`[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






                                 

 
                     ADVANCING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP
                         IN QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY

=======================================================================

                                     
                                     
                                     

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              JUNE 7, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-16

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 
 
 
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  

                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     

       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
       
                           ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 52-451PDF          WASHINGTON : 2024 
       
       
       
       

              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                  HON. FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, Chairman
BILL POSEY, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California, Ranking 
RANDY WEBER, Texas                       Member
BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   HALEY STEVENS, Michigan
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York
MIKE GARCIA, California              DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
STEPHANIE BICE, Oklahoma             ERIC SORENSEN, Illinois
JAY OBERNOLTE, California            ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon
CHUCK FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee         VALERIE FOUSHEE, North Carolina
DARRELL ISSA, California             KEVIN MULLIN, California
RICK CRAWFORD, Arkansas              JEFF JACKSON, North Carolina
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York             EMILIA SYKES, Ohio
RYAN ZINKE, Montana                  MAXWELL FROST, Florida
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida              YADIRA CARAVEO, Colorado
DALE STRONG, Alabama                 SUMMER LEE, Pennsylvania
MAX MILLER, Ohio                     JENNIFER McCLELLAN, Virginia
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              TED LIEU, California
MIKE COLLINS, Georgia                SEAN CASTEN, Illinois,
BRANDON WILLIAMS, New York             Vice Ranking Member
TOM KEAN, New Jersey                 PAUL TONKO, New York
VACANCY
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              June 7, 2023

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Chairman, Committee on 
  Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..    15
    Written Statement............................................    16

Statement by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    17
    Written Statement............................................    18

                               Witnesses:

Dr. Charles Tahan, Director, National Quantum Coordination 
  Office, OSTP
    Oral Statement...............................................    20
    Written Statement............................................    23

The Honorable Paul Dabbar, Former Undersecretary for Science, 
  Department of Energy
    Oral Statement...............................................    30
    Written Statement............................................    32

Dr. Eleanor G. Rieffel, Chief Scientist, NASA Ames
    Oral Statement...............................................    48
    Written Statement............................................    50

Dr. Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director, Quantum Economic 
  Development Consortium
    Oral Statement...............................................    56
    Written Statement............................................    58

Dr. Emily Edwards, Executive Director, IQUIST, University of 
  Illinois
    Oral Statement...............................................    71
    Written Statement............................................    73

Discussion.......................................................    82

             Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Charles Tahan, Director, National Quantum Coordination 
  Office, OSTP...................................................   124

The Honorable Paul Dabbar, Former Undersecretary for Science, 
  Department of Energy...........................................   129

Dr. Eleanor G. Rieffel, Chief Scientist, NASA Ames...............   132

Dr. Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director, Quantum Economic 
  Development Consortium.........................................   139

Dr. Emily Edwards, Executive Director, IQUIST, University of 
  Illinois.......................................................   145

            Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

Letter submitted by Representative Frank Lucas, Chairman, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives
    Paul Stimers, Executive Director, Quantum Industry Coalition.   156


                     ADVANCING AMERICAN LEADERSHIP



                         IN QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 2023

                          House of Representatives,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 
2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Frank Lucas [Chairman 
of the Committee] presiding.
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    Chairman Lucas. The Committee will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of the 
Committee at any time.
    And without objection, I would like to submit for the 
written record testimony provided by the Quantum Industry 
Coalition. Seeing no objection, so ordered.
    I recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
    Good morning, and welcome to the Science, Space, and 
Technology Committee's first hearing on quantum science and 
technology this Congress. This hearing could not have come at a 
more critical time. Quantum technologies, much like artificial 
intelligence (AI) and high-powered computing, are changing our 
Nation's economic, strategic, and scientific landscape. 
Congress is navigating difficult policy questions on the 
emerging technologies, and continued American leadership is 
essential if we want to capture their many benefits.
    I cannot overstate the importance of maintaining the U.S. 
competitive advantage in quantum capacities. The global leader 
in commercial and military quantum applications will have an 
economic and strategic advantage not seen since the United 
States ushered in the nuclear age in the 1940's. Quantum 
sensors developed right here at home already enable many of the 
functions we take for granted, like keeping time and enabling 
global navigation and positioning. Further development, 
miniaturization, and hardening of these quantum systems will 
give Americans the advantage on the battlefield of tomorrow.
    Quantum computers have vast untapped potential for both 
good and evil, which is why it's so important that we stay 
ahead of our adversaries on these technologies. On the one 
hand, quantum computers could help us solve fundamental 
problems in biology, chemistry, and physics. Quantum computers 
could model the effects of new drugs at the molecular level, 
saving time and money and delivering new healthcare treatments. 
They can help us understand and develop advanced materials that 
will revolutionize American manufacturing. They can help us 
develop cleaner energy technologies, ensuring affordable prices 
with lower emissions. They might even advance the development 
of artificial intelligence. Imagine the widespread benefits 
this could have for agriculture. Using the services enabled by 
quantum technology, we could increase global food security, 
lower the price of groceries for Americans, and increase 
production and profits for American farmers.
    In the wrong hands though, quantum computers could crack 
modern encryptions that are the bedrock of global financial 
systems, communications, and intelligence gathering. We cannot 
afford to have adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party 
(CCP) use quantum technologies against us. Using a quantum 
computer, the CCP could, in moments, crack current encryption 
codes, breaking down our digital defenses and exposing 
businesses and American citizens to gross violations of 
privacy.
    Recognizing the importance of staying ahead of the 
competition, this Committee passed the National Quantum 
Initiative Act in 2018. Thanks to this legislation, the United 
States has maintained its position as the global leader in 
quantum research, development, and technology, but our 
adversaries are catching up. China and Russia are investing 
heavily in the development of operational quantum systems. 
China in particular is investing more than $15 billion in 
quantum research and development.
    If we want to maintain our leadership role in the quantum 
field, Congress needs to make smart strategic investments, but 
government cannot do this alone. A central tenet of the 
National Quantum Initiative Act is empowering U.S. researchers 
and businesses to innovate while the Federal Government plays a 
supporting role, where appropriate. The model has worked well, 
and U.S.-based businesses are leading the pack in quantum 
applications. As this Committee works to reauthorize the 
National Quantum Initiative for the next 5 years, we must build 
on this working model, while also developing new international 
partnerships with our allies.
    That is not to say that there's not an active role for the 
government to play. The quantum industry, like other emerging 
technological industries, is in dire need of additional talent 
to fill out the workforce. The National Science Foundation 
(NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) Quantum Centers, 
established under the National Quantum Initiative Act, have 
been hard at work to build out our educational curriculum, 
training programs, and industry partnerships over the last 5 
years. These activities have not--could not take place without 
government support, and I look forward to hearing our witnesses 
speak about the progress that has been made.
    The government could also empower the quantum industry 
through complementary research and technology development. The 
National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) is 
already recognized internationally for its quantum innovations. 
Congress should enable NIST to further develop its expertise 
and leadership in solving the many complex science and 
engineering challenges that enable the quantum ecosystem to 
succeed.
    My staff and Ranking Member Lofgren's staff are hard at 
work crafting bipartisan legislation to ensure we maintain our 
leadership position in quantum science and technology, meet the 
workforce needs of the quantum industry, and accelerate the 
commercialization of quantum systems. The dialog we have--will 
have in this hearing today will inform the development of that 
legislation, and I look forward to hearing the recommendations 
of our witnesses on how this Committee can improve quantum 
programs to carry out the National Quantum Initiative into the 
next 5 years.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Lucas follows:]

    Good morning, and welcome to the Science, Space, and 
Technology Committee's first hearing on quantum science and 
technology this Congress.
    This hearing could not have come at a more critical time. 
Quantum technologies, much like artificial intelligence and 
high-powered computing, are changing our nation's economic, 
strategic, and scientific landscape.
    Congress is navigating difficult policy questions on 
emerging technologies, and continued American leadership is 
essential if we want to capture their many benefits.
    I cannot overstate the importance of maintaining the U.S. 
competitive advantage in quantum capabilities. The global 
leader in commercial and military quantum applications will 
have an economic and strategic advantage not seen since the 
United States ushered in the nuclear era in the 1940s.
    Quantum sensors developed right here at home already enable 
many of the functions we take for granted--like keeping time 
and enabling global navigation and positioning.
    Further development, miniaturization, and hardening of 
these quantum systems will give Americans the advantage on the 
battlefield of tomorrow.
    Quantum computers have vast, untapped potential for both 
good and evil, which is why it's so important that we stay 
ahead of our adversaries on these technologies.
    On the one hand, quantum computers could help us solve 
fundamental problems in biology, chemistry, and physics.
    Quantum computers could model the effects of new drugs at 
the molecular level, saving time and money in delivering new 
healthcare treatments.
    They could help us understand and develop advanced 
materials that will revolutionize American manufacturing.
    They can help us develop cleaner energy technologies, 
ensuring affordable prices with lower emissions.
    They might even advance the development of Artificial 
Intelligence.
    Imagine the widespread benefits this could have for 
agriculture. Using the services enabled by quantum technology, 
we could increase global food security, lower the price of 
groceries for Americans, and increase production and profits 
for American farmers.
    In the wrong hands, though, quantum computers could crack 
modern encryptions that are the bedrock of global financial 
systems, communications, and intelligence gathering.
    We cannot afford to have adversaries like the Chinese 
Communist Party use quantum technologies against us. Using a 
quantum computer, the CCP could, in moments, crack current 
encryption codes, breaking down our digital defenses and 
exposing businesses and American citizens to gross violations 
of privacy.
    Recognizing the importance of staying ahead of the 
competition, this Committee passed the National Quantum 
Initiative Act in 2018. Thanks to this legislation, the United 
States has maintained its position as the global leader in 
quantum research, development, and technology.
    But our adversaries are catching up. China and Russia are 
investing heavily in the development of operational quantum 
systems. China, in particular, is investing more than $15 
billion in quantum research and development.
    If we want to maintain our leadership role in the quantum 
field, Congress needs to make smart, strategic investments. But 
government cannot do it alone.
    A central tenant of the National Quantum Initiative Act is 
empowering U.S. researchers and businesses to innovate while 
the Federal Government plays a supporting role, where 
appropriate. The model has worked well, and U.S.-based 
businesses are leading the pack in quantum applications.
    As this Committee works to reauthorize the National Quantum 
Initiative for the next five years, we must build on this 
working model while also developing new, international 
partnerships with our allies.
    That is not to say there is not an active role for the 
government to play. The quantum industry, like other emerging 
technology industries, is in dire need of additional talent to 
fill out the workforce.
    The National Science Foundation and Department of Energy 
quantum centers established under the National Quantum 
Initiative Act have been hard at work to build out educational 
curriculum, training programs, and industry partnerships over 
the last five years.

    Chairman Lucas. And with that, I now recognize the Ranking 
Member, the gentlewoman from California, for an opening 
statement.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you, Chairman Lucas, for holding 
today's hearing. And I'd also like to welcome our really quite 
distinguished panel of witnesses.
    You know, one of the joys of serving on the Science 
Committee is that we truly are the Committee of the future, and 
we're doing so in a bipartisan manner. Today's hearing is truly 
about the technology of tomorrow. As we know, in 2018, the 
Committee led the development in the bipartisan National 
Quantum Initiative Act and the whole-of-government research 
initiative on a topic that seems really ripped out of the 
science fiction books I used to read as a teen, quantum 
information science.
    By all accounts, the first 5 years of this initiative have 
been a big success. The initiative galvanized the U.S. Science 
Committee around quantum technologies, and it's made our 
country a world leader in many quantum applications. I was an 
original co-sponsor of the act in the 115th Congress, and I'm 
looking forward to partnering with the Chairman in considering 
this reauthorization.
    The first 5 years focused primarily on the fundamental 
science advances needed to make quantum systems work. While 
investments in fundamental research need to continue, they are 
essential over the next 5 years, we're also, as the Chairman is 
mentioning, need to invest in human, physical--and physical 
infrastructure that's going to allow us to move quantum 
technologies from the lab to the marketplace.
    In my own district in Silicon Valley, companies such as D-
Wave and Rigetti Computing are already building hybrid quantum 
computers that can address novel computing challenges. Now we--
these two companies are among many companies developing quantum 
technologies. The nascent U.S. quantum industry does face 
significant hurdles to continuing its growth and meeting its 
potential to hopefully secure U.S. leadership in quantum 
technologies.
    One of these challenges, of course, is preparing the 
quantum-ready workforce. We've not yet had a major focus on 
quantum education and workforce development. Although in the 
CHIPS and Science Act Congress updated the National Quantum 
Initiative Act to promote early introduction to quantum 
concepts and quantum science among middle school and high 
school students, really, it's just a few universities that have 
created their own interdisciplinary quantum science and 
engineering degree programs. Significant hurdles remain to 
getting a ready workforce, and one important topic for this 
hearing is understanding those hurdles and exploring the role 
of the Federal science agencies in helping to address them.
    Another challenge, of course, is infrastructure. Enabling 
our universities, national labs, and startup companies to 
conduct quantum experiments and develop and demonstrate quantum 
technologies requires state-of-the-art research infrastructure, 
and this is, of course, a multilayered challenge.
    NIST is one of the key Federal agencies charged with 
conducting quantum research. It's really in a crisis of failing 
infrastructure and unmet maintenance needs, and I hope that 
this Committee can address that in our authorizing work. The 
Department of Energy labs also face challenges. We're asking 
our Federal scientists to conduct exquisitely sensitive 
experiments in woefully outdated labs. In addition, 
universities and small companies across the country will need 
access to specialized equipment that they can't afford on their 
own.
    As we look forward into the future, there will be 
additional challenges that we can start preparing for today and 
additional challenges that we may not even imagine at this 
point. I look forward to the discussion today to learn how the 
reauthorization of the National Quantum Initiative Act can help 
to address these challenges.
    And, Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to work with you, and I 
yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Lofgren follows:]

    Thank you, Chairman Lucas, for holding today's hearing. I 
would also like to welcome our distinguished panel of 
witnesses.
    One of the joys of serving on the Science Committee is that 
we are the committee of the future. Today's hearing is truly 
about the technology of tomorrow. In 2018, this Committee led 
the development of the bipartisan National Quantum Initiative 
Act, a whole-of-government research initiative on a topic that 
seems ripped out of the pages of a science fiction novel: 
quantum information science.
    By all accounts, the first five years of this initiative 
have been a resounding success. The initiative galvanized the 
U.S. science community around quantum technologies and has made 
our country the world leader in most quantum applications. I 
was an original cosponsor of the Act in the 115th Congress, and 
I am looking forward to partnering with the chairman in 
considering a reauthorization of the National Quantum 
Initiative Act.
    The first five years of the National Quantum Initiative or 
NQI, focused primarily on the fundamental scientific advances 
needed to make quantum systems work. While investments in 
fundamental research will continue to be essential over the 
next five years, we must begin to invest more in the human and 
physical infrastructure that will enable us to move quantum 
technologies from lab to market. In Silicon Valley, not far 
from my own district, companies such as D-Wave and Rigetti 
Computing are already building hybrid quantum computers that 
can address novel computing challenges.
    While these two companies are among many companies 
developing quantum technologies, the nascent U.S. quantum 
industry faces significant hurdles to continuing its growth and 
meeting its potential to secure U.S. leadership in quantum 
technology.
    The first of these challenges is preparing a quantum-ready 
workforce. The NQI has not yet had a major focus on quantum 
education and workforce development. In the CHIPS and Science 
Act, Congress updated the National Quantum Initiative Act to 
promote early introduction to quantum concepts and quantum 
science among middle school and high school students. A few 
universities have created their own interdisciplinary quantum 
science and engineering degree programs. However, significant 
hurdles remain to enabling a quantum ready workforce at all 
levels from the skilled technical workforce to the doctoral 
level. One important topic for this hearing is understanding 
those hurdles and exploring the role of the Federal science 
agencies in addressing them.
    The next challenge is infrastructure. Enabling our 
universities, Federal labs, and start-up companies to conduct 
quantum experiments and develop and demonstrate quantum 
technologies requires state-of-the- art research 
infrastructure. This is a multi-layered challenge. The National 
Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the key Federal 
agencies charged with conducting quantum research, is in a 
crisis of failing infrastructure and unmet maintenance needs. 
The Department of Energy labs face similar challenges. We are 
asking our Federal scientists to conduct exquisitely sensitive 
experiments in woefully outdated labs. In addition, 
universities and small companies across the country will need 
access to specialized equipment that they cannot afford on 
their own.
    As we look further into the future, there will be 
additional challenges that we can start preparing for today. 
Mathematicians theorize that the day will come when someone 
builds a sufficiently powerful quantum computer to break modern 
encryption algorithms. I sure hope it is a U.S. lab or company 
that does so. The question for us today is what we need to do 
to make that hope a reality.
    I look forward to the discussion today to learn how a 
reauthorization of the National Quantum Initiative Act can help 
to address these challenges.
    Thank you and I yield back.

