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IBM makes a leap in quantum computing power – PCWorld

Posted: May 20, 2017 at 7:27 am

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IBM has some new options for businesses wanting to experiment with quantum computing.

Quantum computers, when they become commercially available, are expected to vastly outperform conventional computers in a number of domains, including machine learning, cryptography and the optimization of business problems in the fields of logistics and risk analysis.

Where conventional computers deal in ones and zeros (bits) the processors in quantum computers use qubits, which can simultaneously hold the values one and zero. Thisto grossly oversimplifyallows a quantum computer with a 5-qubit processor to perform a calculation for 32 different input values at the same time.

On Wednesday, IBM put a 16-qubit quantum computer online for IBM Cloud platform customers to experiment with, a big leap from the five-qubit machine it had previously made available. The company said that machine has already been used to conduct 300,000 quantum computing experiments by its cloud service users.

But thats not all: IBM now has a prototype 17-qubit system working in the labs, which it says offers twice the performance of the 16-qubit machine.

Quantum computing performance is hard to compare. Much depends on the quality of the qubits in the processor, which rely on shortlived atomic-level quantum phenomena and are thus somewhat unstable.

IBM is proposing a new measure of quantum computing performance that it calls quantum volume, which takes into account the interconnections between the cubits and the reliability of the calculations they perform.

The companys quantum computing division, IBM Q, has set its sights on producing a commercial 50-qubit quantum computer in the coming years.

Peter Sayer covers European public policy, artificial intelligence, the blockchain, and other technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.

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It’s time to decide how quantum computing will help your business – Techworld Australia

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If you're not ready to start using quantum computing in your enterprise, you should at least be planning how to do so.

Researchers say companies may be less than five to 10 years away from turning to quantum computing to solve big business problems.

David Schatsky, managing director, Deloitte LLP

"Quantum computing has the potential to not just do things faster but to allow companies to do things entirely differently," said David Schatsky, managing director of Deloitte LLP, a global consulting and financial advisory company. "If they have certain analytical workloads that could take them weeks to run and they could do it almost instantaneously, how would that change the way they make decisions, or the risks they're willing to take or what products and services they can offer customers?"

That means corporate execs and IT heads should be thinking now about the strategic and operational implications of having quantum computers in their tech toolbox.

There is much buzz around quantum computers because they are expected to surpass even the most powerful classic supercomputers in certain calculations -- especially handling problems that involve sifting through massive amounts of data. Quantum computers, for example, might be able to find distant habitable planets, the cure for cancer and Alzheimer's disease or revamp complex airline flight schedules.

Quantum machines offer a different kind of computing power because instead of relying on ones and zeros - or bits - they use qubits, which can be both ones and zeros.

One of the rules of quantum mechanics is that a quantum system can be in more than one state at the same time, meaning it's not known what a qubit is until it begins to interact with -- or entangle -- other qubits. Unlike classic computers that operate in a linear or orderly fashion, quantum computers gain their power from qubits working with each other, allowing them to calculate all possibilities at the same time, instead of one by one.

"It's an incredibly promising new paradigm in computing," said William Martin, a math professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass. "We have examples of things a quantum computer can do that we don't know how to do with a normal computer. It's going to be a game-changing phenomenon, if we can actually build it."

WPI professor William Martin

In a report released late last month, Deloitte noted that quantum computing is close to realizing its promise and having an enormous impact on fields from healthcare to pharmaceuticals, space exploration and manufacturing. As researchers continue work on building powerful, fully functional quantum machines, interest is growing.

The field has attracted $147 million in venture capital in the last three years and $2.2 billion in government funding globally, according to Deloitte.

A little over a year ago, the European Commission announced a $1.13 billion project to develop quantum technologies over the next decade. And the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced last month that it is working to build a quantum computer in the next several years.

The U.S. is considered to be a major investor in quantum computing research, as well as home to quantum-focused companies like IBM, Google and Microsoft. . Google, for instance, is working on quantum processes it can make available to companies over the cloud, while Microsoft said last fall it was ready to go from "research to engineering with its quantum work."

