The “Prove It” Stage: What DARPA’s Stage C Means for IonQ
Every quantum computing company publishes an ambitious roadmap, but DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) is designed to answer a practical bottom-line question: will these systems deliver more computational value than they cost? In this conversation, Jeff Rothblum sits down with Dr. Rick Muller, Chief Scientist at IonQ Federal, to break down why Stage C is the ultimate “prove it” phase - requiring real-hardware validation against a common yardstick. They discuss how IonQ’s record gate fidelities, "walking cat" architecture, and cryptographic resource modeling connect into a single path toward fault tolerance, and what utility-scale systems will mean for materials science, clean energy, and national defense.
Jeff Rothblum: Hi, I'm Jeff Rothblum. I'm a Director of Global Government Affairs here at IonQ. I'm here today with Dr. Rick Muller, our Chief Scientist for IonQ Federal.
Dr. Rick Muller: Hi Jeff, glad to be here.
What DARPA is Actually Measuring
Jeff Rothblum: As someone who sort of knows about quantum, they've heard about these EOs, they kind of know what's going on, they've heard about benchmarking - what is DARPA really trying to find out here? What is DARPA's benchmarking program, and what does it actually mean?
Dr. Rick Muller: People have been putting a large investment into quantum technologies for a long time, and what the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) wants to answer is whether those technologies are worth more than they cost.
What DARPA did first was investigate some of the places in industry where quantum computers could be useful. They understood the size of those markets, and then computed how much time it would take for a quantum computer to solve those problems. From that, they can figure out what the value to an industrial company actually is from a quantum computer.
Jeff Rothblum: So it's really about ROI, right? Building these things - are they actually worth the money?
Dr. Rick Muller: Yes.
Stages A, B, and C: Why Stage C Is Such a Big Deal
Jeff Rothblum: So we've gone through Stage A and Stage B. Can you talk a little bit about what Stage C means? Like, why is this such a big deal?
Dr. Rick Muller: In Stage A, all of the performers were asked to talk about the concept they had and whether there was any meat on those bones.
In Stage B, everyone was asked to put together a roadmap and detail the risks that would be involved in testing something out.
Stage C is where you have to prove it. In Stage B, you had to put a detailed roadmap together that said: by this date, we're going to have the technology working to a certain level. These are kind of "no-go" conditions if you don't make them.
Stage C is where you're working with an independent verification team to produce results on real hardware, and by 2033 demonstrate whether you can produce a utility-scale quantum computer that delivers that value to customers.
Jeff Rothblum: So, like, put your money where your mouth is.
Dr. Rick Muller: Put your money where your mouth is. Accurate. Do it.
Why Independent Verification Matters
Jeff Rothblum: You mentioned a really important term, which is independent evaluation. You've sat on the government side of things; you're now here in industry. Like you said, all of us companies have put out sort of a roadmap that says "this is what we think we can do." Talk to me a little bit about the importance of that independent verification or independent government testing, as opposed to companies just saying, "Here's our roadmap and this is what we're going to do."
Dr. Rick Muller: It really is about having everyone have to address the same yardstick.
Quantum technologies differ substantially between different companies' approaches. Some use photons, some use atoms, some use superconducting circuits. The metrics that come out of those also differ. Every company thinks that their technology is the best, and every company has metrics that prove their technology is the best.
What the independent testing in the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is intended to do is put them all on that same yardstick - on a similar set of metrics, like cost-to-solution of these important problems - so that the government actually knows what the most promising technologies really are.
Jeff Rothblum: And the market then learns some of that, too, right? This becomes a public sort of service where this is a widely understood, common measuring stick. Is that right?
Dr. Rick Muller: Exactly. DARPA is known as a rigorous testing organization. They were founded to give high-risk, high-payoff research results to the U.S. military, and they've been doing that for a long time. They've developed technologies like the stealth bomber and the internet.
Having DARPA do this testing is something that not only U.S. media and industry look at, but the media of our allies look at as well. This is an important signal not only for the U.S., but for worldwide industry.
Connecting the Dots: Fidelity, "Walking Cat," and Cryptography
Jeff Rothblum: Over the last year, IonQ has had a run of really good results. We've had the fidelity record, the "walking cat" architecture, and the elliptic curve cryptography work. There's been a number of different things. Can you put that all into one bigger picture? What does all this mean for IonQ in the context of Stage C, and where we're going?