    Chairman Lucas. I want to thank the Ranking Member for all 
these thoughtful words.
    And with that, let me introduce our panel of witnesses 
before they begin their testimony. Our first witness is Dr. 
Charles Tahan. Dr. Tahan serves as the Director of the National 
Quantum Coordination Office (NQCO) and Assistant Director of 
Quantum Information Science at the White House Office of 
Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Dr. Tahan came to Quantum 
Coordination Office from the National Security Agency's (NSA's) 
Laboratory for Physical Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in physics 
from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Thank you.
    Our next witness is Under Secretary Paul Dabbar. Mr. Dabbar 
was the fourth Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. 
Department of Energy serving from 2017 to 2021. Before entering 
government, Under Secretary Dabbar served as a nuclear 
submarine officer in the U.S. Navy. He's now the CEO (Chief 
Executive Officer) of his own quantum networking company, Bohr 
Quantum, and he also holds degrees in marine and nuclear 
engineering and business administration. Thank you.
    Next, we have Dr. Eleanor Rieffel. Dr. Rieffel is the 
Senior Researcher for the Advanced Computing and Data Analytics 
at NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration's) 
Ames Research Center in Palo Alto, California. She is a 
published author on the subject of quantum computing and 
received the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal in 
2019. The doctor holds two degrees in the subjects Americans 
fear most, math from UCLA (University of California, Los 
Angeles) and Harvard University. Thank you. Just an observation 
about the obvious thing in the world out there.
    Next is Dr. Celia Merzbacher. Dr. Merzbacher is the 
Executive Director of the Quantum Economic Development 
Consortium (QEDC), a coalition of quantum stakeholders 
dedicated to the growth of a commercial quantum-based industry. 
Dr. Merzbacher has served in various research and government 
roles, including stints at the Naval Research Laboratory, OSTP, 
and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She earned a degree of 
science in geology and earth sciences from Brown University and 
her Ph.D. in geochemistry from Penn State.
    Last but not least we have Dr. Emily Edwards. Dr. Edwards 
is the Director of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and 
Technology Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign. Her center is a leader in training scientists across 
a variety of fields to enter the quantum-ready workforce. 
Before moving to Illinois, Dr. Edwards was the Director of 
Communications and Outreach at the Joint Quantum Institute at 
the University of Maryland. The doctor holds bachelor's degrees 
in physics and chemistry from Appalachian State University and 
a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland.
    Thank you all for being here today, and I want to begin by 
recognizing Dr. Tahan for 5 minutes to present his testimony.

           TESTIMONY OF DR. CHARLES TAHAN, DIRECTOR,

           NATIONAL QUANTUM COORDINATION OFFICE, OSTP

    Dr. Tahan. Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member Lofgren, and 
esteemed Members of the Committee, I am honored to appear 
before you today to discuss the future of the National Quantum 
Initiative. My name is Charlie Tahan. I'm the Assistant 
Director for Quantum Information Science and the Director of 
the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House 
Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP. I'm also a 
practicing quantum physicist with over two decades of 
experience in academia, industry, and government.
    My mandate at OSTP includes working with agencies to 
develop and maintain the National Strategy for Quantum 
Information Science, a strategy that has been consistently 
improved over the last few years. It is a privilege to lead the 
National Quantum Coordination Office, and I want to thank the 
Committee for establishing it under the NQI Act.
    The value of the NQCO lies in our team of government 
experts in quantum detailed to OSTP from NSF, DOE, NIST, DOD 
(Department of Defense), and the intelligence community (IC). 
Our duties extend to regular interactions with industry, 
academia, and national and Federal labs in the global quantum 
ecosystem, including our foreign counterparts.
    Our participation in workforce development and public 
outreach activities such as World Quantum Day and the National 
Q-12 Education Partnership underscore our commitment to 
building the community. One of the NQCO's most important roles 
is to facilitate interactions between the agencies, members 
from over 20 Federal organizations actively participating in 
the working groups and events that we help organize.
    The impact of information technology (IT) on our society 
has been profound, and quantum information science represents a 
foundational shift in our understanding of IT. Quantum 
information applies the most surprising aspects of quantum 
mechanics, which are the rules that govern how really small 
things behave to how we process, store, and transfer 
information. Quantum science has already made disruptive 
impacts via technologies like GPS (Global Positioning System) 
and MRIs (magnetic resonance imagings). Next-generation quantum 
centers will create even more transformative systems for 
precision navigation and for biomedical applications. Future 
quantum computers will enable new science, as well as chemistry 
and materials discovery. Quantum networks may one day connect 
these new types of computers and sensors together.
    But to get to that future, numerous scientific and 
engineering challenges must still be overcome. Large-scale 
quantum computers are also expected to jeopardize existing 
secure communication protocols. This requires the United States 
to balance the economic and national security implications of 
quantum. National Security Memorandum 10 on quantum computing, 
signed by the President last year, addresses these concerns 
directly.
    Given this immense potential, U.S. leadership in quantum 
information science is crucial. The national strategy has three 
broad goals: getting the science right, enhancing U.S. 
competitiveness, and empowering our people. The first 5 years 
of the NQI Act succeeded in strengthening the American quantum 
ecosystem. It has solidified our all-of-nation response, 
recruited new researchers to the field, and helped spur 
significant industry investment. Federal funding for quantum 
has doubled since the NQI's passage.
    Our success can be seen by those who have emulated the 
United States with many countries around the world launching 
national quantum initiatives of their own. It is critical that 
the United States reaffirms and strengthens its commitment to 
quantum information science by reauthorizing the National 
Quantum Initiative Act. By doing so, the United States will 
signal to the world that it will continue to lead in this 
critical yet emerging field. U.S. involvement is more important 
now than ever, as it is essential that we continue to work with 
trusted partners to get the development and protection of this 
technology right, which includes the rapid deployment of 
quantum-resistant cryptography.
    Because of this importance, OSTP coordinated an interagency 
process, recommending policies to the Committee to enhance the 
NQI Act. Here are some of the most important points:
    First, reauthorize the NSF and DOE centers and remove the 
limit on the number of designated centers.
    Second, support long-lived NSF programs focused on training 
talents in quantum and understanding workforce demand.
    Third, strengthen the whole-of-government approach by 
expanding the core agencies. For example, a dedicated 
international fund is needed to support U.S. commitments in 
international cooperation. NASA, NIH (National Institutes of 
Health), and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) also have 
important roles to play and can do more, and we welcome further 
integration of the DOD in the IC.
    Fourth, we need to begin translating scientific discoveries 
made in the NQI to commercial utility and agency missions 
through engineering research and systems integration programs 
and public-private partnerships. The NSF TIP (Technology, 
Innovation, and Partnerships) Directorate, a NIST Center for 
Quantum Engineering, and the QUEST (Quantum for Energy Systems 
and Technologies) program at DOE are just a few examples of 
such opportunities.
    Finally, create and equip new laboratories across the 
United States so that we can remain competitive with the world.
    These recommendations complement those of the NQI Advisory 
Committee whose first report is now available and I've included 
in my written testimony.
    I will end by reinforcing the importance of people to our 
success. Training and recruiting talent both here and across 
the world are the most important actions we can take to 
strengthen U.S. leadership.
    Thank you again for this opportunity, and I welcome your 
thoughts and questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Tahan follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. I now recognize Under Secretary 
Dabbar for 5 minutes to present his testimony.

            TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE PAUL DABBAR,

               FORMER UNDERSECRETARY FOR SCIENCE,

                      DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

    Mr. Dabbar. Chair Lucas, Ranking Member Lofgren, and 
Members of the Committee, I'm honored again to be before this 
Committee, my favorite authorizing Committee, but please don't 
tell E&C (Energy and Commerce) that. I am honored to be here to 
discuss quantum technologies and this Committee's leadership 
from 5 years ago on triggering a technology revolution and how 
this next act can continue that momentum.
    Not long ago, the prospects of quantum moving from the 
science lab to applications seem farfetched. Barely 6 qubits 
could be fabricated on a chip. And quantum teleportation was an 
interesting science experiment at Berkeley. Your act 5 years 
ago directed significant investments that led to results. It 
built on the historical efforts of NSF, NIST, and DOD, provided 
additional supports for universities, a commercial consortium, 
and the five NQI centers and provided for coordination of 
national efforts.
    At DOE we stood up those research centers with over 70 
participants from national labs, academia, and the private 
sector. This was the first time that DOE Discovery Program 
included the private sector. Major accomplishments included, at 
Oak Ridge, development of a quantum computing hub, extensive 
quantum networks tested at Caltech, Brookhaven, Fermilab and 
Argonne. IBM fabricated a quantum processing chip with a record 
433 qubits on its path to a quantum supercomputer. Google 
developed a high-fidelity quantum processor and developed 
quantum simulations, including a wormhole teleportation 
protocol. And Berkeley lab researchers received the Nobel Prize 
last year in experimentally proving quantum teleportation for 
networking.
    But your accomplishments were far beyond the direct NQI 
programs. Your efforts were the seed round that triggered a 
massive set of investments from others. In academia, a wide set 
of university-started programs from the University of Chicago's 
Molecular Engineering School to Caltech's quantum networking 
efforts, just--the Columbia Quantum Initiative, Oklahoma 
State's Lahiri's group, and Santa Clara University's 
engineering physics program. You triggered foundations to 
invest, notably, the Pritzker Foundation in Illinois. You 
triggered a vast set of private investments. Since the NQI was 
passed, over $6 billion have been invested by the private 
sector, about five times what you appropriated and directly 
authorized. On Wall Street that would be called leverage.
    My quantum networking business Bohr Quantum and many other 
companies benefited from this ecosystem, and not only have 
American companies grown, but quantum companies from overseas 
have moved to the United States, including in the Bay Area, 
following your leadership.
    As you consider the NQI reauthorization, here are a few 
thoughts on how to build on your successes. We need to bridge 
the gap between research quantum products and users. While 
still advancing the science, it's imperative to look at first-
generation applications and deployment, including private 
company quantum computers and enhanced QUEST program and 
network systems. Stand up a program to design, procure, and 
deploy at the national lab's first quantum-centric high-
performance computers. And I would recommend deploying a first 
U.S. quantum satellite program.
    Here are some specific ideas for your consideration for the 
second NQI Act: Maintain core research programs at the various 
centers and adding funding to that. Authorize a new program for 
first steps of usable quantum computers, networking, and 
sensing. I would recommend authorizing a quantum-centric high-
performance computing program. Authorize DOE to start a $200 
million-per-year post-exascale high-performance computing 
program that would incorporate quantum into the architecture of 
the supercomputers. The NQI should build on the momentum of the 
announcement by IBM, UChicago, and the two DOE national labs to 
build 100,000-qubit supercomputer that was announced a few 
weeks ago and included our great ally Japan in that. We should 
look at doing a joint DOE-NASA quantum satellite program. We 
should look at scaling up helium-3 production at Savannah River 
National Lab, create a new quantum foundry effort in 
instrumentation, and authorize allowing for allied nations to 
work together with us.
    This topic is important to national security. It is no 
coincidence that when Snowden defected to China, they 
immediately started ramping up quantum networks and their 
quantum computing program. This technology is critical around--
about decryption, as the Chairman mentioned. And China, while 
behind us, is right on our heels. I recommend that you--we 
continue to move forward with the momentum that you created for 
America in this next act.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Dabbar follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. And I now recognize Dr. Rieffel 
for 5 minutes.

              TESTIMONY OF DR. ELEANOR G. RIEFFEL,

                   CHIEF SCIENTIST, NASA AMES

    Dr. Rieffel. Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member Lofgren, and 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to discuss NASA's role in quantum research and 
development (R&D). I direct the Quantum Artificial Intelligence 
Laboratory, the QuAIL lab, at NASA Ames Research Center in 
Silicon Valley. Our team focuses on quantum computing and 
collaborates with other NASA centers on quantum networking and 
quantum sensing. I joined NASA just over a decade ago to help 
build its quantum computing effort.
    Quantum Information sciences aims to harness the unique 
properties of quantum systems to process information in 
powerful ways. Applications range from computing to networking 
to measurement, timing, and sensing. Potential NASA 
applications include astronomical imaging, mapping of planetary 
electromagnetic and gravitational fields, and aeronautics 
communication and navigation.
    When the QuAIL team at NASA Ames was formed, it followed 
the model of the NASA advanced supercomputing program. It would 
not build quantum computing hardware, but rather would form 
close partnerships with groups that did. NASA's high-end 
computing capability has long served as early testers for 
supercomputing hardware and software advances from industry and 
beyond.
    Algorithmic work is essential for the ultimate utility of 
quantum computing. Certain prototype--the current prototype 
quantum processors are small and non-robust, but progress is 
rapid, and as hardware advances, we will be able to explore 
quantum algorithms in ways that are impossible today.
    NASA, with its many computational challenges, is a rich 
source of use cases in aeronautics, Earth and space sciences, 
and space exploration. Quantum computing holds the promise of 
addressing challenges that are beyond what high-performance 
computing can do.
    Advances in quantum optics have potential for new 
networking technologies, both terrestrial and space-based, with 
potential applications in security data transfer and 
navigation. Quantum networking is key to link quantum computers 
and quantum information systems. NASA's SCaN (Space 
Communications and Navigation) program investigates optical 
networking and has conducted multiple successful technology 
demonstration missions in the last decade with more planned. 
SCaN partners and other U.S. Government agencies in areas of 
advanced adaptive optics for ground stations, space qualifiable 
quantum sources, detectors, and memory, as well as to develop 
quantum use cases. Mission concepts from these joint activities 
include a space-based quantum testbed.
    Quantum sensing uses quantum properties of matter and light 
to achieve unprecedented measurement sensitivity that 
outperforms classical counterparts. Quantum sensors can impact 
technologies important for a range of NASA missions such as 
timing, remote sensing, metrology, ranging, and imaging. For 
example, improving gravitational mapping would enable 
scientists to better understand changes in ice, oceans, and 
land water on Earth. The gravity recovery and climate 
experiments have been mapping Earth's gravitational fields. 
NASA is funding efforts toward a future quantum gravity 
gradiometer or QGG that provides 10 times better resolution. 
Quantum sensing technologies such as atomic clocks and atomic 
inertial measurements provide navigation and timing in space 
and in areas in which GPS is unreliable or unavailable. Quantum 
sensing technologies can revolutionize NASA's mission to unlock 
the secrets of the universe, provide insights into dark matter, 
and connections between quantum mechanics and gravity. NASA's 
Cold Atom Laboratory has been operating continuously on the 
International Space Station since 2018 and serves as a 
pathfinder for future space technologies.
    NASA and the QuAIL team have many partnerships with 
industry, other government organizations, academic 
institutions, and international entities. NASA has been at the 
forefront of many technologies. NASA contributed to 
demonstrating the potential of parallel computing with the 
first massively parallel computer, the ILLIAC IV, coming to 
NASA Ames in 1972. We are excited to play a similar role in 
quantum information sciences.
    Thank you again for allowing me to share my expertise in 
this area with you and for your continued support of NASA 
research. I would be pleased to respond to questions from 
Members of the Committee.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Rieffel follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you very much.
    I now recognize Dr. Merzbacher for 5 minutes to present her 
testimony.

               TESTIMONY OF DR. CELIA MERZBACHER,

                      EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

            QUANTUM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONSORTIUM

    Dr. Merzbacher. Thank you, Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member 
Lofgren, and Members of the Committee. It's a great honor to 
have the opportunity to participate in today's hearing. I'm 
Celia Merzbacher. I'm Executive Director of the Quantum 
Economic Development Consortium, or QEDC, which is managed by 
SRI International.
    QEDC is the consortium of stakeholders that was called for 
by the NQI Act of 2018 We get what I think of as startup 
funding from NIST, and we get some funding from the Air Force 
Research Lab (AFRL) as well. But increasingly, we are supported 
by our growing members. We have some 230 members today. About 
170 of those are corporate, and about 3/4 of those companies 
are small or startups.
    More than 50 government agencies have also participated in 
QEDC activities, so we're really building a broad, trusted 
community of quantum ecosystem members. QEDC's mission is to 
enable and grow the quantum industry and the associated supply 
chain. Sounds easy, but it's not. We're exploring for use cases 
of quantum. That's the most frequent question. And in order to 
realize these use cases and the potential, we're looking for 
gaps that need to be filled, gaps in technology, critical 
technologies, like lasers and cryogenics and special 
electronics, gaps in standards and benchmarks for measuring 
progress, gaps in the workforce, and we're providing input on 
policies like export controls.
    The NQI was launched with a science-first strategy, which 
made a lot of sense at the time. We needed multidisciplinary 
research. We needed teams of researchers from physics and 
materials and computer science and engineering to come 
together. We needed to start creating the pipeline of talent. 
You'll hear more of that from Dr. Edwards. And we did a great 
job of doing that through the investments under NQI by NSF and 
DOE in particular. We've had a great start, and those efforts 
need to be sustained.
    But other nations are investing as well, as we've heard. 
Just recently, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Japan, India, 
Germany--I could go on--have all released or renewed their 
national strategies, and they're all funding the science, but 
they're also focusing more on the application and 
commercialization. China is investing a lot. Some reports say 
$15 billion. They're hard numbers to verify, but the number of 
high-quality, highly cited research publications and patent 
applications indicate that China's research and industry in 
quantum is growing as well.
    The private sector is making big bets, too. I think most of 
you, if not everyone, has heard about some of the large tech 
companies' activities. They're developing products with their 
own resources and making big investments. There's a growing 
number of smaller, pure-play quantum companies, and I'll remind 
you, there are no big quantum companies today. These small 
companies have private investments. Some of them are getting 
some government funding as well. But the venture funding seems 
to be slowing according to a McKinsey report last year, and so 
it's really important at this time for government to take 
measures to de-risk the technology and to bridge to the quantum 
economy of the future.
    I noted the title of this hearing was ``Ensuring American 
Leadership in Quantum Technology.'' Technology is the 
application of science, and so I'll leave you with some 
suggestions for how NQI could be improved in light of the 
economic potential and the accelerating global competition. 
First of all, expand R&D to address gaps on the pathway to the 
quantum economy. For example, we could try some new programs 
that really fund industry and academia to work together, 
focusing on small businesses. This can be done in the NSF TIP 
Directorate. TIP stands for Technology, Innovation, and 
Partnership. Sounds like a good fit.
    Fund QUEST. Thank you to this Committee for authorizing 
QUEST. It's becoming urgent to fund the program, which is to 
provide access to researchers broadly from industry, academia, 
government labs to quantum computing resources. Other countries 
are standing up similar programs. We need to fund this one.
    Provide for upskilling and reskilling of the existing 
workforce. We need to build the pipeline, and we're doing a 
great job of starting that, but we need people today, and so we 
need to fund the workers. And I want to just mention in my 
closing to take full advantage of NIST. NIST has gotten four 
Nobel Prizes in quantum technology. They do standards, 
metrology, advanced manufacturing. They run the CHIPS R&D 
program, so NIST should be a bigger part the NQI.
    And I'll finally end by cautioning about being careful when 
it comes to using export controls to control this technology. 
It's early. Any controls should be done multilaterally or we 
won't achieve our goals and risk hampering U.S. business.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Merzbacher follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. And I now recognize Dr. Edwards 
for 5 minutes to present her testimony.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. EMILY EDWARDS,

       EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, IQUIST, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

    Dr. Edwards. Thank you, Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member 
Lofgren, and distinguished Committee Members for the 
opportunity to testify today before this panel. I'm Dr. Edwards 
and I co-lead the National Q-12 Education Partnership through a 
grant from the National Science Foundation. This consortium was 
spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology 
Policy and NSF. I also co-lead education and workforce programs 
for one of the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes, Hybrid 
Quantum Architectures and Networks, and that's at the 
University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, and University 
of Chicago.
    We've heard a lot about the importance of quantum to our 
Nation, and we've heard a lot about things we must do in order 
to strengthen our leadership, including reauthorizing the NQI 
and continuing Federal investments. It's really amazing what we 
can do today with quantum, and I'm just so excited to talk 
about it because it's one of my favorite subjects.
    For success in the long term, we need to invest in programs 
that significantly expand the participation of teachers and 
educational institutions across the country, and I really 
appreciated the opening remarks by the Chairman and by Ranking 
Member Lofgren. This approach recognizes that scaling the 
quantum workforce relies on empowering educators as mentors, 
role models, and Ambassadors. Moreover, the public of all ages 
should have a front row seat to the development of quantum 
information science in places like museums and libraries so 
that they can be prepared for a future that is influenced and 
underpinned by emerging quantum research and technology.
    The Q-12 has been convening stakeholders around the 
development of a quantum workforce that draws on diverse 
strengths and backgrounds of people across the country, and 
we've had a lot of meetings. And we see that there is wide 
agreement that students need exposure to quantum information 
science early to ensure continued U.S. leadership in this fast-
evolving field. This is reflected in the CHIPS and Science Act, 
which calls on NSF to increase the integration of quantum into 
STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) 
curricula at all levels, establishes a quantum education pilot 
program, and requires a workforce assessment study. And I want 
to thank Congress, and in particular this Committee, for 
including these provisions in the legislation last year.
    Currently, there are a lot of early stage programs, and 
many are connected to Q-12 that are increasing quantum 
readiness through--by expanding access to the field. And the 
National Quantum Initiative Act reauthorization is an 
opportunity to double down on this. Currently, we are missing 
resources for K-12 teachers. At higher levels--and Dr. Tahan 
mentioned this--educators broadly need cutting-edge labs to 
teach the next generation and provide upskilling for the 
current workforce. Essentially, we need more education and 
training opportunities for students, which are two different 
facets of workforce development, and they need to be readily 
available no matter where you live in this country and no 
matter your background. And this is important for addressing 
the persistent lack of diversity across quantum-related fields 
as this contributes to severe shortages and limits our 
competitiveness as a nation.
    There are a lot of programs that are working to remove 
barriers to this field, but it's going to take time. You heard 
about some--the mention of World Quantum Day. These and other 
educational programs under the National Quantum Initiative Act 
are helping to dispel the notion that quantum concepts are only 
accessible to the very few. Rather, quantum can provide 
inspiration for young learners and teachers alike and empower 
them to understand the--a host of emerging technologies that 
are so vital to our Nation.
    In this context, I'll highlight two elements that are 
possible opportunities as you look to reauthorize this act. 
First, I urge the Committee to consider authorizing at least 
one national center for quantum education and workforce that 
will accelerate the readiness of educators and serve as a 
resource for existing programs to scale their local impacts--
local impact in communities across the country. A center scale 
investment will concretely link the different parts of the 
educational pipeline and the different sectors and include the 
public. A new center could amplify and connect the initial 
workforce programs that have been developed such as those 
supported across the many agencies. And it would--could provide 
an avenue for the much-needed comprehensive regular workforce 
studies.
    Second, there's a critical need for investments and public-
private partnerships to build modern facilities, and we heard a 
little bit about this. Expanding quantum educational programs 
will help American workers have depth and agility over their 
careers and allow more people to prepare what comes next, 
quantum, quantum-adjacent, or whatever else is down the road.
    And I want to just take a moment. I know I'm at my moment--
at time, but I want to take a moment and say that, you know, I 
was reflecting yesterday on the National Quantum Initiative 
Act, and I looked back 20 years, which predates it, and it's 
around this time of year that I spent a summer at NIST as a 
second-year grad student doing quantum physics research. It was 
my second time at NIST because I also spent a summer there as 
an undergrad coming from a small college. These experiences and 
the teachers who guided me have been integral to my path into 
quantum and my career today, and I hope this reauthorization 
expands such pathways for more students and more educators 
across our country.
    Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to take questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Edwards follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

