US Announces New Rules for Advanced Technologies like Quantum Computers & GAAFET

• The US has published a new set of guidelines for advanced technologies, such as quantum computing and GAAFET.
• This is being done to stay aligned with its international partners (such as the UK) and foster innovation responsibly.
• However, industry experts believe that these rules can have a significant impact on hiring decisions, with companies only sticking to US candidates to avoid unnecessary complexities.

On Thursday (September 5), the United States published a new set of controls for managing advanced technology. These guidelines are in line with similar instructions imposed by international partners, such as the UK.

The rules will extend to quantum computers, gate-all-around field-effect transistor (GAAFET) technology, equipment for producing advanced semiconductors, and additive manufacturing items to produce metal components.

For GAAFET, which is a chip architecture used to enhance a chip's performance and reduce power consumption, the rules will only apply to the production of the GAAFET architecture, not the design for the broader integrated circuit.

Today's action ensures our national export controls keep in step with rapidly evolving technologies and are more effective when we work in concert with international partners." - Commerce official Alan Estevez

Impact of This Decision on Businesses

Some industry experts believe that the new rules will make hiring complicated for tech firms. Although these are just reporting requirements and the US is still doing its best to balance them with the existing workspace rules, it still complicates things.

Giving an example, Celia Merzbacher, executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), said that companies might stick to hiring candidates only from the US to keep things simple.

However, this would mean that they will be missing out on many top talents from around the world just because they don't want to find themselves in hot waters with regards to the guidelines. This won't be good for the progress of the quantum industry where experience is crucial.

Dangers of Advanced Technologies: Quantum Computing

Of course, there are strong reasons why the US has decided to enforce new rules for advanced tech. Let's take the example of quantum computers.

Quantum computers are advanced systems that pose a huge cybersecurity risk. They're almost exponentially more powerful than traditional computers at performing complex calculations, meaning they can very quickly (within minutes even) break almost every single encryption method in use today.

Such exploitative technology in the wrong hands can lead to a pandemic of security breaches. Think of everything that encryption tools protect: banks, personal data, documents/ID, confidential business and legal information; all of it will be left exposed.

Plus, it's not like the problems will start once quantum computing becomes more widely available. Threat actors right now use a harvest-now, decrypt-later' method.

This means they're harvesting sensitive data as we speak and waiting for the day quantum computers will be powerful enough to break encryption as we know it now - which is when they'll decrypt and exploit the harvested data.

A lot of data such as financial records, government records, health records, and biometric data hold value for nearly an entire lifetime. This means that even if they're exploited five years from now, the impact will be equally devastating.

Related: Apple brings next-level security to iMessages with post-quantum encryption

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