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Paper short abstract

Drawing on the French case, we suggest that "quantum" has become an "order-word" (Deleuze and Guattari) for the state, some scientists and market players. We highlight three of these implications: an antipolitics irreversibilization process, a nationalist fervor and a depolitization of knowledge.

Paper long abstract

The quantum computer has become a buzzword that has sparked enthusiasm among certain computer scientists and physicists, start uppers, industrialists, and administrative officials, who have come together to form a “trading zone” (Galison) around the promise of a revolutionary technology that will soon be available. During an investigation of the French “quantum ecosystem”, we realized that the question of “why” quantum computers should exist was never asked and that the notion of “second quantum revolution” acts as an “order-word”, a collective assemblage of enunciation belonging to indirect discourse (Deleuze & Guattari). Based on document analysis, observations and interviews conducted in a laboratory, within government agencies, and among market players, we examined how such order-word has come out, without public debate. We will highlight 3 “matters of concern” (Latour):

1-Making quantum computer irreversible through state investment: We have analyzed the rhetoric of irreversibility, and the reasoning through start-up road maps and the technology readiness levels method.

2-Technonationalism dissarranging Europe: Unlike works that have shown how Europe has been built through infrastructure, investment in digital technologies, and regulation, the global race for the quantum computer reveals efforts to undo Europe. We will show France’s imperialist vision of Europe and the envenomed notion of digital sovereignty.

3-Depolitization of knowledge: We will illustrate how scientists limit their reflexivity by creating boundaries between their work and the uses to which it could be put.

We aim at redirecting our collective capacities towards democratic issues and set the history of computing on a more reflexive course.