    
    Chairman Lucas. Absolutely. And I want to thank the 
witnesses for your truly outstanding testimony.
    The Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
    Dr. Tahan, the National Quantum Initiative focused on 
advancing fundamental quantum research across several agencies. 
Fundamental research is generally open and available for public 
consumption, even in areas with advanced technological 
potential. Unfortunately, we know how China's happy to let the 
U.S. advanced fundamental research while it overinvests in the 
development of leading-edge applications after the fact. In the 
next 5 years of the National Quantum Initiative, how can we 
safeguard our research investments while maintaining our core 
scientific values? That's a big question, but it is important.
    Dr. Tahan. Thank you, Chairman, for the question. It is 
important. It's a question that goes beyond quantum, the 
question of research security in a new world. I will say that 
this is something we take very seriously in the White House, in 
the Subcommittees that oversee quantum, in OSTP. One of the 
first things I did when I became Director was launch a fast 
track action committee on the role of international talent and 
research security and quantum information science. That report 
is available. We can, you know, make it available to your staff 
and follow up on it.
    Some of the recommendations that were made in that policy 
document--and these came from all the agencies--include having 
the agencies write technology protection plans, even 
fundamental R&D agencies like NSF. Those ultimately became 
directives in National Security Memorandum 10. It is something 
we follow on every year to help coordinate and share best 
practices across agencies from the DOD to the IC to the FBI 
(Federal Bureau of Investigation) to the NSF and DOE. We have a 
subcommittee, the Economic and Security Implications of Quantum 
Science Subcommittee, that's completely dedicated to that, 
sharing best practices among the people who are actually 
running the programs.
    There's no perfect way to manage risk, and, you know, first 
and foremost, our goal has to be to move--continue to move 
fast, empower our scientists and entrepreneurs, keep the open 
scientific community. This is a unanimous view from the 
agencies. We need to keep our open scientific engine of 
discovery going, but we need to do it in a smart way in this 
new world, and that comes down to really knowing what's going 
on across the world and in our country, what the risks are in 
making good decisions.
    Chairman Lucas. Dr. Edwards, each of our witnesses touched 
on the need for more quantum workforce development investments. 
You run an Education Workforce Center now, and you recommend 
Congress authorized the creation of a national center for 
quantum education workforce in your testimony. What would be 
your vision for such a center, and how do you see it meeting 
the needs of a diverse group of quantum stakeholders? I'll give 
you another big-picture question, too.
    Dr. Edwards. Let's see. I was trying to figure out which 
indicated talk. Now, that's a really, really great question. So 
for clarification, so the Q-12 partnership is a consortium, a 
voluntary consortium, and so currently, we're setting up 
scaffolding. And over the last couple of years, it's become 
clear that what is needed is to build on this scaffolding to 
have a national center that can provide a resource. The role of 
such a center in this case is to draw together the existing 
workforce efforts and leverage them. So basically, the centers 
are doing awesome at the science, and the--and they're really 
articulating the need for a workforce, but their original scope 
was not at the K-12 and undergraduate levels. And given that 
their original scope was not the--there is not necessarily 
resources to scale the impact of the nascent programs they are 
doing. And so I think a national center serves a--as a resource 
to scale and to also build into communities that are not being 
reached by the current National Quantum Initiative investments.
    Chairman Lucas. Teeing off of that, using the phrase 
national center, should Congress create more than just one 
workforce center under a single agency, or should we promote 
multiple centers?
    Dr. Edwards. So this is a great question. So I think--
another great question. So I think there are two approaches. 
The--what we need to do is--the goal when we design a center or 
design a resource is to remove barriers, and so I would say it 
would be ideal to have a center that is co-funded by multiple 
agencies because this will serve to remove the barriers that 
exist between the different investments across multiple 
agencies. We really want participation and to leverage efforts 
that are at the whole-of-government. In the absence of that, if 
it makes sense policy-wise, then I would say you would need 
multiple centers if you're not able to have one that kind of 
pulls in the whole of government.
    Chairman Lucas. My time has expired. I now recognize the 
Ranking Member, Ms. Lofgren, for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the 
witnesses for your really fascinating and wonderful testimony.
    One of the questions I--and most of you have mentioned 
NASA, and it's great to see someone from NASA Ames. Thank you 
so much for traveling here to be with us. Is there anybody who 
doesn't think that NASA should be added as a member of NQI? 
Should we add it? Everybody's saying OK. So I think that's 
something I'd like to explore with the majority.
    I'd like to follow up, Dr. Merzbacher, with the testimony 
you had about the gap between science and application and how--
you know, kind of the valley of death if you're in Silicon 
Valley. Could you be more detailed about what we might do to 
enhance the delivery from the lab to the commercial market? 
What are some of the things that we could do to enhance that 
effort?
    Dr. Merzbacher. Yes, this is not a quantum-specific 
problem----
    Ms. Lofgren. Correct.
    Dr. Merzbacher [continuing]. Of course, but I view quantum 
as sort of a poster child or a pilot project--you know, we can 
focus on this. It's the emerging technology today, and we can 
get it right. And so some of the approaches that could be taken 
to move some of the research that's got practical application 
into the marketplace is to better connect the industry and 
academic researchers. And I run into this problem of capacity 
at some of the small companies to even do longer-term research, 
so we've got to somehow better connect the two, and that's 
where perhaps some programs at places like NSF TIP could help.
    We also know that there's going to be manufacturing and 
scaling-up challenges. Right now, even at the companies, if you 
go and visit them, it looks like a research lab. It's a big, 
complicated system that takes a lot of people to keep it 
running, and we need to be integrating these things and scaling 
them up and making them more reliable. And so there's 
manufacturing challenges and manufacturability challenges. And 
programs like the Advanced Manufacturing Program that NIST runs 
and that's supported by other agencies as well is an 
opportunity. We could create an Advanced Manufacturing 
Institute.
    I'll remind you all that under the CHIPS and Science Act, 
DOD is creating some hubs for prototyping, and they have said 
they want to make one of those focused on quantum. We're very 
excited to see what the outcome of that competition is. So 
we'll have some prototyping capability. If we can get some 
manufacturing capability to go along with the research piece, I 
think we have the whole sort of innovation chain.
    Ms. Lofgren. How much do we allow the private sector in to 
utilize facilities that is--are funded by the Federal----
    Dr. Merzbacher. Often, they're welcome. I'm on the board or 
advisory committees for some of those user facilities. When you 
look at the numbers, there are not as many from industry, and 
that's often because maybe they don't know about it. There may 
be IP (intellectual property) issues. That always comes up, but 
I don't think that's unnecessarily standing in the way. I think 
it's getting more--making it easier, and sometimes there's 
really just a capacity problem. And so when I look around and 
say where is the capacity for doing some of that early stage 
work, it's in the government labs and universities, so we need 
to connect the people in both sectors.
    Ms. Lofgren. Dr. Edwards, let me ask you about the 
workforce issue. Obviously--you know, when I first was 
considering this, I thought, well, why would we do K-12 
because, you know, a senior in high school is not going to be 
prepared to go into quantum physics. But the more I thought 
about it, the more I thought, you know, actually, that is 
helpful because quantum seems at odds with the world as we see 
it. And, you know, when I first read Schrodinger's cat, I'm 
going, this is so weird, and yet--and so it would be helpful 
for young people to actually get--wrap their heads around that 
so that they could move on at a later date.
    We can't be in every classroom, and, you know, not every 
teacher wants to do this, but have we thought about creating a 
model curricula that would be available to schools or teachers 
who wanted to do this if they could just download it and print 
it as a way to getting this across the Nation?
    Dr. Edwards. Yes, thank you for that question. Yes, so the 
through the Q-12 and the grant Q2Work, we've been able to 
develop an initial framework that's a precursor to curriculum, 
to infuse quantum into the STEM subjects at the high school 
level and also at the middle school level. And this is an 
approach led by teachers, and I think that it's a way that 
recognizes the diversity of education approaches across the 
country.
    The next step is indeed to develop a model curriculum, and 
this does actually--this is part of why we need a center 
because it's--such a center would develop the appropriate 
curriculum so that teachers and school districts and then even 
primarily undergraduate institutions could flexibly adapt it to 
the needs of their classroom because, after all, the teachers, 
the educators, the communities, and the families, they know how 
to best communicate this--these complexities to their young 
people.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you. I see my time has expired. I yield 
back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. The Chair recognizes gentleman 
from Florida for 5 minutes, Mr. Posey.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank the 
staff for putting together such a great and informative panel. 
This has really been an interesting hearing.
    What additional safeguards does the National Quantum 
Initiative need to put in place to prevent countries of concern 
like China from stealing our research? You know, Dr. Tahan 
touched on it, and I'd kind of like to get the opinions of the 
other witnesses. Left to right would be fine.
    Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, so one of the things that we did 
at DOE--around all technologies, but quantum was a part of it--
was develop something called a technology risk matrix, which 
was actually to list technology by technology of what's OK to 
work with on an open science basis and what is--although it may 
not be classified yet, that it should be restricted on 
engagement with countries that are adversaries. I'd recommend 
that--while DOE has that, I would recommend that other agencies 
also look at that screening process also.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you.
    Dr. Rieffel. I'm a technical person--oh, I turned it off. 
Oh, OK. I'm a technical person, so I just want to say that I'm 
aware of NASA's strong export controls, and we vet foreign 
nationals coming in to NASA. We look at documents going out of 
NASA, et cetera. And for a stronger answer, I'll defer to other 
experts at NASA and at other agencies.
    Dr. Merzbacher. So I'm here representing the industry side, 
of course, and I've come up with a term I call business 
security. And my members need to understand that they are 
making decisions every day that take them along the path that 
leads to a position in the future that may or may not be 
business-secure. They're accepting investors. They need to 
understand who those people are. They need to be making really 
smart decisions. And to help equip the members of QEDC, I have 
a very good relationship actually with U.S. law enforcement 
agencies, and they come in and talk to these companies, 
especially the small ones. They don't have someone whose full-
time job is doing export control. So they need to have access 
to resources, and we're really fortunate to have that 
relationship that we can use to help them get access to useful 
information that they can use now to be business-secure in the 
future.
    Mr. Posey. Have you noticed any attempts to capture any of 
our resources and knowledge?
    Dr. Merzbacher. I assume it's happening. I feel like a Q is 
a big target, and I know that there are occasions when 
companies have talked to some of our friends in government. I'm 
not in the middle of that, so I'm not aware of all of it, but I 
think the relationship has been very useful. And the government 
people remind us, once the secrets are out, it's too late. We 
need to be catching those problems before they lead to breaches 
and leaks.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you. Doctor?
    Dr. Edwards. Thanks. So I think mine's maybe just a little 
bit different to complement what's already been said. I think, 
you know, at a university--so I'll wear my IQUIST hat for a 
minute as Executive Director of a quantum center there at 
Illinois. Academia has in place export controls to follow--you 
know, to follow the laws that are out there, but I think an 
open dialog on how these are implemented and how these--what is 
export-controlled and what is not that is continuous because 
the technology is advancing so fast, and the research and the 
labs at the universities changes really fast.
    And we also have significant graduate programs that serve 
both domestic and international students. And we want--and that 
ensure--that is creating a very lively and robust enterprise in 
the United States, and so we want to keep that in place. So I 
think the key for--at the university level is to ensure that 
there's open communications as these export controls are 
developed, that recognize the role of academia and the role of 
industry and the role of government, how we can work together 
to make sure that as they come out of the labs, they are 
safeguarded.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you. Doctor, any further thoughts? I mean, 
you can go to any trade show in any industry in this country 
and look at the new products that come online, and a week 
later, they're duplicated from China----
    Dr. Tahan. Yes----
    Mr. Posey [continuing]. Almost any industry in this 
country.
    Dr. Tahan. I'll make two quick comments to add to my 
previous ones. One, I think it comes down to making good 
decisions at the beginning, like Paul said, that if it's 
fundamental research, let it be fundamental research. If it's 
technology development, let's--how are we going to protect it 
over the long run?
    The second thing is for emerging technologies like quantum, 
we need to get in early, so bringing the FBI in, our 
recommendation is for bringing DHS in to help the companies 
secure their cyber networks. You know, we need to be proactive 
and doing that early. Waiting till CFIUS (Committee on Foreign 
Investment in the United States) and other things, that's way 
too late. We need to be very proactive with emerging 
technologies and get people educated, help them with their 
cybersecurity, and then, you know, eventually have guidelines 
for physical security and so on. But it's really an early game 
here, and that's what we've been working on.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you. Thank you all. Mr. Chairman, thank 
you.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes the gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. Stevens, for 5 
minutes.
    Ms. Stevens. Well, thank you to everyone who has shown up 
for quantum today. This is really remarkable to see the Science 
Committee packed on such a critical and global-shaping topic 
that we are eager to see the United States lead on.
    Recently--I represent southeastern Michigan, a community, a 
county called Oakland County, and we have Oakland University in 
my district. And recently, Oakland University and their band of 
researchers, alongside Argonne National Laboratory, discovered 
a breakthrough to help lay the foundation for future 
advancements in quantum computing. These scientists uncovered 
opportunities for manipulating quantum information by coupling 
magnetic behavior to a superconducting circuit, thus 
potentially creating a sort of quantum disk drive with 
mindboggling amounts of storage. We're really excited about 
this. And this research, as many of you have articulated in 
this phenomenal panel of witnesses, is happening in 
universities and think tanks all over the world.
    And one of the major barriers to research development and 
education in quantum information science is the relative lack 
of shared research infrastructure and instrumentation. The 
National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee released a 
report last Friday, just last Friday--and we're glad to have 
these guys on speed dial--calling for Congress to invest in 
infrastructure for quantum in the reauthorization of the 
Quantum Act.
    So Dr. Tahan, can you talk about the scientific community's 
needs for quantum-related research infrastructure and what 
Congress should be doing to address these challenges in the 
reauthorization of the National Quantum Initiative Act?
    Dr. Tahan. Absolutely, I'd love to. I think the important 
thing to keep in mind here is that if we want to lead the 
world, we need the people to do it, and so we can't rely 
anymore on the top 25 universities generating talent. We need 
to expand the capacity of the United States to generate talent 
wherever it is. And really what--to make that happen, we need 
to do a few things. We need to educate----
    Ms. Stevens. Expand talent and keep it here.
    Dr. Tahan. And keep it here, right----
    Ms. Stevens. Yes.
    Dr. Tahan [continuing]. And wherever they may be. You know, 
at the end of the day, that's what I'm passionate about and 
we're all passionate about. That's what we need to do. To do 
that, we need to educate people. This is a great opportunity. 
There are great careers here for our young people. We need to 
incorporate much more universities, community colleges, other 
places of learning and training into the leader--leading 
universities, R1 schools, through--and that means investing in 
infrastructure, equipment, even small labs so people can be 
trained up. We need to get, you know, quantum computing 
testbeds that students can learn in a thousand schools, not 20 
schools.
    Ms. Stevens. And you see a return on such an investment, 
right? I mean----
    Dr. Tahan. This is--I think there's a great--and I like--
this is what I always say. Quantum is more than quantum 
physics. If you think about what it takes to build a quantum 
computer or a quantum sensor or a quantum network, what are the 
skills you need? How to design a circuit, how to do microwave 
and RF (remote frequency) engineering, how to do programming. 
Like those skills in any industry of the future are going to be 
valuable----
    Ms. Stevens. Well, and Dr. Rieffel's career sort of 
represents that in many respects, artificial intelligence to 
quantum now at NASA, and so, you know, we'll find the bookend 
to spend, you know, a couple of days with you and your career 
and your career trajectory.
    But I just want to get in for the record here because we 
have these manufacturing institutes, Manufacturing USA, and 
there is one in Rochester, New York, not in Michigan's 11th 
District, but in Rochester, New York, called AIM Photonics. And 
I'm just curious--and I see Dr. Merzbacher nodding and Dr. 
Edwards. Are any of you working with AIM? Can you tell us about 
that consortia experience particularly on talent, R&D, and some 
of these broader challenges that we're talking about here?
    Dr. Merzbacher. Thank you. Yes. We actually put together a 
team with QEDC members and others on a proposal to the DOD 
prototyping call for proposals, and AIM is one of the partners 
because they have capabilities. The idea of being able to make 
things--and as I think Charlie Tahan said or someone else, 
quantum is really about light and matter interacting, and AIM 
Photonics is about managing light, you know, making these 
compact systems and these photonic integrated circuits that 
they make are critical to future quantum systems. So AIM is a 
great part of the ecosystem----
    Ms. Stevens. You know, I'm wondering if they're going to 
rebrand and start calling themselves the quantum lab. But 
certainly the photonics component of it is deeply important. 
And we'll ask for the record--because, Dr. Edwards, we want to 
continue to get you in here as well--about the need for the 
technology dominance for the United States, the strategic 
investment, what my colleague on the other side of the aisle 
was talking about with regard to export controls and how some 
of your enterprises, in addition to a Federal public-private 
partnership that we have with Manufacturing USA, is helping us 
to achieve that goal.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired. The 
Chair now recognizes gentleman from Texas, Mr. Babin, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Babin. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 
Member Lofgren. I really appreciate all of you witnesses being 
here. It is a fascinating hearing, and we thank you.
    Dr. Dabbar, I'm glad that you mentioned in your testimony 
the impact that quantum has on our national security, 
specifically when it comes to certain defense capabilities that 
we have or want. Can you please elaborate on our network 
systems and how we can strengthen these systems to prevent 
vulnerabilities and damage from our adversaries? And then also, 
can you share where China is in this same technology?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So I'll start with China. So 
China is--especially in the networking topic as you asked 
about, has accelerated their efforts in some respects farther 
than us. As I mentioned, after Snowden left and defected, he 
laid out the--how efficacious NSA is. And, amazingly, they 
massively built out a quantum network from Shanghai to Beijing, 
which is not close. They are not close to each other. They also 
launched a quantum satellite 6 years ago, OK, and so when I 
mentioned about how networking and satellites and security and 
codes, they started doing that 6 years ago. And as I look at 
NASA and other people have been pitching internally at NASA and 
elsewhere for us to go do that, and that hasn't happened yet. 
So I think leadership from this Committee for us to catch up on 
some of those areas.
    On the positive side, when it comes to entanglement and on 
the high end of distribution of quantum data and networks, the 
United States is by far the leader in, and so the ability for 
us to take the CHIPS Act and some of the infrastructure built 
out authorized in that and for whatever you feel is appropriate 
to authorize in the NQI to accelerate that further, the United 
States is ready to deploy the highest-end quantum networks that 
will be helpful for quantum computing networking, as well as 
security.
    Mr. Babin. Absolutely. Can you please share why we're 
behind China in quantum satellite efforts? And you alluded to 
that right then but--and what can we do going forward? You 
mentioned leadership, especially from this Committee. Because I 
don't believe that we can afford to continue to delay making 
moves to catch up, especially in encryption and some of these 
fields with quantum. If you can elaborate a little further.
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So I think America is ready 
at your direction and your authorization between the photonics 
works at NIST, at DOD, and at NASA to actually design a quantum 
satellite, probably in conjunction with some of the NASA labs 
and DOE labs and provide miniaturization of the photonics, get 
it on chip, and be able to get it down into a package that can 
go up into a satellite. I think the interaction of that with 
the terrestrial networks that should be bid out under the CHIPS 
Act, so the likelihood of New York winning a terrestrial 
network, a land-based local network, Chicago also winning one, 
probably one in California and probably one in Oak Ridge in 
east Tennessee all likely winners, and taking downlink stations 
with the satellite and start networking across the country is 
within the technological capabilities with your leadership.
    Mr. Babin. Outstanding. And what are some ways that DOE can 
better collaborate with the industry on existing and future 
initiatives, and how are agencies already engaging with the 
private sector to meet the needs of our national security 
space? To you, Dr. Dabbar, and if I have time, then someone 
else can answer as well.
    Mr. Dabbar. So one of the strengths of your last act was 
that it authorized efforts between government and private 
industry that was kind of leading-edge for an early discovery 
science. First time it was, I think, really ever done. So it 
is--it can continue to be enhanced, but your last act was 
really groundbreaking on that for something so early stage and 
collaborative.
    I think that as you look at authorizing a big quantum 
computing program, building on what was just announced in 
Illinois and with New York, with a lot of private sector 
leadership to be direct, I think if you authorize programs for 
government to continue to be potentially the first owner of 
those systems or customer of those systems, just like when Dr. 
Merzbacher's organization in 1969 controlled the internet with 
the first nodes--four nodes was controlled by her organization. 
That was a great example of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency) and Stanford at the time.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman----
