A Quantum Contrarian Con Artist

When “skepticism” stops being a contribution and becomes a business model

Introduction

In the growing spotlight on quantum tech, a new kind of opportunist is taking the stage – the contrarian con artist. These are not the honest skeptics who ask hard questions in good faith. They are bad-faith actors cloaking themselves in “skepticism” to hijack the discourse around quantum computing and its related fields. As investment and public interest pour into quantum computing – along with the likes of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD) – these opportunists have found a niche. They loudly dismiss the entire quantum or post-quantum readiness endeavors as overhyped or hopeless, not to improve the science, but to build their own brands and line their pockets, or stroke their ego.

In short, they’ve discovered that in an TikTok era of short attention spans and excitement, being confidently negative can be a profitable con. And the damage they do – misinforming the public, sowing confusion, and undermining genuine progress – needs to be called out in no uncertain terms.

Bad-Faith Skeptics Exploiting the Quantum Boom

The past few years have seen quantum computing leap from obscure labs to front-page news. Governments are investing billions, startups boast of new breakthroughs, and everyone from cybersecurity chiefs to CEOs is being told quantum breakthroughs are coming.

With this surge of interest, it was perhaps inevitable that contrarians would emerge claiming the whole thing is a sham. This pattern is playing out across the quantum ecosystem. In quantum computing itself, a handful of vocal personalities insist that useful quantum computers will never arrive – pronouncing the technology “always 20 years away” or even likening it to a hoax.

In the realm of cryptography, buzzwords like “quantum-proof” and “post-quantum” attract both genuine innovators and snake-oil peddlers. Some boast “perfect secrecy” via exotic ciphers or one-time pads, a classic lure in crypto scams (not a new scam by any stretch). Others claim we don’t need post-quantum cryptography at all, waving away the hard work of NIST and global cryptographers with absolutist certainty. And in QKD – a legitimate quantum tech for secure key exchange – contrarian critics have not only raised technical concerns (some fair, many dated) but in extreme cases paint QKD as an outright scam, even a conspiracy. For over two decades, skeptics dismissed QKD as impractical, unscalable, “overengineered” – going so far as to label real commercial QKD systems “snake oil”. This contrarian grift sits inside a wider marketplace of quantum hype, pseudoscience, and outright scams – a landscape I mapped in Quantum of Flapdoodle.

These bad-faith skeptics share a common playbook. They adopt the guise of the iconoclast, the lone truthteller “brave” enough to say that the quantum emperor has no clothes. They mix grains of truth (yes, quantum tech still faces steep challenges) with sweeping, dishonest generalizations (e.g. “quantum computers will never work,” “QKD will never be useful“). They posture as the antidote to hype, but offer only cynical dismissal in its place.

Crucially, they are not engaged in the field’s progress or solutions at all – their interest is in monetizing negativity. Some launch consulting gigs or paid newsletters premised on “debunking the quantum hype,” selling advice to anyone nervous about being duped. Others angle for influencer status on social media, milking applause from a lay audience that can’t easily vet their bold claims.

In the most egregious cases, they have even aligned with financial incentives: for example, in 2022 a short-seller hedge fund issued a sensational report accusing a leading quantum hardware firm, IonQ, of running a “scam” – conveniently timed to drive the stock down for profit. (Experts later noted the report was exaggerated and misleading; the episode underscored how a claim that something is baloney can itself be baloney.)

In all these scenarios, the self-styled contrarian isn’t advancing knowledge or protecting the public – they’re exploiting controversy for personal gain.

The Allure of the Confident Contrarian

Why do these doom-saying contrarians attract any audience at all?

The sad truth is that confident negativity often sounds credible to the uninitiated. Psychology has documented a strong negativity bias in how we perceive expertise. We instinctively lend more weight to pessimistic voices – the critic who smugly dismisses a new technology – than to the enthusiastic advocate. One famous study found that readers rated a harshly negative book reviewer as far more intelligent and “competent” than a positive reviewer of the very same content.

In other words, we default to thinking the naysayer is the smartest person in the room. I’ve unpacked this pattern – where sounding smart is confused with sounding dismissive – in more detail in The Easiest Job in Quantum Computing: Being a Cynic. This effect is magnified on social media. Dour pronouncements and scathing hot takes tend to get more attention and shares than nuanced or upbeat commentary. As one observer wryly noted, “When I make a caustic joke or cutting comment? Social media gold“. The contrarian con artists know this. They deliver unrelenting negativity with supreme confidence, knowing it plays to an audience’s biases. Counterintuitively, the less evidence they provide, the more incisive they can appear – they’re not bogged down in technical caveats or data, just a snappy proclamation that all the experts are wrong. To a layperson, that performance of certainty can be persuasive, especially when wrapped in an “I’m immune to the Kool-Aid” attitude.

