Quantum 201: US v China Quantum Industrial Base

About this episode

The episode discusses the US and China's competition in the quantum industrial base, focusing on supply chains and technological advancements.

Constanza Vidal Bustamante joins Chris Miller and Zachary Yerushalmi to break down her new report with John Burke, Quantum's Industrial Moment: Strengthening US Quantum Supply Chains for Scalable Advantage — a deep dive into the components, chokepoints, and policy levers that will decide who wins the race to a fault-tolerant quantum computer. We discuss… (00:00) Why quantum is "pre-transistor" — and why the US still has time to lock in supply chain dominance before the next-gen architecture is even invented (09:53) Dilution refrigerators, helium-3 from the nuclear stockpile, and whether mining the moon is actually a viable Plan B (17:43) Did the 2024 export controls backfire? Inside the case study of China going from zero to dominating dilution-refrigerator publications in two years (48:44) Lasers, photonics, and the Chinese supplier that reverse-engineered a Danish flagship — and is still selling into US labs under R&D tariff exemptions (1:03:45) Why quantum looks more like biotech than semiconductors: 90 companies, ~7 modalities, and the anthropology of an industry where everyone thinks their qubit is the right one Constanza's report…

People in this episode

Host: Jordan Schneider

Guest: Constanza Vidal Bustamante

Topics covered

• quantum technology
• US-China relations
• supply chain
• export controls
• quantum computing
• industrial policy

Keywords

• quantum supply chains
• fault-tolerant quantum computer
• dilution refrigerators
• helium-3
• export controls
• quantum industry
• biotech
• semiconductors

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: CNAS, US, China

Products: dilution refrigerators, helium-3, quantum computer, lasers, photonics

Places: moon

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