    Mr. Babin. Thank you, and I'm out of time.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes the gentlelady from North Carolina, Ms. Ross, 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman, 
and to Ranking Member Lofgren, and thank you to all the 
panelists for being here today.
    I'm proud to represent North Carolina's 2d Congressional 
District in the Research Triangle and home to the IBM Quantum 
Hub at NC State University. Since its opening, the IBM Quantum 
Hub has been a center of quantum computing, education, 
research, development, and implementation. I also recently 
visited the Duke Quantum Center, a unique vertical quantum 
institute located just outside my district, which I believe 
Representative Foushee will be telling you all about. It's a 
really, really--you actually get to see the computers, the 
inside of them. It's really cool. Anyway, I'm excited about 
quantum advancements being made in our home State of North 
Carolina, and look forward to your testimony.
    I do want to point out one of the major barriers to 
research development and education in quantum information 
science is the relative lack of shared research infrastructure 
and instrumentation, and I heard a lot about this at Duke. The 
National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee released a 
report just last Friday calling for Congress to invest in more 
infrastructure for quantum in the reauthorization of the 
Quantum Act.
    So, Dr. Tahan, you--could you talk more about the 
scientific community's need for quantum-related research 
infrastructure and what Congress should be doing to address 
these challenges in the reauthorization of the National Quantum 
Initiative Act?
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, thank you, Congresswoman. We worked very 
hard, the advisory committee, to get recommendations to inform 
you all as you were writing the new legislation. One of those, 
as mentioned, and also in the agency recommendations, was a 
fund for infrastructure investments across the country. This 
could take many different forms, but in terms of the science, 
it's how do we give researchers access to the tools that can 
sometimes cost $3-5 million apiece in a more efficient way such 
that we can move the science forward? You know, you don't want 
to become a professor at NC State and then have to wait 5 years 
to get the tools in place to actually do your job. And I--this 
is something we hear about from many different professionals 
across the country.
    So one way to do that is to create programs like the qubit 
foundry program to make devices and give them out across the 
country, have centralized places like Lincoln Labs, national 
labs that make the qubits, or from industry, make the qubits 
and give them so that the science can be done on campus with 
students and we can come up with new ideas. Another way is to 
provide sources to equip labs. That's--that--those things are 
not typically done within the R&D funding program at the 
agencies. It really has to be an addition. It's purely for 
equipment and an investment around that. So that's really what 
I think the greatest opportunity is.
    Ms. Ross. OK. And, Dr. Rieffel, how does NASA currently 
fund and share research infrastructure?
    Dr. Rieffel. We have broad collaborations with industry, 
with other government labs. We're also part of two of the 
National Quantum Initiative Centers and have access to the 
technology there. One of the really exciting things to build on 
the previous question has been to see hardware moving from 
place to place as opposed to staying in one lab. And as we work 
with other agencies and across the different centers at NASA, 
we expect to be able to support these efforts in really 
phenomenal ways.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you very much.
    Dr. Edwards. Sorry, can I jump in----
    Ms. Ross. Sure, absolutely.
    Dr. Edwards [continuing]. Just to----
    Ms. Ross. My next question was for you, so you can take the 
remainder of the time.
    Dr. Edwards. Oh, if you would like to ask it.
    Ms. Ross. No, go ahead.
    Dr. Edwards. OK. I just wanted to underscore this need for 
infrastructure through an educational lens. So Illinois--and I 
believe the vision also actually at Duke Quantum Center of 
which I've also visited, Dr. Monroe was my postdoctoral 
advisor, but both Illinois and there and other places, we're 
talking about user facilities and open access educational 
testbeds to cross-train students and even be flexible to do 
upskilling of the current workforce.
    I think there's a risk right now that with the current 
investments, people don't have access to easily get into these, 
particularly students, and so I see a need that you could build 
educational testbeds, coupled with user facilities at 
universities, to provide access to electrical engineers, 
computer scientists, physicists because we still do need them 
even though it's just a--it's not just physics, mathematicians 
and others to work at the different levels of the pipeline from 
K-12 all the way to upskilling.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair now 
recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Garcia, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses, a very important discussion here obviously.
    I think we're at a really meaningful part of our Nation's 
history. I actually view this technology quantum coupled with 
AI and machine learning as the fourth offset, the fourth 
military offset. The first offset, if you recall, was our 
nuclear programs, the Manhattan Project, the propulsion 
programs that paralleled that, the second offset being stealth 
technology and the technologies that were derived from that 
that gave us this asymmetric advantage over our adversaries on 
the global stage.
    I think the third offset can best be defined as the 
autonomy and miniaturization of systems that yielded things 
like the B-2, the B-21 now being produced in my district, as 
well as UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) en masse.
    And I think that the fourth offset, like I said, is now the 
ability to overlay the quantum computing and underpin the AI 
and machine learning to--by quantum to fully enable the 
processing of data, the data management systems, the networks 
of networks, the information flow on the--you know, the fronts, 
the military fronts specifically.
    When you look at it through that paradigm, it puts a little 
bit of a different importance on these programs. And I think, 
given sort of the nascent position of some of these programs--
and, first of all, I think we're also drinking our own 
bathwater a little bit relative to China's progress. I think we 
are trying to have a self-fulfilling prophecy that China is not 
doing the same investments and not making the same progress 
that we are. I think they actually are keeping pace and they 
are spending as much money. It may not be visible to us, but 
they're utilizing an entire commercial base in conjunction with 
their military operations. So I think we should be paranoid 
about their progress and not assume that we have a 
technological advantage or even a funding advantage in many 
cases. I think it's very important to look at it from a 
disadvantage perspective and a paradigm that we need to catch 
up so that we keep our foot on the pedal and we gain 
efficiencies.
    But I also think because it is the fourth offset, and I 
really believe that, that from a security perspective, to your 
point, Dr. Tahan, we need to be proactive. And I don't get the 
sense across the disparate agencies, the government side and 
the commercial side, that we are actually putting in place the 
security protocols, and not on the fundamental research, but on 
the actual technology development, the higher-end technology 
development that could feed into weapons systems. My concern is 
that we are not vetting all of the all folks that are working 
these programs to the levels that we should. Do we have insight 
into how many Chinese nationals are working these programs? 
Have we done background checks? These don't necessarily need to 
be classified programs, but do we manage and keep track of the 
personnel working these technologies that are feeding into our 
fourth offset?
    My concern with the CHIPS Act--I ended up supporting it, 
but I spent probably 6 hours in the skiff talking to intel and 
Department of Commerce and Department of Defense--that the 
investments we are making in CHIPS didn't port cleanly to DOD 
applications, that we were focusing on 7, 9 nanometer wafers 
and not looking at the smaller wafer chip sets that would go 
into hypersonics.
    The second concern I had that--is that we weren't porting 
over the requirements for supporting quantum development. You 
know, I don't recall seeing any sort of specific tailoring of 
the semiconductor development to quantum computing, whether 
it's quantum dot arrays or the layers and substrates needed to 
do what is necessary for quantum computing.
    And the third concern I had with the CHIPS Act was that we 
weren't looking at how to protect the intellectual property 
across all of these efforts. They're all evolving on separate 
islands almost, and we're allowing for venues to share 
information, which is good, we've got to be able to share 
information, but we also have to protect that information from 
the CCP and then also make sure that the folks working these 
programs are vetted and not effectively getting educated here, 
getting smart on the technology, and then going back to 
mainland China, where they may not have a choice to share the 
information.
    So I've used up my time just talking about this, but I'm 
really concerned that we as a government right now are not 
looking at this as a national security program and that we are 
only looking at this as sort of a commercial program, maybe not 
only, but not enough emphasis on the national security 
implications of this. The idea--you know, the OPM (Office of 
Personnel Management) data breach from several years ago, the 
only thing really keeping the Chinese from really leveraging 
that data against us is their ability to compute and manage 
that data. So I'll end with that. I don't have any questions.
    And, Ms. Edwards, the QUEST program, I'd like to take it 
offline. We're going into markups for appropriations, so if you 
can help us understand that.
    I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Bowman, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all 
the witnesses for being here.
    The CHIPS and Science Act is intended to promote domestic 
development, manufacturing, and testing of advanced 
semiconductors, and the definition in the bill is specific 
about semiconductors. However, companies like SEEQC based in my 
district are designing and manufacturing more advanced chips 
for scaling quantum technologies using superconductors. 
Superconductors are useful for quantum computing, quantum and 
classical sensing, and other cases outlined in the NQI. Does 
anyone have thoughts on the role that superconductors could 
play in the advancement of the quantum computing industry? And 
what might be needed from Congress or the Administration here?
    Mr. Dabbar, I will turn it to you first, given the 
Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center managed by 
the DOE.
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So Westchester County is 
certainly a leader in quantum technologies. SEEQC in Elmsford 
has some very interesting control systems which could lead to 
scaling of quantum chips well beyond what most people are 
talking about. IBM has obviously made significant announcements 
in Westchester County in their operations. And then finally, 
the CHIPS and Science Act authorizing a quantum network to be 
bid I think it is extremely likely that New York will win, and 
there'll be networks not only in the city and Long Island but 
up to your town and Westchester.
    The support for those sort of efforts, I think, would be 
critical, and I think one of the things that people don't see 
is that companies like IBM, like SEEQC, like what's going on in 
Brookhaven are far beyond basic science, and I think first 
deployments in conjunction with the private sector, as you 
mentioned, but also with universities and labs, including in 
New York, will--are ready. And so that's why when a number of 
people here talk about first deployment and cooperatives 
between universities and labs and companies, it's ready.
    Mr. Bowman. Awesome. Would anyone else like to just add?
    Dr. Edwards. It looks like a lot of people, but maybe I 
will just very quickly say that the one thing that in my 
experience with the superconducting technology is that the 
ability to make high coherence qubits is a grand challenge that 
Dr. Tahan is familiar with deeply, and I think that it relies 
on currently infrastructure from a few companies that are 
overseas in order to successfully make qubits. We have a piece 
of equipment at the University of Illinois that we waited 12 
months for, and it's one of the only pieces of equipment in the 
world that's known to make successful high coherence qubits 
using superconductors. And so I--at least it--that is publicly 
available, and it's very expensive. So when you ask what people 
can do, I think it's important to look at these investments to 
buildup the supply chain. And I'll--of course, I think the 
panelists have other comments.
    Dr. Rieffel. We're really excited, as part of the NASA 
QuAIL team, to be part of C2QA (Co-design Center for Quantum 
Advantage) right out of Brookhaven and SQMS run out of Fermi 
Lab, which both do superconducting technologies and have really 
advanced that. Thank you all for supporting those centers.
    I want to mention that in addition to doing faster 
computing, superconducting technologies and other quantum 
technologies have the potential of reducing energy consumption 
for the computation, and that that's another real advantage 
that we can push on here. So thank you again for your support.
    Dr. Merzbacher. And I'll just add that SEEQC is actually a 
member of our team that put in this proposal to develop 
prototyping capability. They're a key facility that we hope 
will be able to grow so that the broad community can use their 
expertise and capabilities to make these systems.
    Mr. Bowman. Please.
    Dr. Tahan. I've been working on crowd computing for most of 
my career. You know, we make some chips at SEEQC in my home 
lab. It's a great lab.
    I'll just say in terms of what Congress can do, you know, 
as the CHIPS and Science Act is implemented, you know, there's 
about $11 billion in R&D in the National Semiconductor 
Technology Center (NSTC), advanced packaging. If we can ensure 
that emerging technologies or quantum are covered in the 
implementation of those R&D facilities, that's the greatest 
opportunity, frankly, probably of a generation to ensure that 
we have continued technical leadership of the next generation 
of IT. You know, so facilities like the DOD Commons--you know, 
that's something that we worked on internally to encourage 
quantum to be part of that, but also as the NSTC gets stood up, 
that they include exotic materials like superconductors, of 
optics, other things that will matter beyond CMOS 
(complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) to future quantum and 
other types of technologies like neuromorphic computing.
    Mr. Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now 
recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Obernolte, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Obernolte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our 
witnesses. It's been a fascinating hearing on a really 
important topic.
    I think we're all in furious agreement on a few things, 
first of all, that NQI should be reauthorized; second of all, 
that we need more people and more money. We have talked about a 
couple of problems, and I think every single witness has 
brought up these problems in your testimony: One, the problem 
of enabling a quantum-skilled workforce and growing that 
workforce, and then the second problem of commercializing some 
of the technology that's been developed in labs and in 
academia. And I think everyone at the table mentioned this 
problem.
    I want to point out that these two problems are related 
because if we can solve the second problem, the second problem 
solves the first problem. If we get more commercial 
application, you're going to get more private investment. 
You're going to get companies that are delivering these 
solutions to market. They are going to create jobs. They're 
going to create pipelines into their companies. They're going 
to create their own training programs, and that'll make this 
self-reinforcing cycle that solves the first problem of the 
quantum educated workforce.
    Ranking Member Lofgren asked a great question on this, 
about how we start doing that, getting these applications out 
of the lab and into commercialization. And the answer was, 
generally, we need better communication between the labs and 
academia and commercial companies. I'm not sure I agree. Count 
me skeptical on that, and here's why. I mean, I think the 
problem that we're facing is that most of the potential 
applications for quantum computing technology are largely still 
theoretical. It is great that IBM has a chip with 433 qubits on 
it. You know, that's amazing, way more than we thought we would 
have at this point, but we're still going to need millions, if 
not tens of millions of qubits to solve the kind of computing 
problems that traditional computers are unable to solve. And we 
still have--as has been brought up, we still have some 
technical problems to solve like the problem with decoherence 
before we get there.
    So, you know, I really think we need to identify the low-
hanging fruit, some applications of quantum computing 
technology that we can start to commercialize now while we're 
working on these longer-term solutions.
    So, Mr. Dabbar, you're the private sector guy here. Do you 
agree with that assessment? And what are the low-hanging fruit 
that you can see that that might lend themselves to immediate 
commercial application?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes. Yes, Congressman, sticking to your quantum 
computing specific point, you know, one of the three major use 
cases. I think the likelihood of there being a heterogeneous, 
high-performance computer that has QPUs (quantum processing 
units) as part--underline the word ``part''--of the 
architecture in conjunction with CPUs (central processing 
units) and GPUs (graphics processing units) for it to be an 
accelerator to narrow down very large problems is actually 
something that could probably be designed into the next high-
performance computer today. That's why I recommend that when 
you authorize the next high-performance computing program for 
the national labs, that you direct them to do that.
    The computer at Oak Ridge was--the last previous one, 
Summit, was the first one that had two different types of 
chips, and that was proven, and it dramatically improved AI and 
general computing performance. I think it's low-hanging fruit 
to start taking a look at the chips that are going to be 
available in the next computing cycle to be included as part of 
a system. A fully quantum computer that has advantageous 
capabilities is, I think, farther out, but I think as part of a 
system, I think that's low-hanging fruit.
    Mr. Obernolte. Thank you. Yes, that's encouraging.
    Dr. Edwards, I really respect the role that you have here 
on this panel because you are dealing with education very 
near--a situation very near and dear to my heart, which is 
education. I think the problem is bigger than the one that 
we're confronting here. I mean, we've got--China has passed the 
number of--has passed the U.S. on the number of Ph.D.'s in 
computer science that they have awarded a couple of years ago, 
and within the next year or two, they'll award double the 
number that we award. So our problem, I think, is broader than 
just educating students in quantum computing. I think we don't 
have enough students in STEM in general and computer science in 
particular. How do we solve that problem?
    Dr. Edwards. So this is a very big question, so maybe I'll 
keep my remarks brief and----
    Mr. Obernolte. Well, you've got 21 seconds.
    Dr. Edwards. I know. And then I'll be happy to answer also 
in writing.
    So quantum information science is more than just quantum 
computing. I think we all know that. And there are near-term 
technologies, as well as far-term applications that you spoke 
of. It's a convergent area that spans all of STEM. So it's an 
opportunity akin to the space race, an opportunity to take this 
moment to inspire students and to inspire the current workforce 
to buildup public literacy and to unite across all sectors to 
address the critical challenges you talk about. It can't fix 
all of STEM, absolutely not. I don't say that, but I think that 
we can use the NQI reauthorization and continued Federal 
investments to buildup the infrastructure to take a next step 
forward. And again, I'm happy to provide more detailed remarks 
in writing. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Obernolte. We'll follow up. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes the gentlelady from North Carolina, Mrs. 
Foushee, for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Foushee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 
Committee hearing today, and thank you to the witnesses for 
your testimony and for appearing before us this morning.
    I am proud that in my district, North Carolina's 4th, 
indeed includes the Duke Quantum Center, a partner of the 
Department of Energy-funded Quantum Systems Accelerator, one of 
five quantum information resource centers in the country. Mr. 
Dabbar, the Department of Energy Quantum User Expansion for 
Science and Technology Program, or QUEST, was first authorized 
in CHIPS and Science to match researchers with existing 
commercially available quantum computing capabilities. Should 
the next phase of the NQI be expanded to include quantum 
computer use of facilities? I understand from reading your 
testimony that you have some recommendations for this program 
in the context of the NQIA reauthorization. Could you please 
elaborate on those recommendations?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes. Yes, Congresswoman. So I think there's two 
potential things as you mentioned in your question. The QUEST 
program, which allows computer access for all researchers and 
develop computational scientists in the quantum algorithm space 
that was authorized in the CHIPS Act, I highly recommend that 
that get even more accelerated or you consider that. Taking 
that up to $50 million a year is something I would recommend, 
which is a little bit of a bump from the CHIPS Act. Getting 
broad access to quantum cloud capabilities that researchers at 
universities or schools all over the country, I think, would be 
a great use for development and research. And then I would 
also, as I mentioned previously, recommend a concentrated 
effort to building the first heterogeneous, high-performance 
computer system at one or more of the national labs as part of 
the next big supercomputer effort, similar to what was 
announced here recently by DOD and some private companies.
    Mrs. Foushee. Thank you. And, Dr. Edwards, although I 
understand that many quantum technology jobs require extensive 
postsecondary education, there are also many roles that only 
require an associate degree from a community college or trade 
school. Can you discuss what the skilled technical workforce 
looks like for quantum and how we can enable affordable 
educational opportunities for people to train for those jobs?
    Dr. Edwards. So for the second part of that question about 
how can we enable affordable training, I think we need to 
develop the curriculum that was referred to before. There are 
some initial strides that have been made possible by 
investments of the initial 5 years of the NQI Act, and it needs 
to be modular to be able to be deployed in community colleges. 
We need community college consortiums. I know there's several 
of them working to go--to model after the photonics initiative 
to buildup capacity--or capability at the technician level.
    For the actual skills needed, I actually would like to 
maybe ask Dr. Merzbacher to----
    Mrs. Foushee. I was coming there.
    Dr. Edwards. Oh, excellent. I was going to say I think she 
can provide more depth on the initial understanding of what 
skills are there, but to underline that this is all happening 
in real time, and we don't have enough data yet. And so I think 
building on what maybe Dr. Merzbacher will say, we need more--
we need to know more in order to design these programs for the 
populations you're talking about.
    Mrs. Foushee. Thank you for that. So Dr. Merzbacher, if you 
would, please.
    Dr. Merzbacher. Yes, I'll add to that as well. So my 
organization has a number of standing committees. One is the 
Workforce Committee. It's very active, and it involves members 
who are both in the education business, but also the industry 
members. And we asked them, do you have jobs that are being 
done in your company by a Ph.D. that could be done by a 
technician? And they all said yes. So there's a huge 
opportunity here. And I was talking with actually someone from 
your district about this. He said we don't have as much trouble 
hiring Ph.D.'s as we do technicians.
    So we're doing a workshop this year to get more 
understanding around this. I think it's--it is a very diverse 
ecosystem, and companies have different needs when it comes to 
technicians, but a technician doesn't need to have quantum in 
front of their name. If they understand how to use vacuum 
systems, how to run electronics, how to keep things maintained 
and operating, they can be qualified. So what we need is to 
sort of get them quantum-comfortable and appreciating the 
opportunities and then, you know, helping to connect them with 
those opportunities. A lot of times technicians don't 
necessarily relocate across the country, and so there's a 
difference in the education at that level, but it's equally 
