The article depicts the challenges faced by the US with respect to terrorism as the US government sends Richard Holbrooke to visit South Asia as a special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Unlike the Bosnian insurgency of 1995, where Holbrooke handled the Balkans, the situation is pretty different here. While US pushes Pakistan to drive out the Taliban and Al Qaeda from its North Western province of Baluchistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda operates freely from these areas to retake the charge of Afghanistan again. Besides this, the Pakistan foreign policy itself sees the strategic depth they gain against India on the terror front if Taliban regains Afghanistan. Power of Taliban was recently demonstrated in a terrible suicide attack on the Afghan Ministry building in Kabul. Release of A Q Khan illustrates that if Pakistan is not provided with more aid, it can resort again to proliferation to both state and non-state actors.
Finally, it’s hoped that the Holbrooke will lead to better understanding of ground realities in South Asia and formation of effective international strategy against terrorism and jihad. India also sees to it that it communicates its point effectively when the US envoy comes to India.
The article tells about recent advances in quantum computing and its prospects in future with respect to developing highly powerful quantum computers.
A recent discovery by the scientists at University of Maryland reported to have send information from one atom to another located a meter away using a process called quantum teleportation. This transfer happens without any physical medium between two atoms and where the information on first atom simply appears on the second one instantaneously. This state is called “quantum entanglement” where two atoms behave like one entity. The potential here can be used to develop large scale repeater that can network quantum memories over vast distances.
Finally, quantum computing is million times faster then today’s supercomputing and its property of “superposition” where the atom can be in two states at the same time (‘0’ and ‘1’ unlike typical atom which can store only either of the values). Although presently inefficient, with further research and development the practical benefits of quantum computing in future would be incalculable.
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