In response to a parliamentary question, the Indian government did not provide an explicit answer to whether it has developed systems capable of withstanding quantum cyber-attacks under the National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications. Responding to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's written question on the matter yesterday, the Ministry of Science and Technology simply said: Yes Sir. Government is developing a proposal to initiate National Mission on Quantum Technologies & Applications with the objectives of building capabilities in Quantum Computing, Quantum Communication, Quantum Materials, Quantum Sensing and metrology. The Ministry added that the details and deliverables of the Mission, announced in the 2020-21 Budget, are yet to be finalised. Wait, what's quantum computing? Without delving too deeply into its physics, "quantum" here refers to quantum mechanics—which is what the computer system uses to calculate an output. So, essentially, quantum computers use concepts of quantum physics and apply them to computers. The hope is that they'll help systems process things super fast. Or, as WIRED puts it, "the basic idea is to smash some barriers that limit the speed of existing computers by harnessing the counterintuitive physics of subatomic scales". Right, so why do quantum cyberattacks matter? Right now, much of the electronic information we send online is encrypted. This means information is coded to be unintelligible until the recipient gets it and decrypts or decodes the message using a specific key. Doing this ensures that a "computer system's information can't be stolen and read by someone who wants to use it for…
