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DTN 186: IBM links quantum chips in major milestone

Plus: DoW Taps Orbital Operations for cyrogenic spacecraft demo, Cerebras and Mistral deploy trillion parameter models, Anduril and Qualcomm launch US-made laptop, OpenAI scoops researchers on million-dollar quantum math problem, auto firm JVIS enters the defense industry, and more.

30 Oct 2026 — 6 min read

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IBM links two quantum chips in key step toward bigger computers

“Electrical cables usually excite only audiophiles, but physicists are buzzing about IBM’s announcement today that it has connected two copies of its latest quantum computing chip using aluminum cables nearly 1 meter long. The connections are key to IBM’s ambition to scale up its machines from roughly 100 quantum bits, or qubits, to the thousands needed to make a quantum computer far superior to today’s supercomputers at solving certain problems.

‘It’s a milestone,’ says Andrew Cleland, a physicist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the work. ‘They’ve shown for the first time I know that they can take two processors and link them with meter-length cables.’” (via Science)

A winged Chinese spacecraft bearing a strong resemblance to the US military’s X-37B spaceplane was photographed in orbit by a passing US-owned commercial satellite in 2024, and we finally have the image. Image via Vantor

“The Chinese spaceplane has delta wings, payload bay doors, a dark heat shield, and a rear-mounted service module with power-generating solar arrays. In other words, the design of the winged ship is, to a great degree, a copy of the X-37B spaceplane flown by the US Space Force.

The photo was taken by a commercial imaging satellite owned by a company called Vantor, known as Maxar in 2024. Vantor is one of several companies that provide reconnaissance imagery of locations around the world to the US military and US intelligence agencies. The same Earth-imaging satellites can point their telescopes at objects in space.

Lower-resolution views of a Chinese spaceplane showing the vehicle’s general shape were publicly available before the Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. A US Space Force official revealed Maxar’s observation at a 2024 conference in South Korea, but the Pentagon did not release the full-resolution image to the public until Monday, when it appeared in an unclassified DIA assessment of threats to the United States in space.” (via WIRED)