The allure of quantum computers is, at its heart, quite simple: by leveraging counterintuitive quantum effects, they could perform computational feats utterly impossible for any classical computer.

We live in a world where most of us take the transistor for granted. Within arm’s length of most people reading this, there are likely over ten billion of them sending electrons in every direction.

It’s been more than 40 years since the physicist Richard Feynman pointed out that building computing devices based on quantum principles could unlock powers far greater than those of “classical” ...