PQ digest 29/30

1) Chile launches a National Quantum Strategy (2025–2035) focused on sovereignty

When: Dec 30, 2025 

Chile rolled out a 10-year national strategy aimed at building sovereign capability across quantum computing, sensing, and enabling infrastructure—the kind of “state-level roadmap” that turns quantum from scattered research into an actual industry pipeline. 
What makes this strategically heavy:

• It frames quantum as national capacity, not just academic projects—meaning testbeds, talent, procurement logic, and long-term continuity.

• The strategy explicitly emphasizes sensing and “practical national infrastructure,” which tends to mature faster than universal fault-tolerant quantum computing. 

• It’s also a signal to startups and partners: “we’re building an ecosystem—show up with hardware, software, training, pilots.”

Conclusion
This is the quiet kind of news that becomes loud later. National strategies are market shapers: they create demand (pilots, standards, jobs) long before the “killer quantum computer” shows up.

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2) IonQ finalizes a deal to deliver a 100-qubit system to South Korea’s KISTI

When: Dec 29, 2025 

IonQ announced it finalized an agreement with KISTI to deliver its Tempo 100 system—another example of quantum moving from “labs and demos” into installed national infrastructure.
Key details highlighted in coverage and announcements:

• The system is intended to support a hybrid quantum-classical environment integrated with KISTI’s supercomputing stack, accessible via a private cloud for research and enterprise use cases. 

• IonQ also reiterated a performance headline: 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity (as stated in its investor release). 

• Market coverage notes the strategic weight even when contract specifics aren’t fully disclosed publicly. 

Conclusion
100 qubits isn’t “cryptography apocalypse,” but it is “institutional procurement + hybrid integration,” which is what turns quantum into an ecosystem that budgets keep feeding.

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3) Royal Navy trials GPS-free quantum navigation in the Arctic with Imperial College London

When: Reported Dec 29, 2025 (trial announced earlier in December) 

The Royal Navy and Imperial College London tested quantum-enhanced inertial navigation in Arctic conditions—explicitly targeting operations where GPS is weak, denied, jammed, spoofed, or unavailable.
What matters here is not the buzzword “quantum,” but the capability profile:

• The sensors leverage cold-atom quantum effects to measure acceleration/rotation with long-term stability, enabling precise dead-reckoning without external signals. 

• This is defense-grade motivation: resilience against jamming/spoofing is a strategic driver, not a “nice to have.” 

• Trials in harsh environments are a strong tell: the question is shifting from “does it work?” to “can it survive deployment realities?”

Conclusion
Quantum sensing is where quantum gets practical early. If you want a near-term “quantum changes the real world” lane, navigation and timing are right near the front.

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4) “Quantum diamonds” (NV centers) move sensing toward rugged, room-temperature deployment

When: Dec 29, 2025 

Body
A Financial Times feature spotlighted lab-grown diamonds engineered with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers—defects that become ultra-sensitive quantum sensors. 
Why it’s high on the importance list:

• Diamonds are robust and can operate at room temperature, which is the opposite of the “quantum needs a cathedral of cryogenics” stereotype.

• The article points to sensing applications like medical diagnostics, magnetometry, and navigation, which are the early-commercialization sweet spot of the “second quantum revolution.” 

• Commercial push is real: it highlights industry players attempting to productize these sensors. 

Conclusion
If quantum computing is the long game, quantum sensing is the “start collecting wins now” game. Diamonds are compelling because they’re quantum that behaves like an engineering material.

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5) Russia reports an ion-based machine using 7-level qubits (qudits) with 26 calcium ions

When: Dec 29, 2025 

A Russia-focused report (citing RQC/TASS) described an ion-based quantum computer built with 26 calcium ions, where each ion acts as a seven-level quantum unit (values 0–6). 
Why qudits matter:

• Moving beyond 2-level qubits to multi-level systems can, in some architectures, pack more information per physical carrier—at the cost of harder control and calibration. (The story emphasizes the specialized lasers/optics required for precise control.) 

• It’s another signal of national efforts to develop indigenous platforms and components.

Conclusion
This one is “capability signaling” more than immediate productization—but it’s technically interesting because multi-level quantum units are one of the serious alternative routes to scaling.