There also are quantum computing startups like Rigetti Computing, 1Qbit, and Cambridge Quantum Computing, that are getting a lot of attention.

They're not all building a large quantum computer. Some are working on software, while others focus on hardware components or quantum-resistant cryptography.

One company now building what its executives say is the first quantum computer is D-Wave Systems, based in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Although many question whether it's a true quantum computer, D-Wave's system is still being tested by the likes of NASA, Google, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin. That level of interest in testing the D-Wave system - whether it's a true quantum computer or not -- shows how high expectations have gotten around this technology.

Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA Ames Research Center, said he oversees 700 employees -- 10 to 12 of whom are now working on quantum computing. Those efforts include testing the D-Wave system.

About $3 million of the agency's research-and-development budget goes to quantum computing.

While NASA is not yet trying to solve real problems - like massive air traffic management issues or scheduling astronaut time on the International Space Station - scientists there are working to figure out the best way to use a quantum computer and understand the underlying physics, as well as the programming that will be needed for it.

Even if the D-Wave system is better at computational-heavy calculations, it's not big enough to handle real problems for NASA. Something that large could be five to 10 years away, Biswas said.

In addition to testing the D-Wave system, NASA is also working with U.C. Berkeley, Google, U.C. Santa Barbara, Rigetti Computing, and Sandia National Labs - all of which are doing quantum research.

"Our focus is how do we use available technology to accelerate our main mission," said Biswas. "Quantum computing is an enabling technology. We're looking now at what it will let us do."

That plan follows the advice Deloitte's Schatsky is giving to large enterprises.

"I'd expect to see some meaningful commercial use in the next 10 years," said Schatsky. "We're not saying that companies will be buying quantum computers in the next 'n' years, but this is a real phenomenon that is progressing rapidly.... Companies should pay attention and should start to think about the strategic and operational implications of having this.

"I don't think it's worth a huge amount of time in the C-suite, but if [a company] is innovative and forward looking, they should be tracking this phenomenon, and if they have an R&D budget, they should allocate a slice of it to this domain," said Schatsky, noting that some banks have invested a few million dollars in quantum R&D. "I think interest is going to grow."

Dario Gil, vice president of Science and Solutions at IBM Research, has been working on quantum computing there for the last five years, though the company itself has been researching it since the 1970s.

A year ago, IBM announced it not only had a 5-qubit processor but was making it available to customers in the cloud.

According to Gil, IBM has had about 45,000 universities and companies running more than 300,000 experiments on the cloud-based quantum system. Those efforts are not designed to solve production problems but to learn how to work with a quantum machine.

"I absolutely agree that now is the right time to start thinking about quantum," said Gil. "Companies already are and they are engaging very seriously on this topic. I think quantum, for any serious company that relies on computing for their business, can't just be something that is out there on the horizon. At least one person in your organization should be thinking about what is this and what does it mean for this organization?"

He added that IBM is focused on trying to make quantum machines that can be, or routinely are, used on real-world problems in the enterprise within the next three to five years.

"We're already in that window of quantum emerging as a technology that has commercial value," said Gil. "If you were thinking about the web in the early 1990s or mobile in the early 2000s, this is analogous. Nobody would look back and say, 'I wish I had slowed down in my thinking about those technolgies. You have to start understanding about what it is and what it can do."

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A classic quantum test could reveal the limits of the human mind – New Scientist

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A quantum test could tell us what minds are made of

Dominic Lipinski/PA

By Anil Ananthaswamy

The boundary between mind and matter could be tested using a new twist on a well-known experiment in quantum physics.

Over the past two decades, a type of experiment known as a Bell test has confirmed the weirdness of quantum mechanics specifically the spooky action at a distance that so bothered Einstein.

Now, a theorist proposes a Bell test experiment using something unprecedented: human consciousness. If such an experiment showed deviations from quantum mechanics, it could provide the first hints that our minds are potentially immaterial.

Spooky action at a distance was Einsteins phrase for a quantum effect called entanglement. If two particles are entangled, then measuring the state of one particle seems to instantly influence the state of the other, even if they are light years apart.