important.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired. The 
Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. 
Fleischmann, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. I thank the Chairman and the 
Ranking Member for having this hearing, and to our 
distinguished panel, thank you very much. Secretary Dabbar, it 
was a privilege working with you in the last Administration. 
I'm glad that we could continue to work together, but to each 
and every one of you all, thank you so much.
    So you know, I represent the people of the 3d District of 
Tennessee, which encompasses the entire Oak Ridge reservation 
and all that it entails, including our great national 
laboratory.
    If I may, the main goal of the National Quantum Initiative 
Act was to accelerate development of quantum information 
science and technology applications in the United States over 
10 years. Since the law passed, we've seen major advancements 
in technology, which has led to significant Federal and private 
investment. Last year, Chattanooga's utility EPB launched the 
EPE--EPB Quantum Network, which is the first industry-led 
commercially available quantum network designed for private 
companies, government, and university researchers to run 
quantum equipment and applications using EPB's fiberoptic 
infrastructure. And while we still need to continue our quantum 
research and development activities, I think we have a real 
opportunity to jump to the next step, which is connecting the 
science to specific application areas.
    I'm interested in the panelists' thoughts talking--taking a 
regional approach to this, one where the key players in the 
region would form a consortium to create a testbed where one 
could take advantage of everyone's strengths and focus them on 
specific applications.
    Using east Tennessee as an example, you could take EPB and 
its network, bring in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory with 
its expertise in exascale and quantum computing, maybe some 
business and universities and focus them on applying quantum 
science and technology to securing the electrical grid.
    My question for the panel, do you think a regional approach 
like this might lead to accelerating scientific discoveries and 
translating them into real-world applications? And I think we 
can begin with--on this side and move across the panel, and I 
thank you all.
    Dr. Tahan. Thank you for the question, Congressman. Let me 
just start by saying that the U.S. Government is taking 
protecting our networks extremely seriously, and NIST has been 
leading a standards competition for quantum-resistant 
cryptography, and the government is working to deploy that as 
fast as possible. That does not require quantum technology 
right at the beginning.
    In the long term where we look to quantum networks, 
hopefully connecting our quantum computers and sensors, we're 
very fortunate in the government to have a lot of expertise in 
the agencies, and we brought them together to make 
recommendations for you through various reports. One of them is 
the quantum networking report. The key thing is to focus on the 
hard technical challenges. One thing we really need are very 
high-fidelity components to connect different types of qubits 
to enable a network. If we can do that, if we can solve that 
science problem, we can make everything the industry wants to 
do much easier, and I think that's maybe very well-focused and 
compatible with regional teams focusing on these core 
transduction components that can go into those networks. If we 
can solve those problems first, then everything else becomes 
much easier. And I would encourage--you know, this being a 
science-focused initiative, the government can really 
accelerate that hard piece and make it easier for all the 
applications thereafter.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir. Secretary Dabbar?
    Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, the Chattanooga effort with Oak 
Ridge is a great example of the capabilities and prospects of 
regional efforts. Almost by definition, if you're going to 
build a network, it has to be regional. And so Oak Ridge in 
east Tennessee is at the lead and there's others. New York, 
Chicago are other big areas of the country where things are 
being tested. The CHIPS Act authorizes certain aspects of that. 
I would recommend that this Committee look to enhance that 
because that's the way that things get built out. Once again, 
going back to the internet example of 1969, that's how the 
first four nodes of the internet started, and I think that's 
where we're at with quantum is to do the same.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir.
    Dr. Rieffel. I agree that regional efforts are very 
important. Bringing people together to work together in ways 
that can only be done if people are close by. On the other 
hand, with the technology that's here, being able to work 
across the country is really important as well. And, for 
example, we at NASA worked with people at Oak Ridge National 
Lab to support Google's quantum supremacy experiment, and so 
being able to do cross-country collaborations is also 
important, so balancing those things is critical going forward. 
Thank you.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time is----
    Mr. Fleischmann. OK. I guess I have to yield back. I was 
going to ask the others if I might get at least a 10-second 
response, Mr. Chair?
    Chairman Lucas. Yes, Cardinal, 10 seconds each.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
    Dr. Merzbacher. I just want to say that EPB is a very 
active member of my consortium, and I visited them in March. We 
held actually our meeting in Chattanooga so that we could go 
and visit. I think it's a great model. I think quantum 
expertise isn't consolidated within regions across the country, 
so if you want best-in-class, you're going to have to kind of 
break that open a little bit.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you.
    Dr. Edwards. So I think that building infrastructure to 
have regional hubs in areas especially that are quantum 
information deserts is critical and I think could--is--it 
aligns with the notion that our educational systems are local 
and locally governed and provides on-the-ground access or could 
provide if we were successful on-the-ground access for people 
of all ages to have a front row seat I was talking about.
    Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you. I thank the Chair's indulgence. 
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The 
gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Jackson, is recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Jackson. Dr. Tahan, I want to follow up on the answer 
that you just gave to Representative Fleischmann's question. 
I'm very interested in trying to verbalize for my constituents 
the gap between the state-of-the-art and practical 
applications, and I really don't know if that gap is more about 
scaling up existing technology and finding something that's 
affordable, or whether there are huge technical problems we 
have to solve. It sounded like your answer was that the big 
thing--the biggest thing the government can do is help solve a 
particular technical problem, and that was the limit of my 
understanding. So am I right about that?
    Dr. Tahan. Well, this is a pretty broad field. You know, it 
depends on the category. So there's computing, networking, 
sensing, right? For networks, the point I was trying to make is 
that there is a classical solution to the risk of a future--far 
future quantum computer that the government is working to 
deploy--to standardize and deploy. There are opportunities for 
quantum-enabled networks to do more, and that's more of a 
research and development thing that we need to solve a lot of 
problems to solve. So that's for networking.
    For computing, you know, the question of applications is 
always--you know, has been the most important one. You know, 
we've taken the last 25 years to build very small research-like 
computers, 100 qubits, just starting to be at the point where 
we can't simulate them on our laptops or even on our 
supercomputers, but we don't have applications to run on those 
things yet that do anything useful other than science and 
trying to understand how to build bigger computers. We don't 
know when quantum computers--at what scale they will start to 
be actually useful like generating Nobel Prize science or 
commercial applications. It could be in the next 5 years, it 
could be longer than that.
    Mr. Jackson. I want to drill down on that exactly. So the 
state-of-the-art is roughly 100 qubits. Is that what you're 
telling me?
    Dr. Tahan. Hundreds, hundreds. You know, IBM right now it's 
a 400-qubit machine, but we're sort of in the hundreds category 
now.
    Mr. Jackson. OK. And we really don't have a working theory 
as to what level of qubit is going to unlock some practically?
    Dr. Tahan. No, we do. So over the last 20 years, we've 
developed algorithms, proposed algorithms that do useful 
things. One of them is cryptanalysis, which is a negative 
thing. We need to protect against. It could break codes. 
Another is chemistry and materials discovery. Those algorithms 
that we can cost, meaning we know exactly how many qubits you 
need, the estimates are around hundreds of thousands to tens of 
millions of qubits, OK? But there are other proposed algorithms 
that are more heuristic, kind of like deep learning-based that 
we cannot with mathematics prove will work until you build the 
machine.
    Mr. Jackson. OK.
    Dr. Tahan. So the goal is we need to build bigger machines 
and see if they're going to work or not.
    Mr. Jackson. OK. So you think we've got some practical 
applications at the 100,000 level, but we may be some practical 
applications short of that, but we really don't know yet?
    Dr. Tahan. Exactly.
    Mr. Jackson. OK. Are--between the 100 qubit level that 
we're at, the state-of-the-art, and 100,000 qubit, what's the 
biggest technical challenge?
    Dr. Tahan. Scaling up, you know, how to control all those 
qubits. Each one of those qubits is like a little, very 
sensitive animal that you need to touch all the time. You need 
wires or lasers to go down to it. So unlike your classical 
computer, which has, you know, 10 billion transistors but only 
1,000 wires, a computer with 100,000 quantum transistors would 
need hundreds of thousands of wires, so that's the big 
technical challenge.
    Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, probably as early as later 
this year, we might have 100,000 qubit chip out there that's 
capable, and how--the equivalent to architecture of high-
performance computers with CPUs and GPUs, we don't have a GPU 
chip the size of this room. It's a bank of chips, as you know. 
And so the likelihood of taking a 100--sorry, 1,000 qubit chip, 
and starting to network that, maybe 3 or 6 in one cryochamber, 
so you can maybe get to 6,000 qubits. And as was announced 
recently, as part of a bigger high-performance computer with 
CPUs and GPUs, 100,000 might be able to provide an accelerator 
function to dramatically improve that--high-performance 
computers.
    Mr. Jackson. I just need to understand. Is there a 
breakthrough that hasn't happened, or do we have the science 
and now we're just scaling up?
    Dr. Edwards. OK. I might jump in here.
    Mr. Jackson. Please.
    Dr. Edwards. We don't know yet how to build such a machine. 
There are roadmaps from several companies, but it hasn't been 
built yet. And the physics--the ability to control this many 
quantum objects all at once to do computing is of course 
critical, and we will get there, but it's--there are massive 
engineering challenges as you try to scale this.
    Mr. Jackson. Name one.
    Dr. Edwards. So in the--there's multiple platforms. We 
don't know which qubit is the best qubit. There's 
superconducting qubits, there's semiconductor qubits, there's 
atomic physics qubits, both ions and neutral atoms. There's a 
number of different ones of those, and we know how to get to 
100, but the challenge is like Charlie's--or Dr. Tahan said, 
the challenge is connecting all the wires. In the atomic 
physics case, it's using all the lasers.
    And we don't--we often don't have the--we're operating on 
the edge of what's possible, and people are right now in 
industry often inventing solutions to help be able to 
circumvent the necessary amount of wires or to try to reduce 
the number of lasers you would need to control that many 
quantum objects and especially to avoid or correct errors, 
which is a major challenge. It's a really hard problem, and we 
will get there, but there are significant--I don't know if 
they're necessarily physics breakthroughs, but there are 
engineering challenges that have to be codeveloped with 
industry in order for us to succeed at building this.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Collins, for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    You know, the discussion that we're having today I think is 
about an area of science which probably very few of us really 
understand. You know, Albert Einstein himself kind of struggled 
to keep--put his mind around this. And he was often quoted as 
saying, if quantum theory is correct, it signifies the end of 
physics as a science. So he clearly had mixed views on the 
subject.
    So my question is to any of the witnesses. What would you 
tell a Georgian in my district if they ask why the government 
should be investing billions in quantum research, and how is it 
going to impact their lives?
    Dr. Tahan. Maybe I'll start out by saying it's already 
impacted their lives. You know, if you think about the global 
positioning system which helps us get home, that's estimated to 
be a trillion-dollar impact in our society. I mean, it saves me 
every single day from a lot of traffic. That is based on 
quantum clocks or quantum's--a version of a quantum sensor. 
Magnetic resonance imagers, brain imagers are based on our 
understanding of quantum physics.
    You know, the next-generation brain imagers, if we can 
really bring some of these ideas from lab to market, could be 
around your neck. You know, instead of having to go into a big 
tube to see if you have a tumor, you could be monitored all the 
time or much more--less invasively. I mean, think of what that 
could do to broaden healthcare to the world, right?
    So we can bring these over the market, but we need to keep 
our eye on the ball on the applications that can actually 
affect society and carry it, you know? And that means bringing 
other agencies involves investing in industry to make it 
happen.
    Mr. Collins. All right.
    Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, I just want to highlight the 
biology imaging point. The prospects of moving from an MRI, 
which, for lack of better description, comes up with a blob, 
right, that you see, and you still have to do biopsies and it 
has to reach a certain scale of the cancer, for example, before 
you can even see it. The prospects of--and NSF has been funding 
some of this--of a higher end either magnetic or other type of 
quantum imager to go to the individual cell. And so if you 
could capture and visualize the first cell that is cancer and 
it moves from your thyroid to your pancreas, not wait until it 
turns into a tumor, that's the possibility. And so the 
possibility of catching something that early with, you know, a 
piece of quantum sensing will remake medicine, and so that's a 
prospect.
    Mr. Collins. Good. I know--maybe--I had some--another area 
that I really wanted to get into real quick, and I appreciate 
your answers. That really makes it easier when we're talking to 
our constituency. We just penned a letter, Chairman Lucas and I 
did, as Committee Chairman, Subcommittee Chairman, to the NSF 
about China and Berkeley and how they were receiving money from 
the Chinese and money from the Federal Government on research, 
semiconductor research, and how they were conducting tours of 
these research facilities for the Chinese, and that's very 
concerning. I know we've been talking about that here this 
morning.
    I also had the opportunity to speak to a group not too long 
ago about quantum technology. And my question is for Ms. 
Merzbacher and Ms. Edwards. Thank you for the good southern 
name down there, easy to pronounce. When I was talking to them, 
they mentioned the fact that we need to keep these visas for 
the Chinese coming in because we don't have people that have 
the education to help us with quantum technology. And that 
worries me. And so from an education standpoint, Ms. Edwards, 
is that true? Do we still need to make sure that we have visas 
coming through for the Chinese, and Ms. Merzbacher? The 
workforce, you indicated in your opening statement, upscaling 
existing and upcoming workforce, and I would just like some 
comment on that so that we don't get into this same situation 
that we have now with the semiconductor research.
    Dr. Edwards. So I'm--I admit, I'm not an immigration 
expert, and--but I do recognize the challenges of national 
security in this space, and I do think that, you know, aligned 
with the recommendations that came out on Friday, it is 
actually important, especially at the graduate level, for us to 
continue to draw on the international expertise and the 
domestic expertise that's available. We need to simultaneously 
build the domestic workforce, and that is a major, major gap. 
And we should not get distracted from doing that. But it is 
really important to recognize the contributions internationally 
that colleagues across the world, including China, have brought 
and that they work in--you know, work in our labs and academia, 
and I think this is incredibly valuable. And there are 
recommendations that Dr. Tahan can speak to more directly about 
this.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes gentlelady from Ohio, Mrs. Sykes, for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Sykes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the 
panel for your time with us. This is a--certainly a very 
interesting and important conversation.
    One thing I've probably said in this Committee and 
otherwise is the best part of this job is learning about a lot 
of fascinating pieces of information, technologies, 
professions, but I also wonder how I would ever know about 
those things if I were not a Member of Congress. And it 
frustrates me as much as it encourages me to learn about these 
things.
    And I wanted to go back to something you mentioned, Dr. 
Tahan, about the people being the most important part of this 
equation, and none of this technology works without people who 
truly understand and know what's going on. And when I think 
about the people in my community in Ohio's 13th District and 
what do they actually know about quantum technology and how do 
they get involved in quantum technology? And is it just 
something that they've seen or heard the term on TV but it's 
not for them?
    So I would like you to dive a little bit more into what are 
the opportunities that we can do to connect the dots to our 
constituents and members of our community who are not familiar 
with it and then start talking about the pipeline to get them 
involved and employed in this.
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, a pleasure to answer this question. It's 
something I'm very passionate about, you know, just looking at 
my career, how I got into science. And to me, it comes down to 
there being careers, you know, for parents that want their kids 
to go into and then educating, inspiring, and giving 
experiences to people, you know? So what we have done is try to 
use the White House to amplify the great efforts that are 
already going on in NQI. World Quantum Day, we've tried to make 
into big events where we have, you know, famous people, 
frankly, give videos about quantum. We've--with Emily's and 
other people's help, we brought quantum modules into hundreds 
of schools across the country to--and that's 100 schools times, 
you know, 30 students, you know, so we're giving people a taste 
of like, this is really cool. It's a great career. Many people 
can be successful in it, and now it's our job to even--how do 
we scale that even more? And that's really what we're talking 
about, having a center, having, you know, more coordinated 
activities to really bring this into living rooms and not just, 
you know, The New York Times op-eds. It's--that's what we 
really need to do.
    Mrs. Sykes. Well, thank you for that, and I also 
appreciated your comment about moving this beyond the top 25 
schools within the country and allowing other universities. And 
I believe that was you, Dr. Edwards, who has a degree from 
Appalachian State. And, again, thinking about how do we get 
people who are a part of tech schools, trade schools, State 
schools involved in this and not feeling like they just have to 
be Ivy Leaguers to be a part of this conversation. And in 
reading your testimony about your K through 12 curriculum and 
encouraging more people, if you could share a little bit more 
about the work that you have been doing and that you can 
continue to do with the right support from people like us.
    Dr. Edwards. Thank you for that question. So I would like 
to say that--acknowledge that the work that I've been doing is 
a work of an incredible group of people, and that really I'm 
just providing a conduit to share what's going on. And so what 
we've been doing--and my colleagues at University of Chicago 
and University of Pittsburgh have worked very hard to pull 
together teachers to build a quantum information science 
framework for introducing quantum into high school chemistry, 
high school physics, computer science, math, as well as middle 
school. There's also a public elementary school in Philadelphia 
that we've talked to that--we don't have anything for--formally 
for elementary school outside of the activities that Dr. Tahan 
mentioned, but there's a school there that's actually 
experimenting with having a science lab focused on quantum in 
the elementary school that students have exposure to.
    And so the framework that we're developing is agile, and 
the next step is curriculum. So what needs to happen is a 
center to build on the steps that we've taken so far. There 
needs to be a national resource to develop curriculum, to 
develop--to connect these different parts of the pipeline, to 
work and buildupon the data collection that the QEDC has 
supported, and to really buildup robust programs and make sure 
that they are effective and, again, address these information 
deserts that exist widely across our country. And so we've been 
working on it, but it's--we need a center or something to build 
on this partnership, the Q-12 that's currently voluntary and 
supported with limited funds from NSF for a short period of 
time.
    Mrs. Sykes. Thank you so much for that. And with my 
remaining time, I'll just express one part that I just don't 
hear often in here and would like to hear more of is the fact 
that representation does matter. The fact that we have three 
women here on the panel is incredible. It would be great to see 
more people of color as we're trying to find the missing 
million technology workforce that is not here, and if you can 
see it, you can be it and you can believe it.
    And as I sit across from Eddie Bernice Johnson, it is a 
reminder to me that seeing someone on the wall that looks like 
you allows you to see yourself in these positions. So thank you 
for all that you're doing and continue to be good 
representations of what it means to be a woman in STEM.
    Thank you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Collins [presiding]. Thank you, Mrs. Sykes. The 
gentlelady's time has expired. The Chair now recognizes Dr. 
McCormick from Georgia for 5 minutes.
    Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So what an esteemed 
presentation today, so many educated people. I'm really 
excited. One thing that caught my--I had a bunch of questions 
asked from a bunch of people, but right off the bat, I wanted 
to address Dr. Merzbacher. Am I'm saying that correctly? You 
said something very interesting during your presentation. You 
said that we're not getting the same investment from the 
private side of the world that we used to have and that that's 
kind of tapered off, and that's why it requires more government 
investing to continue the leaps, if you will, in technology in 
this. Can you tell me why you think it is that investing in 
quantum technology is decreasing?
    Dr. Merzbacher. Well, it actually isn't decreasing, but the 
growth has slowed, important difference. So when you look at 
the growth, it's not as fast as it was, and that could be for a 
number of reasons. It could just be that there was sort of an 
initial spike and things have sort of tapered off a little bit, 
but there's still a strong investment taking place. You know, 
look at the tech economy. It's an economic situation that may 
be influencing or impacting this. That could be temporary.
    I think there's high risk, and there's a lot of hardware 
problems that we heard about today, and those are not the 
typical VC (venture capital) investment opportunity. And so 
these are all reasons why I think that there really are areas 
where government has the opportunity to step in, de-risk, bring 
things a little bit farther along, and then the private sector 
will come in when they see a business case, but they have to 
see that business case.
    And I will just point out that we haven't said the word 
supply chain yet here, but there is a supply chain that's 
critical and has some special components for quantum systems, 
and those companies are sort of looking around and they don't 
see the markets today, so there's a chicken-and-egg problem. So 
whether they're using their own R&D funds or looking for 
investors from outside, that chicken-and-egg market problem is 
where we are right now.
    Mr. McCormick. That's what kind of concerned me a little 
bit just from the standpoint--I--that surprised me when you 
said that concerning what's going on with AI and the private 
investment in AI. You're right, once the seeding money is there 
and we see it start to bloom, it's very unusual to see somebody 
stop with the investment from the private sector if they see 
