Has China made a quantum leap forward?


China's new type of nuclear-powered submarines



Like a pair of male turkeys puffing up their chests at each other, the U.S. and Chinese militaries are back at it again,  engaging in tit-for-tat military exercises in the Yellow Sea. On Sept. 4, the Chinese navy finished live artillery maneuvers, using some of its newest planes, ships and battlefield weaponry in a publicly announced show of military strength. Though Chinese state media called the war games "routine," the timing of the event — just days before a scheduled U.S.-South Korea anti-submarine exercise in the same waters — suggests it's more likely an attempt to send the U.S. a simple message: This is our backyard.


After watching U.S.-led forces obliterate a Soviet-style Iraqi military in the first Gulf War, China realized it needed to improve its own outdated army. It has increased military expenditures every year for the past two decades. While Chinese officials called the relationship with the U.S. "stable" during talks in Beijing this week, given China's ambitions in the region, tensions between the two are sure to continue. Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, says China is "working towards a sphere of influence," and with their stronger military, they can now "send signals they couldn't before."


Thanks to a recent technological breakthrough, that's true literally, too. While China has been showing off its new hardware, a potentially more important military advancement has gone largely unnoticed: In May, Chinese scientists announced a demonstration of "quantum teleportation" over 16 kilometers (10 miles), creating what Matthew Luce, a researcher at the Defense Group Inc.'s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, calls "secure communications guaranteed by the laws of physics." China is now at the cutting-edge of military communications, transforming the field of cryptography and spotlighting a growing communications arms race.


Why is this superior to e-mail or radio? Because, theoretically, this method "cannot be cracked or intercepted," says Luce. If the photons in the laser beam are observed by a third party, the particles themselves will be altered due to a law of physics called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that measuring a particle alters it. As such, the sender and receiver would be immediately informed that someone was snooping.


At the 16km distance tested, China would be able to send these secure messages from its network of satellites to units on the ground. Luce also says the choice of a blue laser — instead of an infrared one like the U.S. has been testing — was chosen with its growing submarine fleet in mind since blue lasers penetrate farther underwater. Soon, Chinese satellites could be able to communicate with submarines without them needing to surface or give away their location by breaking radio silence. This may sound like science-fiction, but quantum encryption is already used by a few banks and governments for highly sensitive information on a smaller scale.


No one claims that the Chinese military will surpass the U.S.' anytime soon, but it isn't just dueling naval exercises that will determine pecking order. It's also how fast China can integrate the newest technologies into its military, maintaining its strengths like cyber-warfare while improving the PLA's precision, coordination and secrecy.  (From Time)