But any signal passing between them would have to travel faster than the speed of light, breaking the cosmic speed limit. To Einstein, this implied that quantum theory was incomplete, and that there was a deeper theory that could explain the particles behaviour without resorting to weird instantaneous influence. Some physicists have been trying to find this deeper theory ever since.

In 1964, physicist John Bell paved the way for testing whether the particles do in fact influence each other. He devised an experiment that involves creating a pair of entangled particles and sending one towards location A and the other to location B. At each point, there is a device that measures, say, the spin of the particle.

The setting on the device for example, whether to measure the particles spin in the +45 or -45 degree direction is chosen using random number generators, and in such a way that its impossible for A to know of Bs setting and vice-versa at the time of the measurement.

The measurements are done for numerous entangled pairs. If quantum physics is correct and there is indeed spooky action at a distance, then the results of these measurements would be correlated to a far greater extent than if Einstein was correct. All such experiments so far have supported quantum physics.

However, some physicists have argued that even the random number generators may not be truly random. They could be governed by some underlying physics that we dont yet understand, and this so-called super-determinism could explain the observed correlations.

Now, Lucien Hardy at the Perimeter Institute in Canada suggests that the measurements at A and B can be controlled by something that could potentially be separate from the material world: the human mind.

[French philosopher Rene] Descartes put forth this mind-matter duality, [where] the mind is outside of regular physics and intervenes on the physical world, says Hardy.

To test this idea, Hardy proposed an experiment in which A and B are set 100 kilometres apart. At each end, about 100 humans are hooked up to EEG headsets that can read their brain activity. These signals are then used to switch the settings on the measuring device at each location.

The idea is to perform an extremely large number of measurements at A and B and extract the small fraction in which the EEG signals caused changes to the settings at A and B after the particles departed their original position but before they arrived and were measured..

If the amount of correlation between these measurements doesnt tally with previous Bell tests, it implies a violation of quantum theory, hinting that the measurements at A and B are being controlled by processes outside the purview of standard physics.

[If] you only saw a violation of quantum theory when you had systems that might be regarded as conscious, humans or other animals, that would certainly be exciting. I cant imagine a more striking experimental result in physics than that, Hardy says. Wed want to debate as to what that meant.

Such a finding would stir up debate about the existence of free will. It could be that even if physics dictated the material world, the human mind not being made of that same matter would mean that we could overcome physics with free will. It wouldnt settle the question, but it would certainly have a strong bearing on the issue of free will, says Hardy.

Nicolas Gisin at the University of Geneva in Switzerland thinks Hardys proposal makes plenty of sense, but hes sceptical of using unstructured EEG signals to switch settings on devices. Thats akin to using the brain as a random number generator, says Gisin. He would rather see an experiment where the conscious intent of humans is used to perform the switching but that would be experimentally more challenging.

Either way, he wants to see the experiment done. There is an enormous probability that nothing special will happen, and that quantum physics will not change, says Gisin. But if someone does the experiment and gets a surprising result, the reward is enormous. It would be the first time we as scientists can put our hands on this mind-body or problem of consciousness.

Journal reference: arXiv, DOI: 1705.04620v1

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Testing quantum field theory in a quantum simulator – Phys.org – Phys.Org

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May 17, 2017 Experiments at TU Wien (Vienna) -- with a quantum chip, controlling a cloud of atoms. Credit: TU Wien

Quantum field theories are often hard to verify in experiments. Now, there is a new way of putting them to the test. Scientists have created a quantum system consisting of thousands of ultra cold atoms. By keeping them in a magnetic trap on an atom chip, this atom cloud can be used as a 'quantum simulator', which yields new insights into some of the most fundamental questions of physics.

What happened right after the beginning of the universe? How can we understand the structure of quantum materials? How does the Higgs-Mechanism work? Such fundamental questions can only be answered using quantum field theories. These theories do not describe particles independently from each other; all particles are seen as a collective field, permeating the whole universe.