something that's really forward-looking and visionary. So I 
just thought that was interesting. I'm not sure we want the 
government to continue after the seeding money. I like to see 
the free market just kind of go with whatever it's supposed to 
go with, so I'm--thank you for that remark.
    Dr. Rieffel, I wanted to really quickly--I just went to SAS 
in Luxembourg and was looking at all the different orbital 
systems and stuff like that. I know that one of the things that 
we talked about recently was that the NASA Ames quantum 
computing and the way it tracks orbits and space debris and 
everything else like that. What is this technology going to be 
used to take that next step in this huge, vast universe of 
debris and satellites and everything else like that and the 
way--is it going to have a direct application in tracking this 
immense population in the inner and outer space?
    Dr. Rieffel. We believe so. The extent of that is still a 
research question, but there's quantum sensing technologies 
that can help with that. The other thing is that there are huge 
computational challenges there. We also need to get the data 
back. There's more and more data, which is super exciting, but 
we need to get that back, and so doing data compression and the 
like can be super helpful there as well. Lots of possibilities 
here for quantum computation in those areas.
    As was mentioned before, this is a heuristic area for the 
next few years, and that means we don't have pencil-and-paper 
proofs yet, but the technology is just at the point where we 
can do things on the processors that we can't do in simulation, 
and so the next 5, 10 years are going to be super exciting on 
that.
    Mr. McCormick. Yes. It's crazy to think about how complex 
the calculations get when you're in a 3-D universe and you're 
talking about the vast space that we have to compute as far as 
deconflicting.
    My final question, Under Secretary Dabbar, how do you think 
the regulatory burden is going to affect both the development 
and the--with the guardrails on future technologies in the 
quantum space as far as where do we draw the line, you know, 
controlling the process of leaking out information that can be 
harmful or developing processes that can be harmful versus 
developing stuff that can protect us? How do we regulate as 
Congressmen and women what we're supposed to do in the future?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So I--as I mentioned earlier, 
I'd recommend the DOE risk matrix for technologies as a 
screening mechanism that not only DOE but other agencies could 
use, that they can green light certain open-science topics, and 
we're like, OK, but we're consciously knowing what's OK, and 
then identifying what type of technologies should not be, you 
know, engaged with adversary nations.
    Mr. McCormick. We'll look for guidance on that. Thank you. 
With that, I yield.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired. 
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Frost from Florida for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    So even experts in quantum computing see their field as 
mysterious, complex, and full of surprises, but one thing is 
clear, that this is a powerful, revolutionary technology on a 
historic scale. Dr. Rieffel, did I say that right--correctly?
    Dr. Rieffel. Rieffel.
    Mr. Frost. Rieffel. Thanks to NASA, industry, and research 
being done at the University of Central Florida--Go Knights--
that is in Florida's 10th Congressional District, rockets are 
sending science experiments into the skies above my district 
all the time. You've discussed how NASA conducts research, 
including basic quantum physics to understand how quantum 
mechanics--to understand quantum mechanics and general 
relativity. What are the unique benefits of the International 
Space Station for quantum physics experiments?
    Dr. Rieffel. So we're able to do things up there that are 
unprecedented. Just as one example, it's the unique place where 
we can get Bose-Einstein condensates and explore that. I also 
just want to go with some of what you've said there. This is an 
incredibly exciting area. It's also one that none of us totally 
understand. I think critical for building up the workforce is 
to have people be super excited about working in areas that 
they don't totally understand and that those mysteries there 
will really help us go further in that area. There are a lot of 
NASA areas like do people really know what a black hole is? But 
people are super excited about that. Let's do that for quantum 
information sciences as well.
    Mr. Frost. Dr. Dabbar, where would quantum computing 
research be in the United States if Federal agencies and 
funding had not provided the infrastructure that you've spoken 
about today?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. High-performance computing 
and quantum is a subset--quantum computing is a subset--would 
not anywhere near be placing the United States in a leadership 
position without Federal investment.
    The first high-performance computers, the No. 1, you know, 
next high-performance computer is always developed by the 
Federal system, namely the DOE national labs. So the current 
No. 1 is at Oak Ridge, the previous one is at Oak Ridge, the 
next one will be in Illinois, and right now, you won't see 
commercial customers paying for the very high-end next chip. It 
will be--it has historically been the national labs, as well as 
NSA. And so that's the only way that the next stage--and it's 
been a tried-and-true method of accomplishing that.
    Mr. Frost. And, Dr. Tahan, what would you say would happen 
if these investments did not continue?
    Dr. Tahan. If you look at the history of quantum computing, 
you know, as the government's seed investments in building the 
technologies that enabled the 100 qubit machines, the 100 qubit 
machines we have today, right? Industry is mostly focused on 
integrating what's been--already been discovered into trying to 
make something useful that they can provide their customers 
value with, right? So if we stopped government investment, all 
the new inventions that would enable the 1,000 qubit, the 
10,000 qubit systems would be much less likely to be 
implemented. And as Paul said the draw of a customer would be 
lost, an important customer. So, I mean, it's really critical 
that the government stay engaged----
    Mr. Frost. Yes.
    Dr. Tahan [continuing]. And make sure that we're still 
leaders.
    Mr. Frost. Yes, I mean, it's good to know that Federal 
investments can really serve as a broader investment to attract 
private funding and spur innovation in the country.
    And to any one of our witnesses, I wanted to give anybody 
the opportunity to bring up any suggested improvements in the 
National Quantum Initiative Act that hasn't been mentioned yet.
    Dr. Tahan. I'd just like to mention, once again, you know, 
we have international allies and partners that are vital to 
growing this ecosystem. Quantum is extremely broad. We can't 
investigate every part of phase space, and we also need a 
trusted supply chain with countries who we trust, right? So we 
need to follow up on international cooperation statements by 
having some kind of joint funds to push this forward, 
independent of everything else we're doing in the United 
States. I think that would be really beneficial.
    Mr. Dabbar. Just to highlight that, authorization from the 
act to allow for what Charlie just said, to allow the agencies 
to know that that you say it's OK I think is key. DOE centers 
that happened in the first NQI we have--at Fermilab we have 
Italian cooperation. And what was just announced at University 
of Chicago in terms of the big quantum computing effort, Japan 
is now the--really the second most powerful high-performance 
computing country in the world is a part of that consortium. So 
I think any authorizing language would--makes it really clear. 
The agencies know they have authority to do what Charlie just 
said would be a great line item in a bill.
    Mr. Frost. Good. Thank you. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Collins. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
now recognizes Mr. Kean from New Jersey for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Kean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of 
our witnesses for being here today.
    Dr. Merzbacher, in your testimony, you highlight several 
key areas to explore utilizing quantum solutions to solve some 
of our greatest challenges. I'm particularly interested in 
hearing more about the possibility to improve 
biopharmaceuticals, particularly when it comes to drug 
discovery and personalized medicine. Could you please elaborate 
on how quantum computing and modeling may help advancements in 
this field?
    Dr. Merzbacher. Yes, thanks for that question. The 
application to the pharmaceutical industry is one of the areas 
of high interest on the industry side, and I think it will 
leverage some of the benefits of quantum computing for being 
able to optimize and, you know, streamline search problems. 
Today, the way that drug discovery happens is there's a huge, 
wide net cast, and then there's a very expensive and long 
process to winnow that down to find, you know, one drug maybe. 
So there's a lot of opportunity to improve that process to make 
it more efficient and take less time.
    The pharmaceutical companies are hiring people who have 
enough knowledge about this field to start exploring the 
application of quantum computing in their business. There's 
actually a consortium that my group works with that's focused 
on life sciences, and all of the big pharma companies are 
there, and they're actually talking quite a lot about what 
they're doing because it's still early stage. But I think there 
are real opportunities, and that's an example of one where the 
communities can come together and educate each other. The 
pharmaceutical industry needs to say here's what our problems 
are, the kinds of challenges we have, and then the folks who 
are doing the development of the software and the hardware can 
more quickly develop the tools for addressing that.
    Mr. Kean. Thank you. Dr. Tahan, telecommunications is key 
to our society, and having a strong and resilient telecom 
infrastructure is critical. From broadband to 5G rollout, 
optimization after emergencies, and keeping our systems up and 
running, telecommunications sector faces a wide variety of 
challenges that could benefit from quantum technologies. In 
fact, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Communications 
recommend a Quantum Sandbox program for developing applications 
that could benefit communications resilience in a report 
released on May 2021. Applications are already being developed 
in Europe but not yet in the United States. Can you please tell 
this Committee how U.S. Government will engage with the quantum 
industry and research community to help utilize today's 
technology for telecommunications, both quantum computing, as 
well as quantum communications?
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, I'd be happy to, Congressman. I think 
there's two ways. One, as the country moves to upgrade all our 
networks to quantum-resistant cryptography, there's a huge 
opportunity for industry because, one, agencies, organizations, 
companies are going to need help understanding where--what 
parts of their telecommunications infrastructure needs to be 
upgraded. Then, they will need the new routers, the new 
software to actually upgrade them. I mean, this is going to be 
a very large, long-term upgrade cycle. It's a great opportunity 
for industry.
    The second part is, as we hopefully through the NQI start 
to build quantum network testbeds to prove out and find the 
applications for new types of networks that involve quantum 
mechanics, you know, hopefully, there will be opportunities to 
build the core components that go into those networks and make 
them actually reliable and robust. And I think there's going to 
be a lot of spinoff applications for other parts of 
telecommunications as well, low swap, frequency modulation, and 
so on, they can impact even classical technology. So I think 
those are the two domains where there's real opportunity.
    Mr. Kean. OK. And my last question, Princeton, while it's 
not in my district, is near my district, leads one of the five 
DOE quantum centers, and the university is leading in this 
field. Princeton's work to expand the quantum information 
science ecosystem includes participation in an annual quantum 
career fair, quantum summer schools, internships, training for 
young researchers, and a unique summer research program in 
collaboration with IBM.
    I guess this is a question for Mr. Dabbar and Dr. 
Merzbacher. What recommendations will you have for these 
facilities and universities to build out their workforce? How 
would you recommend that we engage with physics and engineering 
departments, as well as with computer science and algorithm 
development disciplines to build out this critical workforce?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman, I think, you know, one of the 
things that can be done is actually start taking a look at 
specific technologies and applications that are attributable to 
different departments at universities and try to drive those 
with the experts of those universities in terms of developing 
them. I'll give you an example. There's a workshop being 
prepared right now on energy deployment for quantum computation 
and systems. So taking for Princeton plasmas for fusion, taking 
a look at modeling for that is going to be one of the breakout 
workout sessions on energy and discovery for quantum, and 
that's a direct example for Princeton.
    Mr. Collins. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Kean. Yes, thank you. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Mr. Collins. The Chair now recognizes Ms. Bonamici from 
Oregon for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Thank you all for your testimony 
and your expertise. There's a tremendous promise and potential 
with quantum technology, so thank you for being here.
    I was an enthusiastic co-sponsor of the original National 
Quantum Initiative Act, and I'm--I want to note that I'm very 
proud that Dr. Michael Raymer, who is from--a physics professor 
from my alma mater, University of Oregon, played a role in 
shaping the initiative, and the University of Oregon has 
continued, of course, to lead on the Pacific Northwest on this 
issue. So also an enthusiastic supporter of the CHIPS and 
Science Act, which, as you know, really is building on quantum 
technologies.
    So Dr. Rieffel, I really appreciated your excitement when 
you talked about how you don't all understand everything, and 
we want people--the word that came to me was curiosity. We want 
people who are intellectually curious, I think, to get those 
people and get them into the field. But I want to ask you, you 
underscored the potential for quantum sensing tools, including 
gravitational mapping and laser cooled atoms to radically 
improve the precision of Earth measurements. I work a lot on 
climate issues, and I wonder at what scale do these 
technologies need to be deployed to effectively measure trends 
like sea level change, dwindling freshwater resources, for 
example? And how can these technologies improve climate 
modeling as we rapidly approach the global temperature rise of 
1.5 degrees Celsius?
    Dr. Rieffel. We would like to see these widely deployed. As 
I mentioned, this gives much higher resolution, which enables 
us to understand these issues much better, and this affects all 
aspects of Earth science and potentially beyond. And I'll also 
just mention that curiosity is a wonderful NASA word, and I 
think for young folks and older folks being able to address 
challenges while helping us investigate our curiosity will help 
bring the workforce to us. And it doesn't have to just be young 
folks. It can be--a bunch of us had careers in something else 
because quantum information science didn't exist----
    Ms. Bonamici. Didn't exist, right.
    Dr. Rieffel [continuing]. And so people should remember 
that they can come join this effort from their different 
expertise, including in areas that you mentioned.
    Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that. And as a Member of the 
Education and Workforce Committee, I'm always thinking about, 
you know, the students who are in school today, the jobs that 
will be available when they're in the workforce might not exist 
today at all, so we have to spark that curiosity.
    So I'm going to address this to Dr. Edwards, but others can 
weigh in. I'm looking at policies, you know, of course, 
focusing on research and development, promoting public-private 
partnerships with--Representative Obernolte brought up, but 
also that workforce issue. So I want to hear about how we can 
encourage collaborations among private sector, industry, 
government, academia.
    But also, I want to follow up on the question that was 
asked about building the workforce and the diversity of the 
workforce. We have a lot of conversations about the importance 
of a diverse workforce and talent line when it comes to AI, for 
example. Why is that also important in quantum, and how can we 
spark that curiosity? I'll start with Dr. Edwards, and others 
can weigh in.
    Dr. Edwards. Thank you, Congresswoman, for this question. 
So, you know, quantum information science is so cross-
disciplinary, and there's a lack, as you recognize, of 
diversity across any measure of diversity in the fields that 
contribute, computer science, chemistry, physics, math, 
electrical engineering, material science, you name it. There is 
a persistent lack of diversity, which means we are leaving 
something on the table in terms of the American workforce.
    We--quantum information science is exciting, it sparks 
curiosity, and offers us perhaps a once-in-a-generation 
opportunity to try to begin--start at the beginning of a field 
to bake in opportunities and build out infrastructure in 
deserts across the country that don't have necessarily access, 
and to really try to move the needle because when we look 
historically--if we ignore this until there is application in 
jobs, then the quantum workforce will look exactly the same as 
it does today, and we will be sitting here in 10, 20 years from 
now, and if I have the privilege, I'll be saying the same 
thing, and we'll be having the same conversation.
    Ms. Bonamici. We hope we've invested. So one of the 
articles I was reading talked about the importance of 
interdisciplinary education, and I think you touched on that. 
And my time is about to expire. Does anybody want to briefly 
mention the importance of the public-private partnerships?
    Dr. Merzbacher. Well, I run one, so I totally want to foot 
stomp on that idea. I come from a background--my previous job 
was in the semiconductor space where I saw the magic that 
happened when industry and academia work together and the 
students had exposure while they were a student in industry, 
jobs, and experience. Mostly when you're at a university, 
you're seeing the university world, and if you can get industry 
engaged with the academic enterprise, you get those students 
seeing life outside of that bubble, and it's hugely valuable 
for the students during their education, so I can----
    Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely.
    Dr. Merzbacher. Yes.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. I yield back.
    Mr. Issa [presiding]. And I thank the gentlelady for her 
clever asking of the question with zero time remaining. That is 
a skilled professional.
    We go to the gentleman now from Illinois.
    Mr. Casten. I'm going to sit here and let the clock run out 
until I get to zero and then ask my question.
    Mr. Issa. You may not be as lucky.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you all so much. The--Dr. Edwards, you 
had mentioned a little while ago about this question of how to 
get sort of high coherence qubits. And the--that facility you 
mentioned, Fermilab is just at the edge of my district, and 
those materials that come from foreign countries, I'll come in 
there and I--it is, of course, true that we want to make sure 
that we preserve IP in the United States. I also think it's 
important to remind ourselves periodically that we have these 
amazing national labs that attract people from all over the 
world. And I would say it's actually a blessing that we have 
those international components there because those people who 
know how to make those things have no ways to deploy them but 
at our national labs.
    Mr. Dabbar, you and I were 4 years ago I think at the 
groundbreaking for the Integrated Engineering Research Center 
at Fermi, which is--I was just there a couple of weeks ago for 
the ribbon cutting. I would say that they have completed the 
project as you and I intended when we dug those ceremonial 
first shovels. But that's a very intentionally international 
space, and so just let's not lose sight of that.
    I want to stay on the high coherence, and you had raised 
the issue, but you--I think you had mentioned that Dr. Tahan 
was the one with the expertise, so I'll turn to you for a 
moment. Can you give us a little understanding? Because every 
time I go to visit the folks at Fermi, there's this question 
about how long can we hold these qubits in a predictable way, 
and what's the progress? And could you give us just a little 
understanding of what--both what the progress has been in 
creating coherent qubits and what's sort of the benchmark we 
should be watching that says, yes, once you can hold it for 
this amount of time, now we've really unlocked quantum 
computation in a reliable way?
    Dr. Tahan. I can try. Thanks for the question. I was 
actually just at Fermilab earlier this year. It's a really 
great team working on there just along these lines. If I try to 
simplify it in terms of the history, 20 years ago when I 
started, the field started. Coherence time of some--one of the 
best qubits was a nanosecond. OK. Now, people at Fermilab, 
others, are making 100 mils0 microsecond, even a millisecond, 
you know, so we're talking about many orders of magnitude 
improvement.
    Where do we need to get to, right? That is a little bit of 
a more--so we're seeing dramatic improvement every year, right? 
It's a little bit more difficult question to say where we need 
to get to because it's a holistic problem. Like when you're 
trying to build a quantum computer, it's not just one number 
that you're trying to optimize. It's a how hard is it to 
measure these qubits? How hard is it to control them? How fast 
can you do it? Because if you can do it faster, it matters less 
how long they live, how much--or how good is your error 
correction?
    But nominally speaking, we're approaching the time where 
you can start to devise systems that can--you can imagine one 
day could do something useful. I think this sort of millisecond 
timeframe is probably good enough to do errors--error 
correction and build a big system, a lot of qubits to run the 
algorithms that we've costed very well. The better we can make 
it, the easier--the better we can make the coherence, the 
easier, the smaller the system will be. So that's why you can't 
stop, right? You need to keep working on the disruptive new 
ideas because if you can make these 10, 100 times better, then 
suddenly everything becomes much more feasible and much less 
engineering problems need to be solved. I hope that's useful.
    Mr. Casten. Yes, and I guess what I always struggle with 
when I go to Fermi is, No. 1, they're way smarter than me. 
That's a challenge. But No. 2, there's these sort of 
fundamental basic material science questions of how do you 
create surfaces with the appropriate atomic purity to keep 
these things going? And how much should we understand this as 
a--as still a basic science challenge versus engineering? 
Because, I mean, scale up to me is an engineering challenge. 
Every time I go visit the lab, it seems like they're doing 
basic science. And I don't say that judgmentally. I'm just----
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, the way the way to think about it is--I 
mentioned coherence time is milliseconds, but if we talk about 
fidelity, like 99 times out of 100 the thing works or 99.9. We 
talk about the 9s a lot. We need three 9s fidelity, four 9s 
fidelity. Each extra 9 requires solving a whole bunch of 
material science and physics problems, so we can--and then you 
take the engineering that put them together to make a computer. 
So there's always going to be in quantum computing scientific 
and real science problems to solve all the way toward what--
till when we have a quantum computer, we just have to embrace 
that, just like in the transistor industry. Every new type of 
transistor needs--you know, thousands of people are working on 
material science problems to get that next generation.
    Mr. Casten. So I have 3 seconds, and I want to respect the 
Chair and not do what he just criticized, but, Mr. Dabbar, I'd 
love to follow up with you afterwards in writing. You and I 
talked 4 years ago about sort of pacing out these quantum 
networks and what that would take, and I would love some update 
from you. Maybe we can follow up offline about what it's going 
to take to start building those out because it still seems 
revolutionary, and it still seems like tomorrow.
    Mr. Dabbar. I'm glad to, Congressman. Illinois and Chicago 
area has made dramatic progress since NQI was passed 5 years 
ago. It's hard to describe it even in 5 minutes.
    Mr. Casten. I'll take that offline. Thank you, yield back.
    Mr. Issa. And now, the lesser questions will come from me. 
I don't have a university in Illinois, but I do have the 
University of California, San Diego, and we're proud of the 
work we do. Some of my questions, though, I think are going to 
be monetary. Mr. Secretary, I'll start with you, and I want to 
give everyone a chance. We talk a lot about diversity, we talk 
about spreading out, but then we also talk about the cost of 
this rollout. Now, we're rolling out something that, quite 
frankly--you said it very well. It's a mixture between lab and 
production. The Manhattan Project wasn't done in every 
