The Quantum Computing Dilemma: Publicity First, Proof Second

Noisy, noisy, noisy. If you worked inside a quantum laboratory, you would use these words to describe the qubits inside the quantum computer you are working on. If you are an investor or observer, you would use the same words to describe quantum computing news in the past six months. News of industry changing, money making, and scientifically foundation shaking breakthroughs in the quantum space have become more common than one would think, with two in the past two weeks alone! Technology companies and their investors in the US are seeking to solve a big problem: quantum error correction . This is a critical step in achieving the value that a quantum computer will bring. But the incentive structures around quantum computing are diluting a fundamental truth of scientific discovery: Big scientific claims require big scientific evidence. On February 19, 2025, Microsoft released a statement that it had created a new state of matter in the culmination of a 17-year research program on topological qubits. The thrust of the discovery was that the use of topological qubits could make qubits inside quantum computers easier to control. If true, this would represent a major breakthrough in the problem of quantum error corrections, more on this in a moment. While some touted the announcement, others are pointing to a major discrepancy between the scientific realities and the marketing materials. This is not the first time that quantum technology companies have jumped the gun. Not to be outdone, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its Ocelot processor on February 27th . The announcement included claims that Ocelot has shaved five years off the practical fault tolerant quantum computing timeline, would cut costs of quantum processors by one-fifth, and included “cat qubits” that “intrinsically suppress certain forms of errors.” That’s a lot. AWS likewise published its results in Nature . (For those of you wondering what a “cat qubit” is, it is actually a “concatenated bosonic qubit.”) The pursuit of quantum error correction has a problem, and not just with qubits. The race to be first is eclipsing the requirement to be sure. In the absence of substantial scientific proof of their claims, both Microsoft and AWS have put forward what amounts to frameworks for future use, not the hard scientific breakthroughs that the press releases claim. These frameworks may prove useful foundations upon which a future quantum error correction solution is built, but it is important to acknowledge that neither of the releases in the past two weeks constitute the solution that will be ultimate answer to quantum error correction, at least not as of now. Truly solving error correction is a major milestone. This is why investors are so keen to see it done. But the bigness of this problem and the promises of its solution are causing an incentive structure that encourages misleading information. Error Correction The breakthrough in question is that Microsoft’s 17-year pursuit of topological qubits has culminated in a new path to quantum error correction. The resulting “topoconductor ” would represent a new state of matter, a major breakthrough by any measurement, that would make the basic units of quantum computing easier to control and thus lead to fewer errors. This is a big claim, so it bears some explanation. In classical computers, information is represented as binary code, 1s and 0s. These are physically represented inside your machine by electrical pulses inside the transistors of the tiny chips that you hear about on the news. These pulses are the “bits” of your computer and are the foundational unit of information for classical computing. In 2025, we tend to talk in terms of gigabytes or 8,000,000,000 bits, but fundamentally bits are still the basic unit of information. Share In quantum computers the equivalent is a qubit, physically represented by a quantum particle. These particles behave in quirky ways and are difficult to control leading to the need for extreme cold to control their motion. The inside of a quantum computer is the coldest place in the universe at just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero . The challenge before quantum scientists is to scale up the number of qubits from around 100 (Google’s Willow processor holds 105 , but other companies have different processors with different capacities) to a million. By classical bit standards, this is a tiny number of information units but in quantum world, it would change everything. Most scientists agree that scaling up to a million would allow a quantum computer to start to do useful things such as develop new pharmaceuticals or optimize complex supply chains. We are not there today, but that’s the goal. Along the path to that goal is a really annoying problem, error correction. Because qubits don’t behave the way we want them to, they are wont to create errors. When doing complex calculations, this cannot be tolerated so a reliable mechanism for error correction is critical before scientists and engineers can scale up their processors to more qubits. Accurate computation requires that 1+1=2…every time, not with some probability. This also explains why announcements from quantum computing companies of breakthroughs in error correction grab attention. Even the stocks of quantum computing companies D-Wave and Rigetti were up on the Majorana 1 announcement, and they weren’t involved! Majorana 1 The use of topological qubits to achieve error correction may prove true, but that proof did not arrive on February 19th . As reported by Fortune , there is a gap between the Microsoft press releases and the peer reviewed journal article published by Nature . An editor’s note on the peer reviewed article stated: “The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices. The work is published for introducing a device architecture that might enable fusion experiments using future Majorana zero modes.” This means that Microsoft did not actually create a new state of matter as claimed. It at best created a framework that may be used in the future, but that’s not what the press release nor a majority of the press coverage said. Here are a few example headlines from press outlets: Semafor : Microsoft’s New Quantum Chip Creates a New State of Matter The Motley Fool : Microsoft’s Quantum Computing Chip Could be a Game Changer Digital Trends : Microsoft Created a Whole New State of Matter to Make its Quantum Chip PCMag : Microsoft: New Chip Means Quantum Computing is ‘Years, not Decades’ Away These headlines are much more interesting to read but stand at odds with what the editors of the peer reviewed journal said. This is the root of the problem, but it is only the latest example. Big Claims, Small Evidence Since 2018, Google, Microsoft, and now AWS have made significant claims about their advancements in quantum computing from achieving quantum supremacy to the creation of topological qubits. Here are a few examples: 2018: Microsoft had to retract claims that it had created topological qubits. 