There’s also a related halo effect: when prominent scientists express skepticism about quantum timelines or usefulness, their skepticism can be genuinely valuable – and it can also be weaponized. Yann LeCun, for example, has described quantum computing as a fascinating scientific topic while openly questioning whether truly useful machines will be fabricated at all (or at least anytime soon). That kind of blunt reality-check is not a problem. It is part of how the field stays intellectually honest: it pushes enthusiasts to stop selling vibes and start talking in constraints, assumptions, error budgets, and engineering realities.

The problem is what happens next in the attention economy. Bad-faith contrarians clip the nuance, amplify the doubt as a verdict, and then use it as social proof that “even the experts say it’s a scam.” The skeptical statement stops being a hypothesis or a caution and becomes a cudgel: no calculations, no references, just a famous name waved like a credential. That move doesn’t clarify anything – it short-circuits thought. And because most people can’t easily verify claims about decoherence rates, error-correction overhead, lattice cryptography, or single-photon detectors, a contrarian’s confident tone often substitutes for actual credibility.

This Isn’t the First Tech Revolution with Grifters and Skeptics

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because the pattern of loud contrarianism arises in every technology wave – and it often follows a predictable arc. I’ve spent over three decades working in emerging technologies, and I’ve seen the cycle repeat in field after field. In the 1990s, as AI stumbled through its “AI winter,” it became fashionable to declare “AI has failed and will always fail.” Pundits wrote off AI as a mirage, useful only for chess games and toy problems. Even when I published my AI book in 2016, many have laughed at the topic I chose. Yet those comments and premature obituaries didn’t age well – by the 2020s, AI had exceeded even its early hype in many areas (from image recognition to language translation). The extreme pessimism was disproven by actual progress. Healthy skepticism helped temper unrealistic claims, yes, but the absolutist stance that “AI is a dead-end” now looks laughably wrong.

We saw a similar dynamic with the internet and mobile technology. It’s almost hard to recall, but in the early days of the web and smartphones, plenty of “experts” confidently dismissed these innovations. A 1995 book famously predicted the internet would implode, calling it no more significant than the fax machine. In the late 2000s, during the roll-out of 5G wireless, doubters abounded. Many argued 5G was a solution in search of a problem – who needs gigabit mobile speeds? Critics harped that millimeter-wave signals would never propagate far, that ultra-low latency was a pipe dream. Fringe voices even fanned conspiracy theories about 5G causing health problems, which grabbed more headlines than nuanced engineering realities. Admittedly, early 5G deployments were underwhelming relative to the hype. But as the technology matured, real successes accumulated – and those dire predictions that “5G is useless” now look shortsighted. Once again, the contrarians had seized on short-term difficulties and extrapolated them as impossible barriers, only to be proven wrong as engineers systematically solved problems.

The graveyard of tech predictions is littered with sweeping pronouncements of impossibility that didn’t hold up. For a deeper look at why every hyped technology attracts both necessary and useful skeptics, and performative contrarians, see my longer piece on quantum contrarianism.

This historical perspective matters because quantum technology is now at a similar inflection point. It has enormous potential but also very real challenges ahead – fertile ground for both hype and doom-saying.

The lesson from earlier revolutions is that constructive skepticism can help identify and fix problems, but destructive cynicism adds nothing useful. In field after field, the contrarians who simply bet on failure ended up contributing little beyond quotable soundbites. Meanwhile, the real progress came from those who acknowledged challenges yet kept at the hard work of innovation. The presence of contrarian grifters in quantum tech is not unique – but neither will they be vindicated if history is any guide. But in the meantime, the contrarian con artists can do real harm by distorting public perception.

The Contrarian Con: Tactics and Tell-Tale Signs

How exactly do these bad-faith contrarians peddle their negativity? There is a discernible playbook of tactics that surfaces again and again across quantum computing, PQC, and QKD. Recognizing these moves makes it easier to separate genuine critical analysis from a contrarian con job:

Absolute Certainty of Failure – with Zero Evidence

The hallmark of the contrarian con artist is the sweeping, definitive claim. “Quantum computers will never work.” “There will never be useful quantum cryptography.” “PQC is a scam for the uneducated.” These pronouncements are delivered as gospel, without data to back them up.

The cynic rarely engages with the nuanced technical literature on error rates or photon loss or lattice cryptanalysis; they simply assert impossibility. It’s the inverse of hype, but just as baseless. It takes seconds to declare “Quantum will never work,” even though truly understanding quantum computing or cryptography takes years. The contrarian counts on the boldness of the claim to carry the day, not its accuracy.

Cherry-Picking and Straw Men

Another tactic is to seize on genuine challenges and exaggerate them into fatal flaws, while ignoring all counterexamples.

Yes, today’s quantum processors are error-prone – so the cynic proclaims error-correction can never be solved (brushing off the steady progress being made). Yes, QKD cannot replace all of public-key crypto – so the cynic calls it “useless” outright, ignoring its niche but real use-cases.

