It is a dizzying gamble and there are billions of euros riding on the outcome. If the wager pays off, Europe will hold its own against mighty China and the US; if not, the entire project will be regarded in hindsight as a breathtakingly indulgent folly.
I refer, of course, not to the forthcoming referendum on Britain’s EU membership but to the European Commission’s announcement last week that it would be launching a €1bn plan to explore “quantum technologies”. It is the third of the commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship projects — visionary megaprojects lasting a decade or more. These are challenges too grand — and bets too risky — for a single nation to square up to on its own.
One flagship project already focuses on graphene, that miraculous one-atom-thick sheet of carbon that has yet to make a mark on the continent’s industrial landscape. The other is the Human Brain Project, which made headlines chiefly because it was boycotted by many of the scientists assigned to work on it. The ultimate aim of that collaboration is to produce a digital blueprint of a brain, but the public infighting has left many uncertain about whether the original goal was feasible or even useful.