university in the country for a reason, not just the 
sensitivity of the material, but the need to concentrate the 
brain trust in that work. How can we see the--when we're 
competing against China with over $15 billion of direct support 
and they clearly concentrate--even India concentrates among 
relatively few universities the best and the brightest--from a 
standpoint of the move forward? How can we balance that rather 
than spreading out our money and make sure that we are 
concentrating those fields of excellence? And then I have a 
follow up.
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So I think the Federal system 
does it well, and I think if we just kind of continue with 
that. You have entities like NSF that are very good at single 
researchers at a university doing a project, including in 
quantum, and having a broad base, much which was discussed, and 
then periodically, you have highly concentrated efforts because 
you do want to have some highly concentrated efforts to build 
something. So let me take southern California, Caltech, San 
Diego, University of San Diego, JPL (Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory), Santa Barbara, Google in Santa--also in Santa 
Barbara, UC Santa Barbara, as well as Google Santa Barbara, are 
at the precipice of building a quantum network. And they're--if 
funding kind of fully comes through authorized underneath the 
CHIPS Act, I think that the prospects of doing that is 
relatively straightforward.
    So I think there's a balance, right, between the different 
sort of systems, individual principal investigators and let's 
go build some systems. And I think in this area we're ready, 
including southern California.
    Mr. Issa. OK. And I saw a lot of head shaking, so usually, 
it's a good sign.
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, I agree. This has to be an ''and,'' not an 
''or.'' You know, we cannot give up our scientific excellence 
by expanding. We need to also expand. But I think in terms of 
expanding across the country, we're really talking about not 
these huge mega efforts actually to build and focus developed 
systems integration, solve these system integration challenges, 
but developing smaller systems that can be used to train up the 
talent for those people that can contribute to those big 
effects.
    Mr. Issa. OK.
    Dr. Tahan. [inaudible] work quite well.
    Mr. Issa. Well, then perhaps you can be my visionary or 
others on my follow up question. Going back generations of 
computers, when I was in college, you know, we put paper into 
NCR 500's. We--you know, we wrote our programs. We were 
learning, but we were learning at a very rudimentary level. By 
the time I was a lieutenant running a DEC facility, we were a 
hub for all kinds of places because our processing capability 
was available through those high speed 2400 baud super 
dedicated lines of the day. But ultimately, it didn't matter 
what the connection was. They had access to our large 
capability that we had within a very expensive facility. That 
hybrid system, which eventually became the internet where 
universities had access to what was a military facility and 
vice versa, we could reach out to them for development. How do 
we take quantum, get the most bang for the buck by leveraging 
what one might call hybrid, the existing technology, the 
existing computers that can help reach those but not overburden 
them or at least maximize the benefit?
    Dr. Tahan. Yes, well, we are very fortunate in our field 
that the internet already exists, that cloud computers already 
exist.
    Mr. Issa. I'd heard that.
    Dr. Tahan. So people, you know, have been hooking up their 
quantum computers to the internet providing access. And the 
QUEST, you know, bill that was authorized in the Science Act 
would expand that access to more subject matter experts who 
actually are experts in chemistry materials. We need to bring 
the domain experts to be able to use those machines across the 
country.
    Mr. Issa. And so----
    Dr. Tahan. Anything we can do to do that would be better.
    Mr. Issa. Yes, my follow up question for the record now 
will be for each of you. If you could give the Committee, 
myself as much of your vision of how we leverage these areas of 
excellence, in other words, where we invest in research 
facilities but where we invest in facilities that can be that 
hub-and-spoke to the rest of the universities so that no young, 
bright mind will be left without the ability to reach out 
beyond? If you're sitting at Kent State University, you're 
likely not to be the hub, but if you can have the spoke that 
leads to that hub, wherever it is. So if you could give me your 
vision because our investment might best be in making those 
tentacles much better than they are today. I am concerned that 
we all take credit for the internet, but the reality is, what 
have we done to make it better at reaching out to this new 
quantum world that we're going to be in? So if you would each 
give that for the record, I would appreciate it.
    And with that, I go to the gentlelady, Ms. McCollum from 
Virginia.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon.
    Recently, I was able to visit the Thomas Jefferson National 
Accelerator Facility in Virginia, which, as you know, conducts 
groundbreaking nuclear and particle physics research. Recently, 
their engineers were able to use an innovative photon detection 
system to solve challenges in quantum computing, quantum 
sensing, and quantum cryptography, which is one example of the 
potential for quantum information science to help us solve 
previously unsolvable problems and better understand the 
fundamental building blocks of matter. So I look forward to 
hearing more from you today and in the future about how 
Congress can support the advancement of quantum information 
science on behalf of society.
    But my first question is, you know, computational models 
are essential to our understanding of the mechanisms driving 
climate change and the impact of efforts to mitigate climate 
change. These models are highly complex and computationally 
demanding, making climate modeling an ideal application for 
quantum computing. So, Dr. Rieffel, could you discuss how 
Congress can support the development of quantum computing for 
climate applications in potential--in a potential National 
Quantum Initiative Act reauthorization?
    Dr. Rieffel. Thank you. Yes, there are many computational 
challenges in climate and Earth science generally, and quantum 
computing has the potential to really affect how quickly we can 
compute those things, reduce the energy with which we can 
compute those things. We also have quantum sensing, which can 
help us understand better ice, oceans, landmass, and changes. 
So the applications in those areas are broad, and to tie in 
with some of what we've talked about before, bringing in folks 
who have expertise in those areas and tying them tightly with 
the folks who have expertise in the quantum computing area and 
really understanding what really specifically are the 
computational challenges in your areas that will really make 
the difference. And we're working on that at NASA, but I think 
more broadly, having those computational challenges would be 
great.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you. The advances in quantum computing 
put our traditional forms of encryption at risk so--with 
serious national security implications. And my understanding is 
that some agencies like NIST are already working to develop 
secure post-quantum encryption techniques. So, Dr. Tahan, could 
you speak to OSTP's work to address the national security risks 
posed by quantum computing and what support you need from 
Congress?
    Dr. Tahan. Thank you, Congresswoman. I'll just start by 
saying I went to William and Mary, and I know Jefferson Lab 
quite well.
    We've been doing a lot to support the transition to post-
quantum cryptography. Probably the most important thing that 
has happened in that space in the last year is the President 
signed a NASA security memorandum, NSM-10, on quantum 
computing, which lays out clear objectives for the agencies to, 
in a timely and equitable manner, move the whole Nation to 
quantum cryptography. So it's going to be expensive to upgrade 
all the routers, to understand what needs to be upgraded not 
only in the Federal Government, but also in our small 
businesses, in companies across--States across the country. To 
do that, we need to know what we need to do. So first and 
foremost, you know, this process included OMB (Office of 
Management and Budget) and included the agencies like NIST, DOD 
that that have significant equities to make that process. And 
that's being run out of National Security Council, and we could 
help facilitate interactions with them if you want to know 
more.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you. And in the time left, providing 
students with the hands-on quantum research experience is 
expensive, and availability is limited at many institutions if 
we just--as we've discussed, including many HBCUs (historically 
Black colleges and universities) and minority-serving 
institutions (MSIs). So, Dr. Edwards, how can we ensure that 
all students interested in quantum-related fields have 
opportunities to access experimental training, cutting-edge 
facilities, and advanced instrumentation?
    Dr. Edwards. Thank you, Congresswoman, for that question. 
You know, representation is so important, and participation in 
this is critical toward closing wealth gaps in many cases, 
particularly for students at underrepresented groups. I think 
that I want to acknowledge the efforts of DOE RENEW (Reaching a 
New Energy Sciences Workforce) program and NSF ExpandQISE 
(Expanding Capacity in Quantum Information Science and 
Engineering) as initially trying to address this at 
universities and colleges. It's a complex problem that I'd be 
happy to provide more in writing. But in short, I will say 
that, right now, there are early stage activities and initial 
stage modular curriculum, but we'll need to explore more models 
out there to find successful ways, particularly because our 
MSIs, HSIs (Hispanic-serving institutions), community colleges, 
and--you know, are primarily undergraduate institutions that 
have professors that are typically tasked with a lot of 
teaching. And they play an outsized role and a lifeline to 
their students. And by engaging them in this and providing 
research funds, we want to make sure we don't risk taking them 
away from their students and breaking that lifeline.
    So I'd like to provide more in writing if that's OK on this 
complex question and ideas on how the NQI Act can help move 
this forward.
    Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
    Mr. Baird [presiding]. The gentlelady yields back, and now 
we go to New York with Representative Williams, please.
    Mr. Williams. Thank----
    Mr. Baird. You have 5 minutes.
    Mr. Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I bring you 
greetings from my Air Force Research Lab in Rome, New York. In 
our district, we're very proud of that. And Dr. Michael Hayduk 
says hello to many of you that you've worked with in the past.
    So, yes, I just want to talk about AFRL and the work that 
the Air Force is doing, but I'll draw it to something I'd ask 
for your insight into. AFRL is doing a lot of active R&D 
programs in quantum information science and principally around 
clocks, sensing, communications, and computing, much of what 
has been discussed here today. This, you know, groundbreaking 
research is to support the Air Force and the Space Force in 
critical issues related to our national defense. And they also 
have spent a lot of effort around private-public partnerships 
around the end of our center and working together with academic 
startups, as well as the Department of Defense. It's an 
excellent model, and I'm interested to see particularly how we 
can pull these things together.
    As I think about the funding really for anything but 
related to the government but specifically around quantum 
science is there's public funding like we've discussed for the 
Air Force or for basic research. There is public-private 
partnerships. The NQI seems to be well-suited to that and 
successful. And there's also, of course, a lot of private 
funding that's taken place. I come out of the tech industry, so 
I'm always interested in what's happening in Silicon Valley and 
other areas in these fundamental areas.
    But my question--and, Mr. Secretary, I'll focus in on you 
just because you and I have spoken about this previously. You 
know, how can DOD-funded efforts interact with NQIA, NIST, NSF, 
you know, any of these kinds of funded ventures? How can they 
interact? Is there things that we can do better?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So I think, subject to your 
Committee of jurisdiction and being able to put it into a bill, 
I think being very explicit in a line item authorizing between 
DOD and the--you know, the non-050, so to speak, agencies, the 
non-DOD agencies and make it really explicit that they could 
work together because sometimes Federal agencies are--get 
worried, and sometimes staffers say that, you know, we're not 
doing the right thing because it's not in the bill.
    But I think if you explicitly do that, let me say one thing 
about AFRL. AFRL is part of a group in New York. Upstate New 
York is amazing on this topic. AFRL has been the leader, as you 
said, on many aspects that you just mentioned, but they're part 
of the group looking to make the bid for the CHIPS Act, DOE-run 
New York quantum network. And so there is already cooperation 
going on between AFRL and the nonmilitary side. And I think 
making it clear that that's OK I think would be good.
    Mr. Williams. Great. Anyone else want to add to that?
    Dr. Tahan. I'll just say it was up at AFRL Rome last year. 
It's an amazing place, and I think it's a really great model 
for everything that we've been talking about today, research 
security versus fundamental research, public research versus 
private companies being involved. We welcome the DOD being, you 
know, a more formal member in the NQI, including the centers. 
The National Defense Authorization Acts of '20 and '21 and '22, 
you know, designated--allowed DOD to designate some of those 
centers as quantum information science centers, but anything 
more you can do to make that more formal I think would be very 
welcome.
    Mr. Williams. Great. Well, thank you. I just want to point 
out that Secretary Dabbar and I served on submarines 
contemporarily, we did not overlap in our squadron but 
appreciate your service. And it's not too many times we get 
shipmates from submarines in the same place without throwing 
things at each other. So anyway, I'm glad you're here, and I 
yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you.
    Mr. Baird. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. And now we 
go to Pennsylvania with Ms. Lee.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all so much 
for your time and your testimony today.
    Quantum science conceptually is very difficult for anyone 
to wrap their heads around, or maybe just me. I'll speak for 
me, and, no less, our constituents. However, what I do 
understand is that quantum technology has the potential to 
vastly improve the quality of life of folks in my district and 
across various fields. In my district, the Pittsburgh Quantum 
Initiative combines expertise across Duquesne University, the 
University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon in developing new 
materials, computational science, engineering, and physics to 
advance quantum computing. Quantum computing R&D can and will 
have a profound impact on industries such as finance and 
logistics. Investing in quantum sensor R&D will support medical 
imaging and drug discovery for my district's healthcare workers 
and help bring cleaner air and water to the western 
Pennsylvania region through precision environmental monitoring.
    While this field is still looking toward the future, our 
commitments to date supporting further research and development 
of quantum technology will improve the stability, reliability 
in quantum systems to make them more practical and commercially 
viable for day-to-day applications.
    So to anyone, we joked in my office that this hearing will 
be a great way to talk about Marvel's Ant-Man movies and if 
we're closer to making ant suits. We are admittedly a very Gen 
Z and Millennial office. That would, of course, we think, be 
true American leadership. Realistically, though, why is 
American quantum leadership an issue that should capture the 
minds of my constituents in western Pennsylvania, and what 
makes something as complex as quantum important to everyday 
American people?
    Dr. Merzbacher. I'll just start by reminding all of us that 
we have actually probably no idea of the big killer app that 
this technology is going to make possible if you sort of think 
back or try to put yourself in, you know, 50 years ago and 
imagine the technology that we have. So the potential is there. 
We can kind of imagine some of it, but it's really hard to 
under--or overestimate how important it's going to be. We can 
start where we are now, and there are even systems that can do 
small problems that are useful. How it's going to play out 
going forward is really hard to predict, but we can sort of 
envision that it's going to solve these problems that are just 
outside of where computers today can even touch. And so it's 
exciting because it's enabling, and I think conveying that to 
people--the problems that are likely to be solved near term or 
maybe sort of business problems that are optimizing, you know, 
financial portfolios or speeding up drug discovery, those are 
really important, and I think people appreciate them, but 
there's probably a huge universe of applications that we 
don't----
    Ms. Lee. We haven't even touched yet.
    Dr. Merzbacher. Yes.
    Ms. Lee. I understand. Mr. Dabbar, what role can we look to 
see quantum research and technology play in mitigating the 
multifaceted effects of climate change like air and water 
pollution?
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congresswoman. So one of the interesting 
pieces of technology I've seen about quantum sensing and about 
the environment is that I know some people who are doing 
quantum sensors to more accurately image cloud systems and 
weather fronts as they're about to come through, and they could 
very, very accurately figure out how much rain is about to hit. 
And, as a result of that, they could figure out when to plant. 
And there's places in Egypt and Indonesia and applicable in 
America of knowing exactly when to plant more--like better, you 
could increase your yields for your food. You're going to have 
a better kind of impact by significant effects. And that's just 
like one example of looking at the environment, better sensing, 
and actually taking action as a result of that.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you. Is there an opportunity to leverage the 
new TIP Directorate at NSF to build partnerships between 
industry and academia for these various purposes?
    Dr. Tahan. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's a tremendous 
opportunity in the Science Act, and if it's properly funded, 
they can really try to bring some of these science experiments 
to actual useful society. I mean, that's really the goal of 
that. So if we can make that happen, it would really be 
transformative.
    Ms. Lee. I thank you all so much for your time talking to 
those of us who are not experts in this field and as we are 
trying to figure out what our role is in support and supporting 
this particular field. Thank you for your patience, and I'm 
certain that we will continue all these conversations as we are 
looking into these new fields of discovery and figuring out how 
we can make life better for all of our constituents. Thank you, 
and I yield back.
    Mr. Baird. The gentlelady yields back, and you can relax, 
witnesses. They tell me that I'm the last one to ask questions, 
and they aren't really tough, so I think you'll be OK. Is that 
true? Yes, OK.
    Anyway, my--you know, I come from a district in 
agriculture, west central Indiana, and so I'm very interested, 
similar to some of the questions that she asked, but I'm really 
interested in how well quantum computing deals with 
agriculture. You know, we have planters today that are very 
precision-oriented, put the seeds exactly where we want. We 
have harvesters or combines that you go to the end of the 
field, you hit an auto button, and it'll turn around and go 
back. We have sprayers that can control--you know, you put on 
less spray, you do it more efficiently. And we even got drones 
that we can look over the fields with. We've got robots that we 
can harvest strawberries and so on with.
    My point is, can you explain to me, Mr. Dabbar--I am just 
going to start with you--briefly how we're using these new 
technologies in quantum that are working to help agriculture? 
And you mentioned that a little bit ago, so----
    Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. In addition to the water and 
planting point, which I think can absolutely be implemented 
with quantum sensing and understanding weather fronts coming 
through, let me talk to you about fertilizer. So one other big 
thing about high-performance computing is being able to design 
from a chemistry point of view different products in a much 
more tailored fashion, much more efficiently, producing it more 
efficiently, less emissions, so designer--you know, designing 
of different types of chemicals, and so in this case, 
fertilizers is a big prospect. It has--high-performance 
computers with current computing capacity has been very 
valuable, but using computational chemistry to come up with 
what's next at a much more powerful level, much more detailed 
has a great prospect. And we're looking at having that 
discussion at a workshop here in the fall.
    Mr. Baird. You know, I want to emphasize what you just 
mentioned, the ability--when we had the fertilizer shortage in 
the last year or so, precision agriculture, and you mentioned 
being able to--having the equipment and the technology, which 
includes the computer capability, to know where to place--you 
know, when you got soils information and you know what that 
seed needs and so you can strategically place those nutrients, 
and fertilizer is one of them.
    So anyone else have a comment in that regard?
    Dr. Edwards. Yes, I'd be happy to add--you know, underscore 
some of those things and add a little more detail. You know, 
I'm just over the border in Illinois, and--not too far.
    Mr. Baird. I know where you're at.
    Dr. Edwards. Not too far at all. There's a lot of farmland 
there, too. And I think that, you know, in the near term 
everything you just talked about, I bet, relies on some of the 
advancements in GPS and sensing that are--either happened in 
the latter part of the 20th century or are happening on the 
ground now. And so I have no doubt that that kind of navigation 
element will play a critical role. We're a ways off yet from 
having--being able to address the fertilizer problem in terms 
of the scale that we were talking about earlier, to go from 100 
qubits to however many it's going to take. And so I think in 
the near term, continuing investment in hybrid approaches to 
both quantum computing but other architectures is critical to 
see applications on the ground in ag tech and other areas that 
are so critical toward that region of the country.
    Dr. Rieffel. I'll also add that I believe a lot of the data 
that you use in agriculture comes from NASA, and that while 
we'll continue with conventional technologies, quantum sensing 
and quantum computing can increase both the data rate and the 
data processing in ways that we can't even imagine how that 
will end up affecting things.
    Dr. Merzbacher. And I'll just add from the industry 
perspective that in order for these technologies to go from 
being research projects to used in the field, there's a lot of 
industry or private sector players in that chain, and so 
companies like the big companies that are making the chemicals, 
that are making the equipment, that are making the software 
that's going to be run on the combines and drones and 
everything else, they all need to understand this is coming, 
and they need to be thinking about how to integrate it into 
those products. And so the users, the--what I call the quantum 
takers, not just the quantum makers, but the takers need to be 
learning about this technology, too, so that they can put it in 
the hands of the farmers at the end of the day.
    Mr. Baird. Anyone else? I would just say I want to thank 
the witnesses for being here. Your input is extremely important 
to us to try to make decisions. And, you know, when you talk 
about what we were talking in this Committee hearing, we're 
really trying to feed the world, and we're all responsible for 
trying to make those efforts.
    And so I just want to thank all of you for being here, and 
your testimony was extremely important to the Members of this 
Committee. The record will remain open for 10 days for 
additional comments and written questions from the Members.
    And so this hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:54 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                               Appendix I

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions




                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Charles Tahan
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Responses by the Honorable Paul Dabbar
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Responses by Dr. Eleanor G. Rieffel
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Responses by Dr. Celia Merzbacher
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Responses by Dr. Emily Edwards
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                              Appendix II

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                   Additional Material for the Record




             Letter submitted by Representative Frank Lucas
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