And if any quantum company missteps or overhypes a result, the contrarians will hold it up as representative of the entire field (“See? It’s all smoke and mirrors!”). This selective framing is designed to make the technology look as bad as possible. It’s the equivalent of pointing to an early 1900s airplane crash and concluding humans will never fly – while ignoring the Wright Brothers are already in the air.

Impersonating the Voice of Reason

Contrarian grifters love to portray themselves as the lone sane voice amid a crowd of foolhardy believers. They adopt an insufferably smug tone: only they are level-headed enough to see through the “fanfare.” In reality, within the quantum community, the challenges and timelines are well understood – researchers are often the first to stress what remains unsolved.

But the bad-faith skeptic acts as if everyone in the field is a deluded fanatic except them. It’s a false savior complex: “Thank goodness I’m here to save you from this folly.” This posture flatters the audience’s ego too – listeners are invited to feel smart by siding with the skeptic against the “sheeple.” It’s cynical manipulation, not genuine intellectual rigor.

Attacking Motives and Credentials

When pressed to defend their doomsaying, contrarians often pivot to attacking the character of those who disagree. Rather than provide evidence, they’ll sneer that “proponents have something to sell” or are driven by greed.

Every positive development becomes suspect as mere marketing fluff or grant-chasing.  (Ironically, these accusers themselves often have books, consulting services, or paid newsletters they’re hawking alongside their negativity.)

Similarly, they may dismiss critics by questioning credentials: anyone countering their claims is “not a real cryptographer/physicist” or is too “vested” to be honest. These ad hominem tactics are meant to shut down debate and elevate the cynic’s stature by tearing others down. In a legitimate scientific argument, motive attacks are a red flag – but to a casual audience, they can be persuasive if the audience doesn’t realize the contrarian also has motives.

No Track Record, No Receipts

Another tell is embarrassingly simple: the loudest “quantum is a scam” voices often have no track record that matches their certainty. No relevant education, no peer‑reviewed papers, no serious preprints, no open‑source work, no patents, no history of building or breaking anything in quantum engineering or cryptography – and yet the confidence level is absolute. That mismatch matters. Quantum computing, PQC, and QKD are not the kinds of domains where correct conclusions routinely appear without the math, the models, or the scars of real work.

Of course, lack of formal credentials is not a conviction. Smart outsiders exist, and nontraditional paths sometimes produce real innovation. But the pattern is consistent: legitimate outsiders show their work, invite scrutiny, and let experts try to break the argument. The contrarian grifter does the opposite – they substitute swagger for substance, and treat “Where’s the mechanism?” as an insult. In a technical field, that combination – maximal certainty, minimal trail – isn’t refreshing honesty. It’s a warning label.

Appeals to Secrecy and Conspiracy

Particularly toxic is when contrarians dip into conspiracy-minded narratives. For example, some quantum naysayers insinuate that the entire field is a collusive bubble – that thousands of physicists, engineers, and investors worldwide are either deluded or knowingly perpetrating a fraud for funding.

QKD, in particular, has been a lightning rod for wild claims. A vocal minority asserts that QKD is not just overhyped but effectively a scam kept alive by shadowy government interests or clueless policymakers. No evidence is offered for these dramatic claims of course. But the very notion of a “hidden truth” can be compelling. It casts the contrarian as the heroic whistleblower who sees through a grand plot. In reality, these claims are usually a mix of misunderstanding and sensationalism. (Yes, QKD has real limitations and skeptics – no, there isn’t an NSA conspiracy tricking the world into using it.)

When you hear someone allege that “quantum X / PQC / QKD is a fraud and nobody else is brave enough to say it,” your baloney detector should ping loudly.

Marketing Their Own Snake Oil

Perhaps the most duplicitous maneuver is when a contrarian discredits mainstream progress only to pitch their own miracle solution.

This is common in the security realm. We have seen figures dismiss modern encryption and post-quantum algorithms, all to promote their proprietary cipher that supposedly offers “unbreakable” or “perfect secrecy”. One infamous company bragged it had achieved perfect secrecy with short keys – a claim that flies in the face of basic math and provoked derision from real cryptographers. Others push one-time-pad-based schemes as “quantum-proof” secure messaging, ignoring the enormous practicality issues and side-channel weaknesses that experts immediately recognize.

This tactic is textbook: sow FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about standard solutions, then sell the anxious audience your snake-oil alternative.

In quantum, it might be a contrarian consultant saying, “Don’t believe IBM or NIST – our secret technology is the only thing that works!” When you pull back the curtain, you usually find that their “tech” is unproven at best or outright nonsense at worst. The rule here is simple: if someone claims everything in quantum is garbage except the thing they happen to be selling, run.

