Nobel Prize Winner: What Quantum Computing Does to AI, Bitcoin, and Your Data | John Martinis

What happens after AI? John Martinis — Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the scientist behind Google's quantum computing breakthrough — says most people are focused on the wrong threat. He's the only scientist on Trump's new tech advisory council, alongside Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Jensen Huang. And he has a very different read on where this is all going. In this episode: why quantum computers could crack Bitcoin encryption, which assets are already at risk, why the entire internet needs to switch encryption protocols in the next decade — and why investing in quantum hardware right now mirrors the Nvidia GPU bet before anyone knew what GPUs were for. If you're thinking about your career, your savings, or your business in an AI world — this one changes the frame. Topics: quantum computing, AI future, Bitcoin encryption, cybersecurity, career in tech, future of work, tech investing, Nobel Prize, Silicon Valley More from the Silicon Valley Girl: Follow my Newsletter: ⁠⁠https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠ https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko/ X: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/siliconvalleymm⁠ https://x.com/siliconvalleymm

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 0:59Marina Mogilko?

  The skills you're building right now are for the AI era, but they have an expiration date. Every few years, something comes along that changes what's actually possible. The internet didn't make libraries faster. It made them irrelevant. AI didn't make search engines better. It made a completely different way of finding answers. And now, we have something that's coming that most people haven't even heard of yet. And it does the same thing to computing itself. In December 2024, Google unveiled a quantum processor that completed a calculation in minutes. That exact calculation that would take today's supercomputers longer than the age of the universe. And that is a different category of a machine. And here's where it gets a little scary. A few days ago,

• 1:43Marina Mogilko?

  Google published another paper. They say quantum computers could crack Bitcoin encryption in nine minutes, using 20 times fewer resources than anyone thought. As someone who holds crypto and is curious about implications of quantum on my day-to-day life, I wanted to ask questions. So I was in Davos this January, and I met the man whose 1985 discovery made all of this possible. He just won the Nobel Prize for it. And President Donald Trump just put him on his Science Advisory Council alongside with Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Jensen Huang. He's the only scientist in that room and he gave me a timeline, five to 10 years. And to understand why this matters for your career, you need to understand what he actually discovered.

• 2:28Marina Mogilko?

  Let's talk to John Martinis. I wanted to talk to you about something that you discovered. So I don't have any experience in quantum physics, but the way I understood it, if you throw a ball against the wall, it bumps, right?

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:40Marina Mogilko?

  But you discovered that an electron can pass the wall without passing it and be on both sides?

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Yes, so it's possible that the ball, you know, the wall can tunnel through the wall and not just bounce off, but every once in a while actually tunnel through it. And the way I like to say it is that, you know, people are accustomed to quantum mechanics as the physics of atoms and molecules and microscopic particles. And here we made electrical circuit about that big and the currents and voltages in that big macroscopic electrical circuit is actually obeying quantum mechanics and showing this tunneling phenomenon.

• 3:21Marina Mogilko?

  That's the moment quantum stopped being just theory. He proved it works in machines and that's what started everything. So before this discovery, scientists thought quantum mechanics only lived inside atoms. He proved it works in machines. So what does that unlock?

• 3:37Speaker 03

  What really happened with this idea, and frankly, it's the reason for the Nobel Prize, is that we took this discovery and then people built on it, built on it. And then the idea of qubits and building a quantum computer came along, which naturally, this physics naturally fit into this. So it's really kind of the

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Creation of a field of discovery and innovation and technology that these experiments got developed into and why it's important today.

• 4:13Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, when you, when you say quantum computer, a lot of people think science fiction. For people who don't know how it affects their daily lives and might affect their daily lives, can you give two or three examples where quantum computers really make a difference?

• 4:25Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  The, the idea I like to talk about is for doing design of materials or molecules or chemistry. And people are very familiar right now, how you use computers to design your kitchen, make a mechanical part, design electronic circuit, you know, other things. So you can build it virtually. And then when you go and you build it in the real world, building it virtually in the digital is a lot cheaper and better. And you can think about the trade offs.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  Well, a quantum computer would enable you to do that with molecules and, you know, certain atomic.

• 6:12Marina Mogilko?

