A congressional panel is giving fresh scrutiny to China’s quest for teleportation technology, studying the communist country’s use of new quantum tools that can transfer information from one place to another without physically moving the information itself.
The fledgling teleportation capability may not be able to beam people around the galaxy as in the science fiction show “Star Trek.” But the ability to move around tiny bits of information more efficiently may one day give Beijing a secure method to collect and transfer sensitive data and is provoking fresh questions about what exactly was inside the suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down after traveling across the U.S. last year.
The congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a hearing last week to examine China’s efforts to transform its military through the application of quantum and other emerging technologies.
“The Chinese do appear to have chosen that to be an area in which they want to excel globally, and one aspect of that is China has launched two different satellites that are capable of quantum communication from outer space, which includes quantum teleportation of individual particles mediated by satellite communication,” RAND Corporation physical scientist Edward Parker told the panel at a hearing last week. “No other country is known to have launched quantum communication satellites.”
Quantum teleportation is made possible through the entanglement of two particles, such as photons, which form at the same instant and place and continue to share a mutual existence when separated by large distances, according to MIT Technology Review. Information downloaded to the photon in one spot would in theory be transmitted via an entangled link to the photon in another spot.
In 2020, the National Science Foundation funded research showing teleportation may be possible in electrons as well as photons. That same year, a team of scientists at Fermilab and Caltech said they teleported “qubits,” or quantum bits of information, over 27 miles using state-of-the-art photon detectors and off-the-shelf equipment.
But those efforts only came after a team of Chinese scientists claimed in 2017 to have teleported photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low-Earth-orbit satellite through an uplink channel over distances spanning up to 870 miles. To overcome atmospheric turbulence in the uplink, the Chinese team said it developed techniques including a high-bandwidth and high-accuracy acquiring, pointing, and tracking system.
The national security implications of securely teleporting data are immense, as military and intelligence services seek secure communications platforms that extend beyond the reach of their enemies.
China’s interest in quantum technology intensified after details of U.S. intelligence capabilities and activities in China were allegedly revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to a 2018 Center for a New American Security study.
Balloon-watching
The successful application of quantum technology reported by China in outer space has raised questions about whether it can be deployed in devices traveling across high altitudes within Earth’s atmosphere too — such as in the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon last year that flew across the U.S. and sparked a major meltdown in U.S-China relations.
Commissioner Jacob Helberg questioned Dr. Parker about the quantum technology’s applicability inside enemy spy balloons at last week’s hearing.
“If you hypothetically attached a quantum sensor to a giant helium balloon that you flew over, in a guided way, over our nuclear silos, wouldn’t that allow revealing sensitive national security information about our nuclear silos?” Mr. Helberg asked. The RAND researcher said he had not “looked into that question in enough technical detail to comment.”
Mr. Helberg told The Washington Times that details about the downed balloon remain classified and he has concerns that quantum sensors on such balloons can enable an adversary to conduct subterranean mapping and other surveillance.
Whether quantum technology was present in the suspected spy balloon downed last year is not publicly known but the balloon reportedly utilized an American internet service provider as it flew over Americans’ heads. China said the craft was a weather balloon that was blown off course and sharply criticized the Biden administration’s decision to shoot it down.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in June 2023 that the U.S. government assessed the balloon had intelligence-collection capabilities but that it did not collect information while transiting the U.S. Gen. Ryder said then that the U.S. government took steps to limit the balloon’s potential collection efforts.
According to an NBC report in December 2023, the intelligence community determined the balloon sent and received communications from China and the balloon was able to send high-bandwidth collections of data over short time periods.
The NSA declined to answer The Times’ questions regarding its understanding of quantum teleportation technology and whether it knew if quantum tech was in the downed balloon. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence likewise declined to comment on whether the balloon contained quantum technology.
The NSA has made clear it does not view some quantum tech as ready for prime-time in the mission to secure national security data. The NSA says on its website that it does not support the use of quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum cryptography (QC) to protect national security systems, and the agency also does not anticipate approving the tech’s use by entities that it works with.
“Communications needs and security requirements physically conflict in the use of QKD/QC, and the engineering required to balance these fundamental issues has extremely low tolerance for error,” the NSA’s website said. “Thus, security of QKD and QC is highly implementation-dependent rather than assured by laws of physics.”
Whether the perceived insecurity of quantum technologies made the suspected spy balloon vulnerable to the U.S. intelligence community’s signals collection capabilities is unknown. The Biden administration sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to collect intelligence on the balloon as it flew over America, according to NBC.
The bottom line: Teleporting information is hard and teleporting humans is likely to remain in the realm of science fiction for a long time to come, a point Mr. Parker, the RAND scientist, made to the congressional China panel.
“Just one last technical note, teleportation certainly does not allow teleportation of humans or significant quantities of material,” Mr. Parker told lawmakers. “It’s individual particles.”
Commissioner Randall G. Schriver suggested an edit to Mr. Parker’s note.
“Dr. Parker, I think you forgot to end your sentence with yet,” Mr. Schriver said to laughs.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.