Financial Incentives to Gloom

As noted, some contrarians have a direct financial stake in failure. Short-seller firms will publish slanted “research” calling a quantum company a hoax, aiming to tank the stock. Or a pundit talking down an entire sector may be quietly invested in a rival technology.

This doesn’t mean every negative claim is false – but follow the money. Reputable critics disclose their interests; contrarian con artists conceal or downplay them. If a dramatic accusation emerges, consider who profits if people believe it. In the IonQ short-selling saga, the sensational headline “Quantum Ponzi scheme” got clicks, but it turned out the authors stood to gain from the panic they were causing. That context matters immensely in weighing credibility.

Taken together, these tactics form a playbook of marketing-driven negativity. The contrarian con artist isn’t guided by open-minded inquiry; they’re guided by what sells. And in certain circles, negativity sells extremely well. It’s easier to scare people or tap into contrarian chic than it is to educate or to build something real.

We should be clear: this is not the same as healthy skepticism. In fact, quantum computing has been healthier because of contrarians who do skepticism correctly: they argue in public, they show their assumptions, and they make claims that can be tested. Gil Kalai is a good example of “skepticism done scientifically” – one can disagree with his conclusions, but the value is that the critique is explicit (noise models, fault‑tolerance feasibility, scaling arguments), and therefore falsifiable. Scott Aaronson has played a similar role from within the quantum community: he has been relentless about puncturing inflated narratives and calling out hype, but he has also been willing to update his view as evidence shifts. In 2024, he wrote that he was more optimistic than ever about fault‑tolerant quantum computing if progress continues at its current rate, pointing to concrete improvements in logical encoding and gate fidelities. That is what legitimate contrarianism looks like: disciplined skepticism that moves when the data moves. The scammers and comment‑section absolutists do the opposite – they issue permanent verdicts, then treat any request for rigor as an attack.

From Skepticism to Cynicism – The Damage Done

It might be tempting to shrug off the contrarian grifters as a sideshow. After all, if the technology is real, won’t progress continue regardless of a few loud cynics? The danger is that bad-faith skepticism can inflict real harm in the meantime. It can distort public and policymaker perceptions, leading to poor decisions. For example, a CEO or government official who believes the “quantum is a scam” narrative might slash vital research funding or delay critical preparations (like upgrading encryption to PQC) under the false impression that it’s all a boondoggle.

We’ve already seen hints of this: some organizations are hesitating on post-quantum migration because a contrarian voice convinced them there’s no hurry – potentially leaving them dangerously exposed if a breakthrough in quantum computing comes sooner than the cynics assume.

In the security realm, dismissing all quantum-safe technologies can be as foolish as overhyping them. A balanced approach – investing in vetted PQC, exploring QKD where it makes sense – is the prudent path, not a wholesale rejection based on a YouTuber’s rant or a viral op-ed.

Moreover, the contrarian con artists contribute to a toxic cynicism that clouds genuine discourse. Engineers and researchers working hard on quantum solutions suddenly find themselves accused of being scam artists or self-deceived hype men. This erodes trust and makes it harder to have the nuanced conversations we need. Yes, quantum computing today is nascent and often overhyped – that’s exactly why clear-eyed, evidence-based discussion is critical.

There is also a quieter cost that doesn’t show up on quarterly reports: the talent pipeline. Over the past year, multiple smart young people have said – privately, and often reluctantly – that they are hesitating to specialize in quantum information because they keep hearing the field will go nowhere. That is exactly how bad‑faith contrarianism becomes self‑fulfilling. If enough capable students and early‑career engineers avoid the space, progress slows, fewer credible voices remain to explain nuance, and the cynics can point to the slowdown as “proof” they were right. In emerging technologies, funding matters – but talent is the harder bottleneck. Cheap cynicism repels talent long before it ever “wins” an argument.

Bad-faith contrarians don’t contribute to that clarity; they replace hype with FUD, which helps no one. As Carl Sagan once warned, “balanced skepticism” is healthy, but becoming a reflexive cynic – rejecting everything out of hand – is just as blind as naively accepting hype. Unfortunately, the rise of the contrarian grifter blurs that line, making skepticism look like cynicism.

In the end, the quantum contrarian con artists will not halt the progress of quantum technology – but they will leave a trail of confusion and wasted time if we let their narratives go unchallenged. We’ve seen this movie before. The internet didn’t collapse because some called it a fad; AI didn’t fizzle out because skeptics mocked it – but along the way, those voices sowed doubt and delayed investments. In quantum tech today, we must similarly tune out the absolutist doom-mongers and focus on the evidence. Quantum computing faces big hurdles, certainly. It might take longer than optimists hope to deliver on its promises. But calling it a “scam” or declaring with certainty it will never work is just as absurd as claiming it’s a magic fix for everything. The truth, as usual, lies in painstaking research and incremental advances – things contrarians have little patience for.