Quantum Computers Aren't Useless. You Just Don't Know How to Use Them.

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sabine Hossenfelder says quantum computers are only useful for breaking codes. She's wrong — and my undergraduates are building the proof. What's happening in my lab right now has nothing to do with cryptography, and everything to do with the future of AI. I'm a cosmologist at UC San Diego teaching undergraduates to build, program, and eventually launch quantum computers — possibly to the Moon via Artemis! We cover: why Sabine's code-breaking verdict misses the real story, how free tools like Quantum Rings are closing the education gap Sabine thinks is a hardware problem, why Q-Day just got moved up to 2029, what my students are actually doing with quantum computers in my lab, and why the next generation of quantum physicists won't need a billion-dollar facility to train. The bottleneck isn't the hardware. It's what we're teaching — and who we're teaching it to. Use my special link to get access to the course and apply for the summer 2026 internship: https://www.quantumrings.com/iti Watch Sabine’s video https://youtu.be/qV7hQEtr3ic?si=EPcg5fAw_18QaKhM Timestamps: 00:00 Quantum Is More Than Codebreakingt 00:51 The Week Q-Day Jumped Years Aheadt 02:38 Why Quantum Felt Useless (Until Now)t 04:42 What Happens If Encryption Fails Quietlyt 05:33 The Tool That Changes Everythingt 07:37 From Beginner to Running Algorithmst 09:26 The Infrastructure Behind the Shiftt 10:58 The Real Bottleneck: Not Physicst 11:59 The Opportunity Everyone’s Missingt ——— 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpAt Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFut Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9Ut Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Unt 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe #sabinehossenfelder #bobwold #quantumcomputer #quantumcomputing #quantumencryption #quantumsupremacy #quantumsimulation #quantumalgorithms #aiandquantum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My friend Sabina Hasenfelder just made a video that got nearly half a million views in just a couple of days.
0:06.0	Her conclusion? Quantum computers are basically only good for doing one thing, breaking codes.
0:11.0	Now, Sabina's brilliant, and she's right that the code breaking progress is terrifying.
0:16.0	Google just moved up Q-Day, the date in which quantum supremacy takes place to about 2029, less than
0:21.5	three years away. And as I've often said, quantum computers seem to be really good at doing
0:25.9	one thing in particular, which is to simulate how quantum computers work. But I think Sabina's
0:30.4	missed a bigger story, because right now in my lab at UC San Diego, I'm teaching my undergraduates
0:35.2	to build quantum computers and then to program them,
0:38.2	and then eventually to launch them into space and maybe just maybe use them for AI in space,
0:43.0	perhaps on the moon thanks to Artemis too.
0:45.0	You'll hear from these brilliant undergraduates later on.
0:47.7	And when you do, you'll see that what they're doing has nothing to do with breaking code.
0:51.3	And by the end of this video, you can do it too.
0:53.6	For free, let me give
0:54.4	Sabina her due, because the news this week is really extraordinary. Three papers dropped in a single
1:00.2	week. First, Google found an algorithm that breaks encryption 20 times faster than anything we've ever had
1:05.6	before. That cuts the qubit requirement from 10 million down to roughly half a million. They thought
1:10.7	this was so sensitive they wouldn't even publish the algorithm.
1:13.9	Instead, they used something called zero knowledge proof, basically a math way of proving
1:17.8	that, trust us, bro, without showing you exactly how it does so.
1:22.1	Second, a startup called Or Atomic, says that they can break RSA encryption with just 26,000 cubits in about
1:30.5	10 days using neutral atom arrays, not the superconducting cubits I'm using in my lab, which are
	...

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