Dr. Rick Muller: All of the results that we've been publishing over the last year really have come from the type of long-term roadmapping thinking that went into DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.
We needed to think about what kind of qubits we are going to put together, and do they work well? The fidelity measurements showed that we have arguably the most accurate qubits that industry has put to the test.
The "walking cat" architecture answers the question of whether you can use that approach - use those qubits - to build an architecture that can do fault-tolerant error correction, so we can correct the errors that quantum computers make along the way, and build something that is flexible and fungible enough to be tuned to specific applications.
What we did in this recent elliptic curve cryptography work was take that architecture and use it to optimize a specific, well-studied, important problem: the signatures that go into blockchain additions. We showed that we could use that architecture, along with the results we have for our qubit fidelity, to estimate at a detailed level what kind of resources are going to be required to do something meaningful.
Jeff Rothblum: So it seems like what you're saying is all of these steps that we've taken have basically been the building blocks to getting to a computer that someone would understand as a normal computer: I can input things, I can run an algorithm, I can run an application. And then we were able to sort of show what that really looks like for this very important cryptological thing that affects our ability to keep data safe on the blockchain for Bitcoin and other things like that.
Dr. Rick Muller: Exactly.
What Quantum Means for Materials, Medicine, and Energy
Jeff Rothblum: Taking a step back—and this is a good segue—we just talked a little bit about cryptography. What does the advancement of quantum computers mean for people who are not living in the space day-to-day like us? What does this mean for things like materials science, batteries, medicine, and life sciences? Give us a flavor of what a future quantum computer is going to change about the way we think about things.
Dr. Rick Muller: Quantum mechanics underpins a lot of the physics that was developed in the 20th century and a lot of the ways that we design materials—whether that's designing alloys that go into lightweight electric cars, designing electric motors that create energy from the wind, designing solar cells, or designing pharmaceuticals. All of these things depend upon quantum mechanical effects.
Quantum computers are incredibly good at simulating those quantum physics effects. We think that it will really be a superpower anytime you want to develop something new—be it a new material, a new pharmaceutical treatment, a new type of solar cell, or a new computing architecture. These will all be accelerated by quantum computing.
Now, we also know the other thing that quantum computers can do well is solve some of the mathematical equations that go into our internet security. Our interest in that is really defensive. We want to understand when the security that we've relied on for the last 30 years to do things like secure credit cards for online purchases can be compromised by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.
For a long time, we thought that was some date conveniently in the future. What we're seeing - and what the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is verifying for us—is that quantum is now. That includes the very good things like better drugs and better materials, but it also includes risks to some of our internet and data security systems that we as a nation, and worldwide, have to address.
The Global Quantum Race
Jeff Rothblum: Lots of people, when it comes to technology, talk about races. There's races all over the place, and people call quantum a race. We have this discussion, and I think we can all agree that the U.S. is in strategic competition with China, specifically when it comes to quantum. How do you think about that issue as a scientist and as someone who's been in the space? Why is it important to try and move quickly here as an industry within our country?
Dr. Rick Muller: I've had multiple roles in quantum, both in government and in industry.
In government, we're really interested in the impact of quantum technologies on national security, and when we have to start worrying about things like sufficiently powerful computers breaking crypto systems. In that sense, it is very important from the government perspective for the U.S. and its allies to develop that technology before the rest of the world does. In that sense, it is a very real race.
From a commercial, industrial point of view, one of the things that attracted me to IonQ as a company was that it was very focused on investing in the technologies that would let IonQ win that race.
The Key Takeaway for Policymakers
Jeff Rothblum: We're based here right outside Washington, D.C. We have policymakers down the road. In just a sentence or two, what does Stage C for QBI really mean? What is the main thing a policymaker should take away from this achievement?
Dr. Rick Muller: Stage C is the "prove it" stage of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.
Everybody has great plans. Mike Tyson once said that everybody's got a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Stage C is the time in which people really have to put up or shut up on their plans. They have to demonstrate that the technologies they're developing, and the architectures and applications built around them, can actually deliver lasting value to the market.
Jeff Rothblum: Dr. Rick Muller, Chief Scientist for IonQ Federal, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Rick Muller: Thanks, Jeff.