  So many moving parts. What about drug discovery? I feel like if we're.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Yes, and the same kind of thing with drug discovery. So if you can simulate molecules really well, then you can maybe even just gain some insight. I mean, what I've been told is that, for example, the drug discovery, it's very expensive to do this. And if you can improve, let's just say your insight on how the drug works by one percent or a few percent, that's really valuable and could be worth a lot of money.

• 6:43Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  So so it's not like we have to totally change things. But I think just improvements and better insights can be quite valuable for companies.

• 6:53Marina Mogilko?

  But if we go ten years forward, what do you think our life is going to look like if quantum computing is everywhere and accessible to everyone? How's it going to change?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  So there's kind of two things involved in this. First of all, we have to build better hardware. And then we have to be, you know, think about algorithms, be smarter with the algorithms and the like. And there's just kind of a gap now. And maybe some people think there's not much of a gap and other people think there's a big gap. But we need to close the gap. And that's building better hardware, which is what I'm doing in my company. We're trying to do that as well as many other people. And then people have to be more clever. And what's interesting is you build better hardware, you can test out the algorithms better. And then you can maybe discover exactly what's, you know, what you need to get it to work right.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  So it's a very interesting time where, you know, everyone's really trying to to push these things together and get it to work properly.

• 7:53Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, it feels like it's a really fast growing market. According to Quantum Insider report, it's going to generate one trillion dollars in economic value in the next ten years.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  With that's an optimistic scenario that we find useful things to do. It's quite possible that will happen. And certainly I like those kind of forecasts because when we try to raise money.

• 8:14Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  But our idea is that what we're really trying to do in our company is make a general purpose, error corrected quantum computer. And not that hundreds of cube, physical qubits, what are people now, but you may need a million physical qubits, operating in the way where the errors go down and, and it works properly. Where I think the real value will be unlocked. And you know, the long-term value. Certainly there, you know, if people do this in the next few years, you'll get, you'll get good value. But the old, those kind of numbers you're talking about, you know, our thesis is you're want to build this big computer and make it very well.

• 8:57Marina Mogilko?

  So he's betting on hardware, the way Jensen Huang bet on GPUs before anyone knew what they were for. Now that's the question that has been on my mind since I heard about quantum computing. Yeah. What, what do you think for all the entrepreneurs who are watching, who want to start building something in this field? What are the most exciting markets when it comes to quantum computing? Is it building hardware or is it like applying the algorithms?

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Well, there's a lot of effort into algorithms because building software and algorithms is a relatively low cost. You don't have to buy those. So our company is doing the exact wrong thing, which is investing in building hardware really well. Now, the nice thing is, is that once you do that, you can be, and you're successful, you can be an extremely successful company. And I, I, I like to think about Nvidia, although they're partnering with TSMC, but their knowledge of designing the computers and putting together the systems have made them extremely valuable company.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  And when our view on hardware is that, you know, it's possible for us to do that, do that too. So we're taking the hard approach and, and focusing on the hardware. And then our particular thesis is that if you look at superconducting qubits right now. And where they are. I mean, I helped invent all the things to get there. And I think it's great, but it's still kind of a little bit, I'd say academic, or maybe even artisanal fabrication. And that we're trying to use much more established semiconductor tools and fabrication process and the like in order to scale up and make the qubits better.

• 10:51Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah. And when it comes to markets, what do you think of the markets that are going to be transformed the most? We talked about healthcare, finance, any other market?

• 10:59Speaker 03

  It's all of the above. And you hear people working, working on that. But I like that we have very definite ideas on how to build it. So let me, I can explain this for maybe some of the Silicon Valley types. I really love Peter Thiel's book Zero to One. Okay. And that kind of in some sense explained my, my career. So I am very much a definite optimist. I want to know what to build. I want to know what to build to make it useful. And that's what that paper was all about. Now, there's a lot of people in this field who are indefinite optimists. In fact, most people in the United States are.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  And they, they have all the ideas like you're talking about, and I think that's great. I'm glad people are pushing that. My particular way my mind works and what's always been successful is to really focus in on something definite you have to do. However, I'm very well aware, you're in a startup company, you'll probably have to pivot.

• 12:04Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  And think about different things, and we'd be happy to do that once those ideas come to fruition. But the one thing I know for sure is we have to make better qubits and we have to make it scale.