But these theories are often hard to test in an experiment. At the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) at TU Wien, researchers have now demonstrated how quantum field theories can be put to the test in new kinds of experiments. They have created a quantum system consisting of thousands of ultra cold atoms. By keeping them in a magnetic trap on an atom chip, this atom cloud can be used as a "quantum simulator", which yields information about a variety of different physical systems and new insights into some of the most fundamental questions of physics.

Complex Quantum SystemsMore than the Sum of their Parts

"Ultra cold atoms open up a door to recreate and study fundamental quantum processes in the lab", says Professor Jrg Schmiedmayer (VCQ, TU Wien). A characteristic feature of such a system is that its parts cannot be studied independently.

The classical systems we know from daily experience are quite different: The trajectories of the balls on a billiard table can be studied separatelythe balls only interact when they collide.

"In a highly correlated quantum system such as ours, made of thousands of particles, the complexity is so high that a description in terms of its fundamental constituents is mathematically impossible", says Thomas Schweigler, the first author of the paper. "Instead, we describe the system in terms of collective processes in which many particles take partsimilar to waves in a liquid, which are also made up of countless molecules." These collective processes can now be studied in unprecedented detail using the new methods.

Higher Correlations

In high-precision measurements, it turns out that the probability of finding an individual atom is not the same at each point in spaceand there are intriguing relationships between the different probabilities. "When we have a classical gas and we measure two particles at two separate locations, this result does not influence the probability of finding a third particle at a third point in space", says Jrg Schmiedmayer. "But in quantum physics, there are subtle connections between measurements at different points in space. These correlations tell us about the fundamental laws of nature which determine the behaviour of the atom cloud on a quantum level."

"The so-called correlation functions, which are used to mathematically describe these relationships, are an extremely important tool in theoretical physics to characterize quantum systems", says Professor Jrgen Berges (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University). But even though they have played an important part in theoretical physics for a long time, these correlations could hardly be measured in experiments. With the help of the new methods developed at TU Wien, this is now changing: "We can study correlations of different orders - up to the tenth order. This means that we can investigate the relation between simultaneous measurements at ten different points in space", Schmiedmayer explains. "For describing the quantum system, it is very important whether these higher correlations can be represented by correlations of lower orderin this case, they can be neglected at some pointor whether they contain new information."

Quantum Simulators

Using such highly correlated systems like the atom cloud in the magnetic trap, various theories can now be tested in a well-controlled environment. This allows us to gain a deep understanding of the nature of quantum correlations. This is especially important because quantum correlations play a crucial role in many, seemingly unrelated physics questions: Examples are the peculiar behaviour of the young universe right after the big bang, but also for special new materials, such as the so-called topological insulators.

Important information on such physical systems can be gained by recreating similar conditions in a model system, like the atom clouds. This is the basic idea of quantum simulators: Much like computer simulations, which yield data from which we can learn something about the physical world, a quantum simulation can yield results about a different quantum system that cannot be directly accessed in the lab.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Explore further: Bell correlations measured in half a million atoms

More information: Experimental characterization of a quantum many-body system via higher-order correlations, Nature (2017). nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature22310

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The Bizarre Quantum Test That Could Keep Your Data Secure – WIRED

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Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Getty Images

At the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, the basement of the physics building is connected to the economics building by nearly half a miles worth of optical fiber. It takes a photon three millionths of a secondand a physicist, about five minutesto travel from one building to the other. Starting in November 2015, researchers beamed individual photons between the buildings, over and over again for seven months, for a physics experiment that could one day help secure your data.

Their immediate goal was to settle a decades-old debate in quantum mechanics: whether the phenomenon known as entanglement actually exists. Entanglement, a cornerstone of quantum theory, describes a bizarre scenario in which the fate of two quantum particlessuch as a pair of atoms, or photons, or ionsare intertwined. You could separate these two entangled particles to opposite sides of the galaxy, but when you mess with one, you instantaneously change the other. Einstein famously doubted that entanglement was actually a thing and dismissed it as spooky action at a distance.

