The Quantum Industrial Base

Quantum 201

“If China invents an ability to take that from 40 hours to 12 hours, you go from one test a week to one test a day. Your iteration cycle changes completely, and they’ll lock that down and grab that supply chain.”

Constanza Vidal Bustamante, Senior Researcher at CNAS and author of the landmark report Quantum’s Industrial Moment, joins ChinaTalk to map out how supply chains behind quantum computers wind through the US and China. Co-hosting are Chris Miller, author of Chip War, and Zachary Yerushalmi.

Our conversation covers:

• What it takes to build a quantum computer — Inside the cryogenic supply chain, the helium-3 bottleneck, and why mining the moon might actually make sense.

• How export controls backfired — How restrictions on dilution refrigerators helped spur China to go from zero to more cryogenic suppliers than the rest of the world combined in just two years.

• The scaling problem — Simply multiplying dilution refrigerators doesn’t get you to a million-qubit machine. Cooling, cabling, and the chips all have to be rethought — and no country owns that yet.

• Why being first isn’t winning — Why long-term victory isn’t cracking Shor’s algorithm first, but locking in supply chains across multiple modalities.

• The public-private fault line — The high-stakes balancing act between the government stepping in to accelerate innovation and letting the market work on its own.

Plus, what China is getting right, where the US still has an edge, whether the US should ban Chinese components, and why quantum supply chains are a national security priority.