Politico

As Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” rampages through the federal bureaucracy, demanding staff and budget cuts, one tech industry that counts on the government for fundamental research and funding is projecting confidence.

Quantum has come a long way since it caught the interest of civilian, defense and intelligence agencies in the 1990s as a theoretical, ill-understood future paradigm changer.

Since then, quantum computers have grown steadily larger and more functional — though still very much in the realm of experiment and science. Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella showed off a new palm-sized quantum chip that he proclaimed was the physical representation of its 20-year pursuit of creating “an entirely new state of matter” and would lead to a truly meaningful quantum computer in years instead of decades.