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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 30 March 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It reviews quantum entanglement, nonlocality and EPR experiments, and asks whether nonlocal quantum effects could carry observer-to-observer signals faster than light. The paper describes proposed experiments and an example of real-time Earth control of a Mars rover. It concludes that there is no compelling answer yet and that experimental tests are needed.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/30/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD reviews quantum entanglement and nonlocality with a focus on whether those phenomena might be usable as a means of faster-than-light communication between observers, especially for real-time space operations over interplanetary distances. The report surveys the relevant quantum experiments and no-signal theorems, then examines proposed communication schemes based mainly on momentum-entangled photons, including scenarios involving superluminal and retro-causal signaling. However, it repeatedly acknowledges that the central question remains unresolved experimentally, and it gives substantial attention to the coherence-versus-entanglement tradeoff and other features of standard quantum mechanics that may prevent usable signaling even if non-local correlations are experimentally validated. Overall, the document is an exploratory analysis of whether quantum nonlocality could conceivably support a practical communications application rather than a demonstration of prospective utility.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOil 8fPl@IA:L tt.!l! 6NL I lead to any causality problems or paradoxes but would bring the remote parts of the solar system and perhaps the universe to the here and now. XII . Another Superluminal Possibility: Nonlinear Quantum Mechanics Thus far, the focus has been on the possibility of nonlocal communication within the framework of standard quantum mechanics. However, even if nonlocal communication proves impossible in standard quantum mechanics, there could be another path to nonlocal communication. The no-signal theorems described in Part III above are based on the formalism of standard quantum mechanics. Such "proofs" become invalid if quantum mechanics is allowed to be slightly "nonlinear," a technical term meaning that when quantum waves are superimposed, they may generate a small cross-term not present in the standard formalism. Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate for his theoretical work in unifying the electromagnetic and weak interactions, investigated a theory that introduces small, nonlinear terms to standard quantum mechanics (Reference 25). The onset of nonlinear behavior is seen in other areas of physics-for example, laser light in certain media and, he suggested, might also be present but unnoticed in quantum mechanics itself. Weinberg's nonlinear quantum mechanics subtly alters certain properties of the standard theory, producing new physical effects that can be detected through precise measurements. Two years after Weinberg's nonlinear quantum mechanics theory was published, Joseph Polchinski published a paper demonstrating that Weinberg's nonlinear corrections upset the balance in quantum mechanics that prevents superluminal communication using EPR experiments (Reference 26). Through the new nonlinear effects, separated measurements on the same quantum system begin to "talk" to each other, and faster than-light and/or backward-in-time signaling becomes possible. Polchinski describes such an arrangement as an "EPR telephone." The Weinberg/Polchinski work had implications that are devastating for the Copenhagen Interpretation's representation of the wave function as "observer knowledge." Polchinski has shown that a tiny nonlinear modification transforms the "hidden" nonlocality of the standard QM formalism into a manifest property that can be used for nonlocal observer-to-observer communication. This is completely inconsistent with the Copenhagen Interpretation's "knowledge" interpretation. Weinberg's experimental predictions have led to a large number of experimental tests that have searched for the predicted effects. Regrettably, all such experimental attempts to observe the nonlinear effects have failed, producing only very low upper limits. Apparently, if there are nonlinear effects that modify the quantum formalism, they are extremely small in Earth-based laboratories. These negative results are not surprising, however, because the atomic transitions used involve only a few electron volts of energy. If quantum mechanics does have nonlinear properties, they would be expected to depend on mass-energy and to appear only at a very high energy scale, particularly at the highest energy densities or in very high gravitational fields. In the everyday world of weak gravity and fairly flat space, this path to nonlocal communication appears to be blocked, because the "vehicle" for sending the signal is not observable. UNCLASSIFIED/ f FOR: OFFI&il.t.k W&liii OP•k¥ 22
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 32 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.