• 12:14Marina Mogilko?

  We need the hardware.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, we need the hardware. Okay, so that's what we're doing, no matter what happens.

• 12:19Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah. I think, so this question has been bothering me for a while. I think you're the right person to ask, is quantum computing going to break cryptocurrencies?

• 12:30Speaker 03

  So my, the CEO of my company is an expert here, and I'm gonna hopefully re-

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Represented well enough. My understanding is if you have some of the older cryptos currency, that was encoded in a way that could be broken. But some of the, if the newer versions, it's, it's a little bit stiffer encryption.

• 12:58Marina Mogilko?

  Is that Bitcoin, the oldest?

• 12:59Speaker 03

  I, I think this is Bitcoin, as I recall.

• 13:02Marina Mogilko?

  So that one's.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  And then you can take your old Bitcoin and, you know, pull it out and then re-encrypt it to make it, make it better.

• 13:11Marina Mogilko?

  Oh.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  So you can make it safe.

• 13:13Marina Mogilko?

  Okay.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  But there's a lot of Bitcoin that's kind of unclaimed, that's old. And it's a lot of money.

• 13:19Marina Mogilko?

  Oh, interesting. So once quantum computer, computing breaks into that.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  So that is a market for a quantum computer.

• 13:27Marina Mogilko?

  Business idea.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Well, so we're aware of that. Okay. And that's fine. Now, what my CEO is doing, which I think is very responsible, is talking to the US Treasury about this. Because the US Treasury is going to be concerned that if other companies or, you know, criminal organizations get, get a hold of that money. It's a lot of money.

• 13:53Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, it is.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  That, you know, that's a real issue and you probably want to set up laws and some system in order to, you know, do that.

• 14:03Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah, because it's still very unregulated. There's so much crypto ledgers or.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and that's the problem is you have something very unregulated, which people really like, but in some sense, that's the Achilles' heel.

• 14:15Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  That because it's unregulated, if some technology can overcome it. And so you may, you know, there may need to be some plot on how to, how to. Now, I'm not an expert here.

• 14:25Marina Mogilko?

  But no, it's, it's good to hear your perspective.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  I think I'm getting this kind of directionally correct.

• 14:30Marina Mogilko?

  I talked to the people building What's Next before it makes headlines. If that's useful to you, do not forget to subscribe to this channel. What is the timeline that you think?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  So what I like to say is it's possible in five to 10 years to build this a big enough quantum computer to do that. And partly I just say that that's kind of an optimistic scenario. And partly I say that is to warn people that, you know, this may be coming and you want to protect, you know, every not just Bitcoin, but you know, the whole Internet needs to switch over in this kind of time period.

• 15:13Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  Now, what's interesting, and just I was at a, at a meeting where the IBM kind of quoted similar numbers. This is all very reasonable. It's funny that at Google, the CEO is saying three to five years.

• 15:28Marina Mogilko?

  Ah, trying to push things.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  Well, I think he's pushing because if you're a CEO and you're making a prediction, you want to, you want to have a lower number because you don't want to be caught.

• 15:39Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  You know, without that. But for example, Google already has quantum resistant protocols on at least some of their, their traffic. I don't know the details, but you know, these big companies already know about it and are protecting, protecting their data or will be protecting their data.

• 15:55Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  But, but there's things like crypto that, you know, that's beyond, beyond that and other kind of private systems that you might have to worry about.

• 16:04Marina Mogilko?

  That was very interesting. So basically we're working in quantum computing, but then we also need to work on the algorithms that protect existing systems.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and what happened is actually the idea that you can break it, break it with this was invented at the 1990s. People understood that. Oh, Peter Schorr and then, you know, in the early, early 1990s. And then the government, you know, really has understood this for a long time. And I'm going to say about 10, maybe 12 years ago, the government got very serious about this. And they saw that, yeah, okay, the technology maybe, you know, could make this happen. And for example, at NIST, they have a big program that they're looking at what they called quantum. Safe cryptography, other ways to encode it.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  And that's, that's been ten years. They have a nice algorithms. Uh, people, you know, you can download essentially the algorithm and code. And people are, are building systems to do this. So, uh, people have been responding to this well, you can buy solutions here. Uh, and, uh, you know, so I think we're in, in, in pretty good state. I think people are still, you know, investigating, you know, part of the thing about the crypto security is people have to try to break it for a long time to make sure that it's really safe. I mean, people don't know that RSA is unbreakable.