Over the years, researchers have run all sorts of complicated experiments to poke at the theory. Entangled particles exist in nature, but theyre extremely delicate and hard to manipulate. So researchers make them, often using lasers and special crystals, in precisely controlled settings to test that the particles behave the way prescribed by theory.

In Munich, researchers set about their test in two laboratories, one in the physics building, the other in economics. In each lab, they used lasers to coax a single photon out of a rubidium atom; according to quantum mechanics theory, colliding those two photons would entangle the rubidium atoms. That meant they had to get the atoms in both departments to emit a photon pretty much simultaneouslyaccomplished by firing a tripwire electric signal from one lab to the other. Theyre synchronized to less than a nanosecond, says physicist Harald Weinfurter of the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich.

The researchers collided the two photons by sending one of them over the optical fiber. Then they did it again. And again, tens of thousands of times, followed up by statistical analysis. Even though the atoms were separated by a quarter of a milealong with all the impinging buildings, roads, and treesthe researchers found the two particles properties were correlated. Entanglement exists.

So, quantum mechanics isnt broken which is exactly what the researchers expected. In fact, this experiment basically shows the same results as a series of similar tests that physicists started to run in 2015. Theyre known as Bell tests, named for John Stewart Bell, the northern Irish physicist whose theoretical work inspired them. Few physicists still doubt that entanglement exists. I dont think theres any serious or large-scale concern that quantum mechanics is going to be proven wrong tomorrow, says physicist David Kaiser of MIT, who wasnt involved in the research. Quantum theory has never, ever, ever let us down.

But despite their predictable results, researchers find Bell tests interesting for a totally different reason: They could be essential to the operation of future quantum technologies. In the course of testing this strange, deep feature of nature, people realized these Bell tests could be put to work, says Kaiser.

For example, Googles baby quantum computer, which it plans to test later this year, uses entangled particles to perform computing tasks. Quantum computers could execute certain algorithms much faster because entangled particles can hold and manipulate exponentially more information than regular computer bits. But because entangled particles are so difficult to control, engineers can use Bell tests to verify their particles are actually entangled. Its an elementary test that can show that your quantum logic gate works, Weinfurter says.

Bell tests could also be useful in securing data, says University of Toronto physicist Aephraim Steinberg, who was not involved in the research. Currently, researchers are developing cryptographic protocols based on entangled particles. To send a secure message to somebody, youd encrypt your message using a cryptographic key encoded in entangled quantum particles. Then you send your intended recipient the key. Every now and then, you stop and do a Bell test, says Steinberg. If a hacker tries to intercept the key, or if the key was defective in the first place, you will be able to see it in the Bell tests statistics, and you would know that your encrypted message is no longer secure.

In the near future, Weinfurters group wants to use their experiment to develop a setup that could send entangled particles over long distances for cryptographic purposes. But at the same time, theyll keep performing Bell tests to provebeyond any inkling of a doubtthat entanglement really exists. Because whats the point of developing applications on top of an illusion?

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Donald Trump’s week from hell – Washington Examiner

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For President Trump, it was a week to forget.

As Trump embarked on his first foreign trip, he left behind a full week of scandals and a Russia investigation that increasingly has the White House under siege. Each day brought new revelations that had Democrats smelling blood in the water and Republicans thinking of abandoning ship all of them Russia-related.

The damaging headlines kept coming as the week came to a close Friday, headlines that included the word "impeachment," and which raised questions about what the political climate will be in Washington when Trump returns to the United States at the end of his nine-day trip.

It began on Monday, when there was a report that Trump shared "highly classified" intelligence with the Russians during an Oval Office meeting. The intel was obtained through a foreign partner, believed to be Israel, who had not authorized it to be passed to the Russians.

The White House, led by national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, pushed back on the idea that Trump carelessly blurted out the information. McMaster described it as "wholly appropriate" in the context of the conversation, and the administration stressed that at "no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly."

But worries remained that Trump had violated protocols by sharing with the Russians. Though as president his actions were almost certainly legal, they may have disclosed information that would make it easy for Russia to reverse-engineer sources and methods. As late as Friday, Israel was reportedly unhappy with what Trump did.

