China Built A Godlike Computer That Shouldn't Work — Unless The Multiverse Is Real

A machine in Hefei finished in minutes what the fastest supercomputer on Earth would need 6.4 billion years to do. And no computer alive can check its answer.

This is the full story of China's Zuchongzhi 3.0 quantum computer: the random circuit sampling result on the cover of Physical Review Letters, the man who built it, and the question that has followed quantum computing since David Deutsch asked it in 1997. Where does the computation actually happen? Google's own founder, Hartmut Neven, says results like these lend credence to the multiverse. His critics say he's confusing mathematics with reality. Meanwhile the benchmark war between Google and Beijing, the unverifiable regime, and China's new below-threshold error correction are pushing the machines toward the one algorithm that ends at your encrypted data.

More investigations like this one: https://www.youtube.com/@SpacializeEN?sub_confirmation=1

Covered in this video: Zuchongzhi 3.0 and Zuchongzhi 3.2, random circuit sampling, Google Willow and Sycamore, quantum supremacy and how it fell, David Deutsch's Fabric of Reality challenge, Shor's algorithm, harvest now decrypt later, and the NSA's 2030 deadline for quantum resistant encryption.

Sources:
Zuchongzhi 3.0 paper (Physical Review Letters 134, 090601): https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.090601
Preprint with the 6.4 billion year estimate: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.11924
USTC announcement: https://en.ustc.edu.cn/info/1007/5015.htm
Zuchongzhi 3.2 error correction (December 2025): https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202512/1351319.shtml
Hartmut Neven's multiverse statement + criticism: https://thequantuminsider.com/2024/12/16/googles-quantum-chip-sparks-debate-on-multiverse-theory/
Scott Aaronson on Willow and the verification problem: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8525
Classical simulation that beat Sycamore (Pan, Chen, Zhang): https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03011
David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (1997), chapter 9
NSA warning and harvest now, decrypt later: https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/05/01/harvest-now-decrypt-later-why-should-you-care/
March 2025 export blacklist: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/us-blacklists-50-chinese-companies-in-bid-to-curb-beijings-ai-chip-capabilities.html
September 2025 additions: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/16/2025-17893/additions-and-revisions-to-the-entity-list
Pan Jianwei profile: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/1571/the-man-turning-china-into-a-quantum-superpower/

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