Page 133 - Elana Freeland - Under an Ionized Sky

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biological levels” —in other words, to reverse engineer a brain by building parallel processing
chips one square micron in size and arraying them in a basketball-sized carbon sphere suspended
in a gallium aluminum alloy (liquid metal for maximum conductivity) in a powerful wireless
router “tank” communicating with millions of sensors already released around the planet and
linked to the Internet.

These sensors gather input from cameras, microphones, pressure and temperature gauges, robots, and natural systems
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—deserts, glaciers, lakes, rivers, oceans, and rain forests.

“Natural systems” no doubt include human beings and animals, as well, but I guess that’s
better left unsaid. As function follows form, SyNAPSE’s “neuromorphic, brain-imitating
hardware autonomously gives rise to intelligence” by mirroring the human brain’s 30 billion
neurons and 100 trillion synapses, then surpassing its 1,000 trillion operations per second.
Meanwhile, McGill University in Montréal, Canada has developed a “biological
supercomputer” powered by adenosine triphosphate protein strings (“molecular units of
currency”) and as small as a book, but with the mathematical capabilities of giant
supercomputers—and it doesn’t overheat. 13

QUANTUM COMPUTERS

Because the D-Wave is so good at specific problems, [Google] thinks some classical/quantum
combination may prove ideal. . .[M]aybe the “neocortex” of future AIs will be comprised of a
quantum chip, whereas the rest will remain classically driven. 14

Classical computers use bits of information in 1s and 0s, 1s being positive charges on a
capacitor, 0s being an absence of charge. A quantum computer uses qubits—strings of ions held
in place by an electrical field and manipulated by laser pulses—and can simultaneously mix 1s
and 0s in a quantum state called a superposition on a single atom or electron that can be in two
places at once or spin clockwise and anticlockwise at the same time. In fact, “measuring a qubit
knocks it out of superposition and thereby destroys the information it holds.” 15
Still, it is the qubit that makes “the weirdest feature of quantum mechanics”—quantum
entanglement—possible:

. . .this property enables distinct quantum systems to become intimately correlated so that an action performed on one
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has an effect on the other, even for systems that are too far apart to physically interact.

This is quantum teleportation, “a reliable and efficient way to transfer quantum information
[measured as qubits] across a network. . .for a future quantum Internet, with secure
communications and a distributed computational power that greatly exceeds that of the classical
Internet.” 17
What is most attractive about quantum computers to the Global Security State is their ability
to quickly factor large numbers—the mainstay of electronic surveillance and data security—and
equally quickly sift through masses of unsorted data to find one person or one event. These two
applications alone would make the quantum computer and its superpositioning a game-changer,
but add in quantum teleportation and it becomes irresistible.