2019: Google claims it achieved quantum supremacy sparking significant debate. 2024: Google claims that quantum computing takes place in multiple universes without direct evidence. 2025: Microsoft claims to have created a new state of matter. 2025: AWS claims to be able to reduce errors, cut the quantum timeline, and cut costs by 1/5. Major breakthroughs like those above require peer review of the evidence and repeatability in the laboratory setting. One consistent throughline in each of these examples is that the companies put forward their results without providing scientific evidence to support their claims. The Majorana 1 claim carried with it an editor’s note making clear that the full scope of the claim was not achieved. Ocelot also provides a framework that discusses what “could” result from its processor, implying something in the future. The scientific community is getting wise to the game of claiming major breakthroughs without sufficient evidence, but markets are not. Market Entanglement The market opening for February 20,2025 was great if you owned stock in a major quantum computing company. Microsoft’s announcement seemed to elevate all around them as quantum company stocks surged on the announcement. This translates into real dollars for these companies creating very real incentives. The promises of quantum computing are enticing, but we need to be careful about the precedents we are setting. If we hope to see the development of quantum computing continue, our incentive structure must change. Right now, we are rewarding (literally in monetary terms) claims related to quantum computing that are not fully accurate. According to the editors of Nature , a new state of matter was NOT achieved by Majorana 1. According to several media sources, it was. In response, multiple quantum companies gained real economic value whether they were involved in the statement or not. This puts pressure on company CEOs to demonstrate similar breakthroughs to bring similar market value to their companies. This was proven when AWS announced Ocelot just one week after the Majorana 1 announcement, and they are unlikely to be the last to do this. Breakthroughs are not common by definition so the likelihood of a major breakthrough at a pace the market will like is low. But the likelihood of another claim that is short on repeatable results is high because we incentivize it. Instead, we should be incentivizing proven and peer reviewed results if we hope to get to real results. It is understood that companies have proprietary data and intellectual property to think about and the suggestion is not to make all proprietary information publicly available. However, quantum computing represents a different type of technology all together that requires a different approach than traditional technology verification methods. Microsoft and AWS already provided their results to Nature for publication and peer review. Google did the same in 2024 with its Quantum Error Correction Below the Surface Code Threshold publication. All three companies already released some of their data to trusted peers for review, but their findings do not match the press release language and this matters. It is also understood that the early phases of technology development come with studies and experiments that do not yield the hoped for results. As any scientist will tell you, those results are equally valuable for continued research, but not for market value. Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that R&D is much more R than D. Incentive Structures Solving error correction with a scalable solution will open the door to significant economic value, which is why markets reacted the way they did on February 20th . This breakthrough will also come with significant national security implications. The economics and the security demand that we have a clear picture of exactly how far quantum computing has advanced to give us a sense of a timeline. Security experts and investor alike need to be able to forecast and prepare , as in the case with asymmetric cryptography . Right now, the public information about quantum computing in the West is starting to become unreliable and confusing. To fix this problem, the economic structure around quantum computing needs to change. We cannot create incentives for quantum computing companies to make splashy announcements in exchange for a temporary stock spike. Instead, we should push quantum computing companies to seek and publish peer reviewed results that showcase the true nature of the breakthrough. Quantum computing is difficult to understand and not intuitive relative to our deterministic world. Its impact to our economy and our security requires that people be able to grasp the concepts and understand where it is in the cycle of R&D. This requirement demands people that can effectively and accessibly communicate about quantum computing in a way that neither overhypes it nor undersells its impact. After fixing our communication about quantum computing, we need to raise awareness among stakeholders that the quantum computing market exhibits this behavior. Observers, particularly those in the security space, should be aware of the tendency of companies to make splashy claims and be skeptical though not dismissive. This is where the communication about quantum computing becomes so critical. Voices in this space have a responsibility. Currently, the voices that make the biggest claims are monetarily rewarded. Those that attempt to debunk a big claim are often buried or do not get the same reach as the marketing machines at AWS or Microsoft. This is why it is so important for quantum observers to be aware of this market tendency and understand the current incentive structure. We complain because China is developing its quantum program in secret and publishes no indication of its progress nor its funding. But if the West does not change its incentive structures, our approach to quantum development is scarcely much better. We are publicizing results, but the results are misleading and cause more skepticism. The more we claim to have achieved some major result only to have it be wrong, the more people start to ignore quantum computing at a time when they should be transitioning it quantum resistant cryptography . Quantum computing is not like other new breakthrough technologies. It is highly scientific and solving it will require major scientific solutions to highly complex problems. We should not forget the requirement to be right before you claim to be first. Connect with us: LinkedIn , Bluesky , X , Website To learn more about the services we offer, please visit our product page. Nick Reese is the cofounder and COO of Frontier Foundry and an adjunct professor of emerging technology at NYU. He is a veteran and a former US government policymaker on cyber and technology issues. Visit his LinkedIn here . This post was edited by Thomas Morin, Marketing Analyst at Frontier Foundry. View his Substack here and his LinkedIn here . Subscribe now Leave a comment