Friday, July 19, 2019

Yang 2020 wants quantum crypto

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has this policy position:
However, quantum computers, using qubits, will theoretically be able to perform the calculations necessary to break our current encryptions standards in under a day. When that happens, all of our encrypted data will be vulnerable. That means our businesses, communications channels, and banking and national security systems may be accessible. ...

Second, we must heavily invest in quantum computing technology so that we develop our own systems ahead of our geopolitical rivals.
We must invest in the technology that will destroy our communications security infrastructure!

But don't worry, robots will take all our jobs and we can just collect $1k per month free and play video games all day.

It is nice to see a presidential candidate try to anticipate future trends, but I don't see this getting him any votes.

2 comments:

  1. Spending money on quantum computing is not investing when the money you are using does NOT belong to you to gamble with. That is called theft.

    It isn't the governments job to bet on horse races because 'OMG, look at the jackpot!', yes, look at the jackpot....and how most people didn't win it. Maybe instead of getting worried about imaginary calculations that no one has been able to demonstrate have a use, they should be getting worried about actual probability which statistically shows their chances in winning this lottery are very small.

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  2. People like him are why STEM is hyped. Bullshit jobs are growing and growing. There is no evidence that automation hurt manufacturing since 2000. Quartz debunked this a while ago. We have record amounts of technology spending (trillions in ICT spending every year) but stagnant TFP growth. Robert Gordon has documented this quite well. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs/

    We live in a world of lies. GDP is not growth, even in economic terms. Growth of government, expenses (profit margins), depreciation, WASTE, externalities, inflation (understated), natural disasters, etc. GDP ignores the decline of household work. We have a declining rate of investment and the GDP double counts it (see recent paper by Robert Barro)! Inflation numbers are lowered with geometric & chain weighting, bogus hedonic quality regressions, OER instead of market rent, exclusion of taxes, assets & health insurance, and a bogus weighting of outlays, which is not based on income class.

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