An Israeli government panel is calling for $350 million to be spent on a 6-year program to make the country a key player in a hot new technology field.
In doing so, Israel will be competing with giants like China, Britain and Germany, which have each budgeted programs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. A host of smaller countries have also entered the competition, among them Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Singapore, which are also investing heavily in quantum computing. Canada, for instance, has budgeted $1.6 billion over five years, Germany $780 million and China a reported $2.4 billion. The European Union has a Quantum Technologies Flagship program to which $1.1 billion has been allocated, a number that is due to be tripled.
Most of the funding will come from the existing budgets of the Council of Higher Education, the Defense Ministry’s Research, Arms Development and Technological Infrastructure Administration, and academic institutions. (Haaretz)
