Episode 53: Vikram Sharma, CEO of Quintessence Labs on Leadership in the Quantum Era

Vikram Sharma is the founder and CEO of Canberra Australia based QuintessenceLabs. His company provides solutions based on quantum technology to strengthen cryptographic key creation and management at scale. This is an urgent need in this era of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, and key to protecting data now and into the future. Q-Labs uses the world’s fastest random-number generator to create the strongest possible encryption keys, and integrates them into advanced key management and encryption capabilities, protecting banks, governments, and other enterprises around the globe. In this OODAcast we ask Vikram for his views on what every CEO, including non-technical CEOs, need to know about the world of quantum effects. He provides explanations in very clear ways that can help inform business strategies. For example, years of theory and research followed by decades of scientific experiments show these four unusual concepts at play at the quantum level: A particle can be a wave and a wave can be a particle. Two particles can behave as if they know what the other is doing, even when separated Measuring a particle changes it At totally random, unpredictable intervals, sometimes small bits of matter come into existence and then go away again Vikram provided an easy to follow description of many other aspects of this nature of reality at its lowest level, and then led us to a deeper understanding of how quantum computers leverage physics of the real world to change the ways humans can compute. For more see: Quantum Computing Sensemaking: Guide to other OODAloop research on Quantum Computing and Quantum Security. The Executive’s Guide To Quantum Computing: What business decision-makers need to know now about quantum superiority The Executive’s Guide To Quantum Safe Computing: Take these steps to make your enterprise quantum proof Is Quantum Computing Ushering in an Era of No More Secrets?: Context from OODA’s Matt Devost on the very near future of quantum computing. What To Do About Quantum Uncertainty: Guess what, besides uncertainty at a quantum level there is great uncertainty among business and policy makers regarding Quantum Computing. AI, quantum computing and 5G could make criminals more dangerous than ever, warn police: Quantum is one of many emerging technologies that law enforcement professionals are tracking Intel offers AI breakthrough in quantum computing: This article is more about quantum simulations for AI, but shows the ecosystem that is developing around the technology Quantum Computing That Can Crack Modern Encryption More Than a Decade Away: When we see reports like this we wonder what qualifies the experts to say this. But in this case the experts are the National Academies of Sciences. Could quantum computers render current bitcoin and most blockchain cryptography powerless?: There is a worry that new algorithms that could run on quantum computing could attack blockchain and asymmetric encryption.