Then on Tuesday came a report that Trump encouraged former FBI Director James Comey, whom the president abruptly fired last week, to ease up on the investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn. The source of that information? A memo written by Comey himself and leaked to the New York Times.

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Trump supposedly said. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump's intervention was an abuse of executive power at best, "obstruction of justice" at worst.

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein blindsided the White House by appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. While an escalation of the probe that takes it out of the president's chain of command, Republicans were initially relieved to have a cooler head supervising things.

Trump initially responded with restraint, as the White House issued a careful statement. But then on Thursday, he lashed out, calling the whole Russia investigation a "witch hunt." It was the second time in as many weeks that the president undercut the West Wing's messaging on a contentious matter.

"The base sees things the same ways Trump does," said a Republican strategist requesting anonymity to speak candidly about the president. "But it doesn't matter if they are only 40 percent of the electorate."

Instead of calming down as Trump flew to Saudi Arabia Friday, the week ended with a bang. First, there was a report that Trump yet again tied Comey's firing to the Russia investigation, this time in a conversation with the Russians themselves.

"I just fired the head of the FBI," Trump is quoted as saying. "He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."

Next came news that the Russia probe has reached into the White House, with someone currently serving emerging as a "person of interest" as opposed to former Trump associates like Flynn, Paul Manafort and Carter Page. This was followed by a report that the White House was researching impeachment procedures.

The day was capped off by the announcement that Comey will testify in front of an open session of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"The Committee looks forward to receiving testimony from the former Director on his role in the development of the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, and I am hopeful that he will clarify for the American people recent events that have been broadly reported in the media," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the panel's chairman.

"I hope that former Director Comey's testimony will help answer some of the questions that have arisen since Director Comey was so suddenly dismissed by the President," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee's ranking member. "I also expect that Director Comey will be able to shed light on issues critical to this committee's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election."

There has been no known change in the underlying facts of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. Yet nearly every controversy that sprung up this week was a result of Trump's words or actions, many of which would have been avoided by a more cautious president.

The Oval Office meeting with the Russian officials itself was something that might have been avoided given the cloud hanging over the White House and has now yielded two big, negative headlines.

Trump is watching his White House leak like a sieve and Republicans keeping waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"If he retreats inside the family bubble, that will only make it worse," said a second Republican strategist requesting anonymity to discuss the president candidly. "Ivanka's sole purpose inside the Trump administration is protecting the Trump family brand."

She and her husband, fellow Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, joined the president on his international trip.

During the campaign, Trump weathered weeks that would have ended a more conventional politician's career, only to win the presidential election in the end. After this week, however, one wonders how many political lives Trump has left.

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Donald Trump will never change: And after a week of farce and fiasco, even Republicans know impeachment is possible – Salon

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Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president last November, many of the billionaires critics tried to convince themselves that he would finally tone down his divisive rhetoricand curtail the unhinged behavior now that he was actually going to be president of the United States. It was a kind of defense mechanism against the utter shock of the situation. Hardly anyone had truly believed that Trump would or even could be elected president, so when he was, many dumbfounded (and terrified) people resortedto self-deception in order to cope.

Of course, many Republicans had similarly deluded themselves earlier in the year, after Trump had managed to win the partys nomination. Now that he was entering the general election as a major-party candidate for president, the reasoning went, he would finally pivot and start acting well, presidential.

We all know how that turned out, of course. After just four months in the Oval Office it should be absolutely clear that President Trump will not be changingany time soon. That is to say, he will not stop tweeting like an unhinged maniac early in the morningor peddling blatant falsehoods and conspiracy theories or revealing classified information to foreign officials in order to boast, or repeatedly breaking democratic norms whether it be personally attacking sitting judges who rule against his policies, or calling journalists enemies of the people. In other words, Donald Trump will not (read:cannot)stop acting like Donald Trump an impulsive, vindictive and unscrupulous billionaire with the temperamentof a pubescent boy.

