"The reality is that none of these companies — or any other quantum computing firm, for that matter — are actually earning any real money."
I don't see any argument that the technology is fundamentally unsound or doesn't scale, even though that's an argument I'm pretty amenable to.
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To be clear, there are people making sophisticated arguments for fundamental barriers to quantum computation. For instance, the quantum-skeptical mathematician Gil Kalai writes about his thoughts on recent progress on QC at (https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2022/05/26/waging-war-on-quan...). His view is considerably more nuanced than this FT article, and much more conducive to learning and discussion. I hope you take the time to read it, and I think I'll submit this to HN main as well.
Though it is true that we don't know the degree to which we will be successful at developing this technology, and we know there are fundamental properties we will need to contend with (for better and for worst), this is entirely consistent with how "early technology" develops.
AFAIK, even "commercially oriented" quantum computing projects are better understood as being in a research stage at this time. When you do research, in general, it feels daunting and it's not at all obvious that things are going to work. (my field is biochem)
The problem is that none of this scales beyond toy systems with a hand full of qubits. As soon as you try making it bigger, everything starts falling apart. I feel like this is a fundamental difference to digital logic which is extremely easy to scale.
