Qubits, that’s “cue-bits” to you and me, behave in ways that make no sense.

Short for quantum bits, qubits can be two things: a 0 or a 1. Confusingly, they can also be two things at once, a 0 and a 1. It’s called superposition.

Gov. Wes Moore is betting $1 billion over the next five years that profitable uses for subatomic parlor tricks will stimulate Maryland’s economy and create high-paying jobs. Governors like to name stuff, so it’s the Capital of Quantum, one of his three economic lighthouses.

“Quantum is going to drive advancement across sectors,” Moore said in January.

Economic development is a bit like quantum physics in that it’s hard to follow most of the time. Jobs! Wealth! Anytime someone tells you, “My friends, this is the future,” you should ask questions.

Finding the truth is even harder when the answer runs through physics, espionage and market capitalism.

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“It’s kind of like we’re trying to drive a car while we’re still building the engine,” said Steven Rolston, chair of the physics department at the University of Maryland.

Bits, the smallest unit of information, are the bedrock of the computing and communications age. Manipulated by transistors to be either 1 or 0, they’re the binary ghost that processes the equations that make cellphones, the internet, this website and remote heart monitoring work. Neat.

If you can substitute smaller yet more powerful qubits for bits, you could work out exponentially bigger equations faster. What couldn’t we do with atomic-powered brains?

Researchers and entrepreneurs worldwide are racing to figure all this out. Are quantum computers possible? How would they work, and can they live up to the promise?

“All your processors that we use today are based on silicon, right?” Rolston said. “We can’t even agree if silicon is the best atom to use.”

But there is a lot of excitement and money.

Hundreds of students, researchers and faculty at UMD are working on hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects.

Better-paying jobs are nearby at Fort Meade, where the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command are interested in the ability of qubits to break current cryptography — based on numbers and equations — and create unbreakable future versions.

“If our adversaries get to quantum computing at scale before we get adequately developed and field post-quantum cryptography, that will be a significant challenge,” Maryland Commerce Secretary Harry Coker Jr. said. “What that means is we would no longer have guaranteed secure communications.”

Some of that potential involves another odd quantum behavior, entanglement. Qubits can be linked in pairs, letting you determine the state of one anywhere by observing its linked counterpart.

If only you can see when qubits are zero or one or both, that’s the basis of a secret code. Again, neat.

UMD and the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency, or DARPA, just set up the Capital Quantum Benchmarking Hub to evaluate quantum prototypes.

Qubits don’t behave like bits, so right now solving equations with them can produce errors. The hub will search for the right techniques to make them reliable, a critical next step.

Here’s a clue to the scale of the challenge.

UMD and Harvard last month linked 48 qubits to create a self-test for accuracy on an equation, storing confirmed results and then checking new work against it.

A quantum computer would use millions of qubits, linked in a reliable, affordable system.

Depending on the results at the new hub, DARPA and Maryland each will provide matching contributions of up to $100 million through 2029.

Maryland’s big payoff, though, would come from startups around the campus in College Park.

Theoretical research, collaboration with federal agencies, and converting theory into technology can all lead to companies that create and sell commercial products, producing profit and jobs.

That’s how state and federal seed money would be fleshed out to Moore’s $1 billion: investors and market capitalization.

On Thursday, IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi gave an interview with Barron’s, a weekly business newspaper.

Created by university researchers, IonQ is the Capital of Quantum lead startup. A company executive traveled with Moore to Japan and Korea this spring, where the governor signed deals for investment in Maryland.

The company leases space on hybrid machines that fulfill some of the quantum promise, and is researching others.

Talking about sales, acquisitions and earnings, De Masi boasted that IonQ would dominate quantum computing and networking as Nvidia and Broadcom dominate video and graphics processing in classical computers.

Tech-hungry investors liked what he said so much, the interview caused IonQ stock to jump 37% within hours. The company has yet to make a profit, but it’s attracting investors.

“It’s a crazy day, given our stock price has had a big, a big move up today,” De Masi said.

Creating IonQs doesn’t come without additional money from Maryland. In February, a company executive said that it might leave the state without $10 million toward a new headquarters in College Park.

Last week, Moore agreed. The money is a special project in the fiscal ’26 capital budget, along with $5 million in additional economic development funds. The budget includes another $10 million for the overall Capital of Quantum.

IonQ will stay.

“I’ll just say that great companies are like free agents in sports, to an extent, you got teams offering more and more and more,” said Coker, a former U.S. Cyber director. “Maryland does recognize that, and we appreciate that.”

Is Moore’s bet a win for Maryland?

Predictions for achieving a quantum computer that could beat a classical computer range from five years to never.

Sometimes, though, the journey is the real value.

Someone at Maryland could create a quantum computer big enough to prevent your Instagram account — or your bank, or Social Security or missile codes— from ever being hacked again, turning data farms in Virginia into yesterday’s news.

Or something else entirely.

“We’re looking at all quantum technologies,” said Rolston, the physics chair, “not just quantum computing.”