And at this stage in the game, it is unclear whether Trump will even make it to the one-year mark in office. The New York Times bombshell reportearlier this week,which claims that the president tried to get former FBI director James Comey to drop an investigation into the presidents formernational security adviser, Michael Flynn, suddenly made impeachment (and possibly criminalprosecution)seem like a real possibility.

Over the past week, of course, the heat kept building. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed as a Justice Department special counsel to oversee the investigation into the Trump campaigns apparent connections to Russia. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was revealed to have joked last year, in a recorded conversation, that he believed Trump was on Vladimir Putins payroll. And investigators are now reportedly focusing not just on former close associates of Trump, like Flynn or onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort, but also on people who currently work in the White House.

No longer are genuine calls for impeachment limited to the liberal blogosphere and social media. Major publications and politicians are nowdropping the I-wordand considering whether the president belongs in office.

Weve seen this movie before, saidSen. John McCain, R-Ariz. I think it appears at a point where its of Watergate size and scale.Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., meanwhile,replied in the affirmative when asked by The Hill whether the reported Comey memo might merit impeachment. But everybody gets a fair trial in this country, stated the congressman. A senior official in the Trump administration was even more candid (albeit anonymously) to the Daily Beast, saying: I dont see how Trump isnt completely fucked.

There is no doubt about it: President Trump is in serioustrouble and there is no doubt that he did this to himself. It is hard to see how something like this wasnt always inevitable, considering the kind of man Trump is (and always will be). Over the past four months, theTrump administration has been a constantcircus, with one fiasco after another. Most of these disasters have been entirelyself-made unlike the president himself, whose success is a result of having a wealthy father.

It is absurd to think that anyone imagined that Trump could suddenly change his ways and become a reasonable and level-headed adult. Trump is neither reasonable nor level-headed, and while he may be twice the age legallyrequired to be president, he is temperamentally a child.

The real question now, it seems, is whether Republican politicians will finally surrender to the factthat Donald Trump is a borderline insane person(and possibly a criminal) who deserves to be evicted from the White House. The next questionwill be how severely this monumentaldebacle impacts the Republican Party and the future of American politics.

The GOP is going to be ultimate victim of [Trumps] confidence game, remarks David Faris in The Week.Both the Republican Party and the president are already deeply unpopular, less than four months into his presidency Rather than protecting him from the consequences of every indecency, crime, and provocation, the smarter play for Republicans would be to begin the process of removing the president from office immediately.

Whether Republicans will go this route and it doesnt seem as improbable as it did just a few days ago is asyet uncertain, but they must realize at this point that things arent going to get any betteror calm down as long as this man is president.

The final question that we must all ask ourselves after this real-life tragicomedy has finally played itself out (one hopes before 2020) ishow this deranged and disturbinglyunfit man was elected president and how we can make sure that nothing like this happens again. After the presidency of Richard Nixon, various reforms were passedto crack down on political corruption and limit presidential power.Forty years later, another disreputable president will hopefully inspire another wave of reform.

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Donald Trump will never change: And after a week of farce and fiasco, even Republicans know impeachment is possible - Salon

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Opening First Foreign Trip, Donald Trump Tries to Leave Crisis Behind – New York Times

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New York Times
Opening First Foreign Trip, Donald Trump Tries to Leave Crisis Behind
New York Times
WASHINGTON President Trump embarked on Friday on his first foreign mission since taking office, beginning a challenging nine-day, multistop, multifaceted journey to the Middle East and Europe and leaving behind a capital consumed by investigations ...

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Opening First Foreign Trip, Donald Trump Tries to Leave Crisis Behind - New York Times

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A Prayer for Donald Trump – New York Times

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New York Times
A Prayer for Donald Trump
New York Times
Given the mess that he's in and the martyrdom that he hallucinates, it's only fitting that Donald Trump would turn toward God. He has fled the country not a moment too soon! for his first foreign excursion since taking office, and it's less a ...

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A Prayer for Donald Trump - New York Times

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Don’t underestimate Donald Trump – Chicago Tribune

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Last October, we were in the midst of debate preparation for Hillary Clinton when news of the "Access Hollywood" tape broke. The senior Clinton team immediately wondered what the event's impact would be. Would there still be a debate two days later? Would Donald Trump show up? Would his running mate, Mike Pence, take his place? How could Trump survive?