• 17:34Marina Mogilko?

  RSA?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  For sure, but they know from practice that, you know, uh, and, and the way that the, everything's operating that they don't think anyone is, is broken it.

• 17:43Marina Mogilko?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  So, so it needs time to do this.

• 17:46Marina Mogilko?

  You know, you, you're observing extremely rare, uh, extremely, extremely rare events. And you're building something that is completely new. Has that changed how you think about luck, black swan moments? Because you're observing them basically in your work.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  Um, what's kind of, uh, strange in my career is, um, I've been developing a series of experiments. Uh, and, um, uh, how I've gone from, you know, one project to the other. And what's kind of funny in my career is I do a project and then somehow it doesn't work out in some way. And then I'm, you know, stuck wondering, well, I have to do something else. And, um, and then I figure out what else to do. That's really interesting. So, changing all the, the different topics and projects.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Has always come through some strange event, often kind of a negative event. And just to give you an example, I was, I went to Google. They paid me well. We did this quantum supremacy experiment. And, but then at some point after the quantum supremacy, they wanted to change the way they managed the group. And essentially, I was not googly enough to stay at Google and I had to leave. Which was, you know, kind of difficult to essentially leave a project you started way back in graduate school. However, by leaving Google, I was then free to think very creatively

• 19:29Speaker 03

  and free to think, well, we're building in a certain way. And how do I really want to build this to make it scalable and better and whatever? And by starting my own company and through think, thinking freely and, you know, starting it with a co-founders, we were able to come with a bunch of ideas, how to make it better. And it could be that although that was a very, let's say traumatic thing, I'm sure other people have gone through this, that may be the best thing for me and the field, that I was able to do something, something new out of it.

• 20:05Marina Mogilko?

  Absolutely.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  So, so, you know, that's one thing. And this has happened to me over and over again. And you, I kind of have to accept that, you know, that's, you know, sometimes these setbacks in life are actually very good for you. So the good thing is this year, I just kind of, I knew it was coming up, but I totally forgot about it. So when the phone call came, it was a complete surprise. Middle of the night, wow, and it was, my wife was awake and she saw, she heard the phone, phone ringing, but she thought she'd catch in the morning. And then she was just going to sleep and she looked at her email and there was all these congratulations. But that was like, you know, 2:30 in the morning. And she knows I need my sleep.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  So, um, she didn't tell me until about 6 o'clock. You know, because I needed my sleep. And also there were reporters who were coming to that house and they wanted to wake me up in bed.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 22:05Marina Mogilko?

  And she pushed them away, like, let him get his sleep.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  She said, "No way are we gonna do that." But I do remember her, like, you know, sitting in the bed and, you know, waking me up gently and saying, "Hey, there's some reporters." And, you know, I kinda, I do, it's October. So I just opened my computer and I saw, you know, my picture there with John and Michelle. So that was a very, like, it's just, you can't believe that it's happening.

• 22:35Marina Mogilko?

  Sounds like a fairy tale.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  It's a fairy tale. And what I would say is, I think the most interesting part is you get to go to things like this and have these very amazing experiences.

• 22:49Marina Mogilko?

  Here's what I actually walked away with. JP Morgan and Google aren't waiting for Quantum to be ready. They are already deploying it. The race is happening, whether your industry knows it or not. The encryption protecting everything you do online, your bank, your company data, your messages, was built before quantum computers existed. John's timeline, five to 10 years. So that's not a distant problem. If you're working tech, finance, or cybersecurity, this is the conversation, I think... We should be having right now. In my newsletter this week, I left out which industries are most exposed right now and what people in those fields are actually doing about it. And how can you start adjusting your career for what's to come? My newsletter is called Future Proof. The link is in the description.

• 23:34Marina Mogilko?

  Quantum is five to 10 years out. AI is right now. I talked to a Stanford professor about exactly what to do in the next 30 days. That video is right here on the screen. It is very practical. It's going to make you excited about AI and excited about introducing it into your workflows. See you in that episode and thank you for watching this after the very end. Bye.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.