Written By: Muhammad Jawwad Paracha
Earlier last week, engineers at a global technology company announced they had joined two cryogenic modules into a single system and cooled them below 15 millikelvin more than 180 times colder than outer space. It is the sort of announcement that passes without notice in Pakistan. It should not. The machine that is future our banking system, our government communications, and our national infrastructure isn’t talked at all. The talent is here, and it is looking for somewhere to go. The question is whether anything exists for them to walk into.
First, what this is not. A quantum computer is not a faster laptop. It will not speed up your spreadsheets. Anyone who says quantum will replace normal computing is selling something. These machines beat ordinary computers at a small set of problems. For everything else, ordinary computers still win.
But that small set matters enormously.
Quantum computers can model how molecules behave in ways normal machines simply cannot. Drug discovery, fertiliser chemistry, battery design, better catalysts all of these come down to understanding molecular behaviour. Only a quantum machine does that naturally. A calculation that would take a supercomputer thousands of years could take weeks.
They are also good at a particular kind of planning problem routing, scheduling, sharing limited resources among competing demands. For a country with an overloaded power grid, a weak logistics sector and difficult water distribution, these are not abstract ideas.
There is also a connection to AI that deserves care, because it is widely misrepresented. Quantum computers will not make AI training faster. That claim is sold often and it is wrong. The real link runs the other way, and it is more useful.
AI systems built for science are limited by the data they learn from. A model that predicts how a new material will behave can only be as good as the examples it was trained on and for genuinely new chemistry, those examples do not exist, because no one has ever measured them. Quantum machines can generate that missing data. They can simulate molecules that have never been made, producing exactly the kind of training material that scientific AI is starving for.
Meanwhile AI is already returning the favour, running the error-correction systems that keep quantum machines stable. The two technologies are becoming useful to each other, not competing.
Now the honest part. None of this is available today at a scale that helps anyone. Reliable machines are expected around 2029, and every timeline in this field has slipped before. Anyone promising Pakistan quantum solutions this year is overselling.
So why act now?
Because of what the AI decade taught us about timing. The research breakthrough came in 2012. The organisations that started building skills in the years after before the applications were clear, before the money was obvious are the ones collecting returns today. Those who waited for proof became buyers instead of builders.
We waited. We became buyers.
Quantum sits at that same point right now. The science is solid enough to take seriously and early enough that the seats are still empty.
Pakistan has made a start worth crediting. A National Centre for Quantum Computing has been set up. NUST, NED, LUMS and Habib have built research groups. The hackathon happened.
But announcements are not investments. China has put more than fifteen billion dollars into quantum technology. Germany, Britain, America and South Korea have each spent billions. India’s national programme is around 730 million dollars and Indian officials themselves say that is not enough. Pakistan is not part of this conversation yet.
Taking it seriously would not mean building a quantum computer. That would be an expensive showpiece we do not need. It would mean spending on people instead of machines. Quantum programs are written on computers accessed through the cloud. A researcher in Karachi has the same access as one in Boston. The shortage is not equipment. It is trained people which means quantum courses in our universities, funded research positions, and keeping the graduates we produce instead of losing them abroad.
It would mean picking one thing and doing it well. We cannot compete across this entire field. But writing quantum algorithms, building quantum-safe systems, and developing quantum sensors for farming and mineral exploration are areas where a small, focused effort could produce something we own rather than something we rent.
And it would mean accepting a decade with no returns. That is the hardest part, and it is why most countries never begin.
The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent those of his employer or any organisation he is affiliated with. Muhammad Jawwad Paracha is a Master Inventor and AI delivery leader at a global technology company, where he leads AI adoption programs spanning over 170 countries. He holds 35+ patents and publications across AI, IoT, Quantum Computing and Blockchain, and is recognised as one of Pakistan’s most prolific technology inventors.
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