Trump not only showed up for the St. Louis debate that Sunday, he stood on the stage and told Clinton that if it were up to him she'd "be in jail." Ten days later, Trump insisted at the Las Vegas debate that allegations made against him by nine women of groping and other unwelcome physical contact were so baseless that he "didn't even apologize to [his] wife" for his actions. Twenty days after that, Trump was elected president of the United States.

The lesson: It is dangerous to underestimate Trump's survival skills. And so, as the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Russia mess has Washington buzzing with nascent impeachment talk, 25th Amendment scenarios and rumors about resignation, it is worth remembering how tenaciously Trump pursued power, along with five key assets he has to maintain his grip on it.

First, while he is proving to be an incompetent president, Trump is an incredibly skilled politician. He did not come to the presidency by accident: He spent 30 years laying the groundwork for his run attacking President Ronald Reagan on trade in the 1980s, putting out a campaign book in 2000, forcing President Barack Obama to release his birth certificate in 2011. He vanquished an all-star GOP field in 2016 beating a Bush, the Republicans' Obama (Marco Rubio) and lionized candidates such as Scott Walker and Chris Christie. He resoundingly won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. He was the host of a top-rated television show for almost a decade: no small communications achievement.

Second, there is the power of the presidency, and Trump's ability to use its allure as a bulwark against accountability. Trump's staff may feud with one another, but with two family members ensconced in the West Wing they seem prepared to defend him by any means necessary. Well-regarded people - such as national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein have shown a willingness to sacrifice their own credibility to protect Trump. And a retinue of prominent law firms appear ready to provide legal and public relations cover in defense of Trump and his family.

Third, there is the desire of many observers to try to normalize Trump and get "back to business." This obviously includes most Republican members of Congress, who have shown a penchant for dismissing concerns about Trump so long as he continues to pursue an agenda of repealing Obamacare and cutting taxes.

But this instinct extends beyond partisans: Remember how media commentators, including some liberal voices, acclaimed Trump's presidential leadership after one well-executed speech three months ago? It might take shockingly little - a successful foreign trip next week or progress on Obamacare repeal in Congress - for pundits to conclude that he is "back on track."

Fourth, there is the intensity of his most devout supporters. While Trump has falsely boasted about many things, he was probably right when he said that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and still maintain their support. Trump's "tribal" supporters back him, not because of what Trump does or says, but because they want the affiliation they enjoy as Trump supporters. While these hard-core supporters were not sufficient to put Trump in office - experts believe this group is 25 percent to 40 percent of the electorate - even at the lower end of that range, they make up a majority of Republican primary voters in most Republican-held districts. That is a powerful check on Republican senators and representatives who might stand up to Trump - as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., learned when he was booed in his own district for distancing himself from Trump during the "Access Hollywood" conflagration.

And fifth, there is the frightening risk that Trump's die-hard supporters are more devoted to Trump than they are to the rule of law. The United States prides itself on being "a government of laws, not of men," but polls show that an increasing number of Americans generally, and Trump supporters specifically, have "lost faith in democracy." Sinclair Lewis's brilliant novel "It Can't Happen Here" portrayed an alliance between populist rhetoric and corporatist policies that established an iron grip on government and trampled legal accountability. A Trump campaign email, sent the day the latest Comey allegations emerged, echoed Lewis's depiction, labelling the growing scrutiny of Trump as "sabotage," accusing government officials of being against an "America First agenda" and urging supporters to "be prepared to go into the trenches to FIGHT."

Trump is down but not out. Indeed, he may even be at his most dangerous in "wounded animal" mode. The effort to hold him accountable for any abuses of power will face formidable obstacles in the weeks and months ahead. He should not be underestimated.

Washington Post

Ronald A. Klain, a Post contributing columnist, served as a senior White House aide to both Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and was a senior adviser to Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign.

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Don't underestimate Donald Trump - Chicago Tribune

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