Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel—Law and Policy for the Quantum Age

LAW AND POLICY FOR THE QUANTUM AGE
Chris Hoofnagle and Simson Garfinkel (NASW member)
Cambridge University Press, Jan 6, 2022
Hardcover: $89.99, Paperback: $29.99
Kindle: $24. PDF: Free (It’s open access.)
ISBN-10: 1108793177, ISBN-13: 978-1108793179

Garfinkel reports:

I was surprised to be seated next to my longtime colleague Chris Hoofnagle for the 12-hour flight from Jerusalem to New York in June 2019. On the flight, Chris told me of a law review article he was writing about quantum computing. We talked about his ideas the whole flight. The next day Chris sent me the article, I marked it up, and before I knew it, I was his co-author.

We soon realized this project was going to be much larger than a law review article, so we wrote a book proposal. Cambridge University Press, which had published Chris' previous book, bought it.

We took the law review article, which included an introduction to quantum physics, and focused it on the aspects of quantum phenomena that were relevant to quantum computing—specifically the hoped-for ability to crack codes and perform massively fast optimization problems. We added material on the theory of computation and explanations on how both digital computers and quantum computers actually compute. We took cybersecurity work on threat modeling and applied it to possible technology development and political futures.

Early on in the process, it was clear that the book would have massive numbers of citations, footnotes, and diagrams. Doing such a book with Microsoft Word would be a disaster, so I suggested using the LaTeX document preparation system and the Overleaf website to write and typeset the book. Our book has 100+ illustrations and dozens of typographical tricks to help to make this complex material understandable to people with liberal arts degrees and no more than a high school science education—that is, our target audience of lawyers and policymakers.

Our book throws cold water on the idea that quantum computers are just around the corner and that they will let shadowy government agencies crack all of the world’s encrypted messages. We expect a “quantum winter” sometime soon as funding dries up. At the same time, we write that quantum sensing creates new opportunities for intelligence gathering and has been underappreciated in the mainstream press. Time will tell if our predictions turn out to be correct.

Contact info:

• Simson Garfinkel, 202-322-8411, simsong@acm.org, https://simson.net/, @xchatty
• Book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/law-and-policy-for-the-quantum-age/026A5CE2FE7FE277B94DA01A519B2DAD, https://the-quantum-age.com/
• Publicist: Paris West, paris.west@cambridge.org

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