China’s Quantum Leap Enters New Phase, After Unlikely Beginnings 

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — Ten years after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of a sprawling American surveillance program, China and the U.S. are now locked in a neck-and-neck race for quantum supremacy that — at least for Beijing — began in earnest when that former U.S. contractor landed in Hong Kong, wielding a trove of top-secret documents.

“It is no coincidence that when Snowden defected to China, they (Chinese leadership) immediately started ramping up quantum networks and their quantum computing program,” said Paul Dabbar, former U.S. Under Secretary for Science and Energy, during a recent House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing. 

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