GPS is getting spoofed and jammed. Financial markets, power grids, RF networks, military systems and your phone all depend on timestamps sent from 30 satellites that are increasingly vulnerable. Quantum clocks are the fix. Matt Kinsella is the CEO of Infleqtion, a quantum technology company that put a quantum atomic clock inside a UK military submarine. In this conversation with Mark and Jeremy, he explains how hitting rubidium atoms with a 778 nanometer laser creates nature's most precise metronome, why the Rydberg state turns a single atom into a receiver that could replace every antenna on Earth, how neutral atom quantum computing differs from superconducting and trapped ion approaches, why GPS is really a timing system not a positioning system, and what quantum mechanics might have to do with free will and consciousness.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Trailer

(01:50) Why coordination matters: From internal strategy to GPS timing

(04:48) What is a quantum clock and how does it link to GPS?

(07:18) Nature's metronome: How atoms keep time with laser precision

(08:14) Room temperature quantum: Why neutral atoms don't need freezers

(12:38) The Rydberg state: Making atoms sensitive to the entire RF spectrum

(14:03) Quantum clock on a UK submarine

(17:06) Quantum in space: Voyager partnership and the International Space Station

(18:48) Hybrid quantum-classical workflows: How QPUs layer above GPUs

(23:18) Software layers: From laser control to developer applications

(25:32) Drug discovery example: GPU, CPU, QPU

(29:03) The bridge between classical and quantum: Memory architecture innovations

(31:54) How Quantum Clocks & Products Lead To Quantum Computers

(33:48) Nvidia

(35:42) Quality or Quantity of Qubits

(38:00) Quantum mechanics and free will: Does wave collapse prove consciousness?

Love it.

Thanks.

⁠⁠Listen to every podcast⁠⁠
Follow us on⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠⁠
Follow us on⁠ ⁠X⁠⁠
Follow Mark on⁠ ⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠
Follow Jeremy on⁠ ⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠
Read our⁠ ⁠Substack⁠⁠
Email: ⁠hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz⁠

Chapters

(00:00) Why quantum computing matters right now

(01:20) Why Nvidia is betting big on quantum

(02:52) NVQ-Link: the bridge between quantum and classical computing

(09:29) Who decides what runs on the quantum computer vs the GPU?

(12:33) AI helping quantum, quantum helping AI

(16:56) Building a space elevator battery: a real quantum workflow

(20:09) The quantum algorithm zoo

(22:04) From noisy qubits to logical qubits

(24:00) How much energy does a quantum computer actually use?

(27:05) The no-cloning theorem: why you can't copy-paste quantum data

(27:20) The biggest unanswered question in quantum computing

(30:47) A $20M NASA program and a telescope for underground

(33:32) What do we want humans to be?