CHICAGO (CN) — Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker released his 2025 budget proposal on Wednesday, prompting the usual scramble by reporters to unpack the pitches and untangle the spin to to see where state leaders want the money to flow.
There's always a few oddities that raise eyebrows, but not all have the price tag of one idea Pritzker's budget office rolled out for next year, buried 73 pages deep in the document.
The Democratic governor wants to invest half a billion dollars into "quantum innovation," including building the "first industrial scale quantum computing facility and first quantum campus in the country."
"The new campus will contain a shared high-powered cryogenic facility which is currently a missing ingredient to grow Illinois’ quantum ecosystem," Pritzker says in the proposal. "The campus is poised to become a hub for research, education, and collaboration, attracting top-tier scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and students."
If you're wondering what any of that even means, don't worry, you're not alone. Even seasoned quantum scientists in Illinois who are excited by the proposal don't have a completely clear picture of what the governor is proposing.
David Awschalom, a senior quantum researcher at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago suburbs, said he envisioned the proposed quantum campus as more of an industrial facility that could attract "a massive workforce of quantum engineers."
"What we're excited about is not so much individual research funding as building an infrastructure for future work," Awschalom said.
He was especially hopeful about the plan to build more cryogenics facilities, which can create the super-cold temperatures necessary for many fields of quantum science research. Individual labs have some cryogenic equipment, he said, but added that "for industrial use, that infrastructure does not exist."
For the moment, the idea of a quantum campus is just a few lines in a budget proposal, so it's not surprising that there are still unknowns to be worked out. But why a "quantum campus" anyway? What is "quantum innovation?"
Quantum information science is, in broad terms, the study of quantum mechanics — the physics of how matter and energy behave at atomic and subatomic scale — as applied to information systems, including the processing of information, transmitting it, and so on. Quantum computers are the most well-known technology associated with the field, but it has potential applications in everything from medical imaging to energy storage to developing new pharmaceuticals.
"The technology involves measuring individual atoms ... even individual photons," Awschalom said, adding that quantum information science is already making its way into satellite communication and data security research.
Meanwhile Brian DeMarco, Director of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, said he thought the campus would be more of an "R & D center" where researchers could expand their experiments into quantum science and its applications.
"I don't know of any other states that have something like this," DeMarco said.
The state doesn't have many details yet either. The Illinois Department of Commerce said that of the $500 million proposal, $300 million earmarked would be earmarked for the quantum campus and $200 million would go to "matching federal grant opportunities," but the governor's office didn't respond to a request for clarification as to how the proposed campus would differ from existing Illinois quantum research facilities at Argonne and Fermilab.
It doesn't even know where it wants to put the thing.
"There are a number of sites currently under consideration — no decision on the location has been made," a spokesperson from the Department of Commerce said in an email.
Pritzker is hoping to cash in on the science's potential despite the remaining questions, pitching that a quantum campus "will bring billions of dollars in private investment to Illinois and create hundreds to thousands of jobs."
The Department of Commerce had similar comments, telling Courthouse News that the potential $500 million investment is a "generational opportunity to move quantum advances out of the lab and into the marketplace, accelerating the commercialization of quantum technologies that have real-world applications."
But pulling in private corporations to develop technology and industries in the hope the state will get a cut of the profits — and no doubt, investors have collectively poured billions into quantum research already — isn't guaranteed to benefit Illinoisans in their day-to-day lives. Speaking anonymously, one public sector industrial engineer groaned at the pitch, saying that the logistics issues facing the state's public services are more mundane.
They noted high turnover rates of post office workers as an example, along with outdated physical infrastructure throughout the state. Echoing their concerns, in 2022 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Illinois' infrastructure an overall grade of C- in its 2022 Report Card.
Awschalom partially agreed, noting that quantum technology wouldn't be a panacea to Illinois' practical issues, but also said quantum machines could excel at systems optimization for logistics planning and communication networking purposes.
DeMarco was more pointed in his rebuttal, saying quantum research could lead to technologies "we can't imagine."
"We could say the same thing about computer technology in the 50s and 60s. 'Why should we have these? What are they good for?' but look at what we have now," he said.
Both expressed optimism in the pitch despite the unknowns, hoping that the investment would make Illinois a leading state in an emerging technological field.
"I'm very grateful for the governor laying out this vision for the state," DeMarco said.
But the public sector engineer remained unconvinced.
"Our issues are political, not technological," they said.
Follow @djbyrnes1
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
