
let them bail out after a year and a few mil? Whatâs the
ownership structure of any new ip? Etc.
Itâs easy to drop a story like this, get a win for investing in
the future, and then quietly disassemble it as soon as the cameras
turn away.
Or, it would be easy, if this administration didnât consider laws
beneath them.
warkdarrior wrote 2 hours 6 min ago:
Divestment costs
josefritzishere wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
I think we're all seeing a theme.
NietTim wrote 52 min ago:
Can you actually make an argument instead of just vague posting?
dlev_pika wrote 42 min ago:
waves at most executive decisions of this administration
thegrim33 wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
Is the theme that any direction US tech advances in results in a
persistent campaign of negative hit pieces aimed at trying to
halt/destroy any achievements? Written by "journalists"/publishers
that have never, and will never, say a single negative thing about
china? Sure seems like that's the theme.
Hikikomori wrote 52 min ago:
Plenty of that on Ars Technica, even by the same author. Baseless
silly whataboutism as usual.
bix6 wrote 1 hour 48 min ago:
> But a member of the US Congress is now arguing that those deals
are illegal, as Congress did not allocate the money for this
purposeâinstead, it was meant to support public research in
semiconductors.
That is the theme. Illegal use of public money. Itâs called crony
capitalism.
mrhottakes wrote 1 hour 49 min ago:
Take a deep breath and get your meds updated.
orsorna wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
What does your tangent about feelings have to do with the fact that
the money is illegally allocated? That is the theme OC is pointing
out.
itake wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
My understanding for the money to be "illegally allocated", the
court system would have to declare it so.
The article do not mention any lawsuits that overturn the
allocation, just a couple senators disagreeing with the
interpretation of the law. The senate does not interpret the law,
but the judicial branch.
anon291 wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
That is basically the theme. You've figured out the actual grift.
The crazy thing is how these same magazines will promote actual
fake industries like crypto, while demonizing industries that
produce actual results like AI. The goal seems to be to get
Americans to invest assets into currencies likely already
controlled by foreign entities while discouraging them from
developing their own potentially revolutionary technology.
bix6 wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
Um sorry have you heard about the gutting of the NSF?
anon291 wrote 1 hour 41 min ago:
Yeah that sucks balls but America's private capital markets are
still robust.
sebmellen wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
Quantum itself is the most scummy, grift-filled industry. Every quantum
company is riding the AI/semiconductor hype wave with basically zero
revenue prospects or long-term application of the tech. Companies
trading at 200x earnings, IONQs CEO claiming to the ânext
NVIDIAâ/âbase case is Ciscoâs market capâ â just ridiculous.
dlev_pika wrote 45 min ago:
If you have enough money, you can say whatever bullshit and the pilot
fish around you will clap.
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