Why is the timeline to quantum-proof everything constantly shrinking?

When Google announced last month it was moving up its own internal timeline for migrating to quantum-resistant forms of encryption, it started a broader conversation in the cybersecurity and cryptography communities: Just what was pushing one of the largest tech corporations in the world to significantly accelerate its adoption of post-quantum protections for its systems, devices and data?

In the weeks since, new research has lended weight to those claims. A joint research paper from the California Institute of Technology, its tech early-stage company Oratomic and the University of California concluded that technological advancements in neutral atom arrays indicate a quantum computer capable of breaking classical encryption may require as few as 10,000 quantum bits (or qubits), not millions as previously thought.

Qian Xu, a CalTech researcher and coauthor of the paper, said the findings are significant and indicates that such a computer could potentially be operational by the end of the decade.

“For decades, qubit count has been viewed as the main obstacle to fault-tolerant quantum computing,” Xu said in a statement. “I hope our work helps shift that perspective.”

Google’s Quantum AI division released its own research paper around the same time, outlining a twenty-fold decrease in the number of physical qubits believed to be needed to break some of the most popular forms of 256-bit elliptic curve encryption algorithms used to currently protect cryptocurrencies.

“We note that while viable solutions like [post-quantum cryptography] exist, they will take time to implement, bringing increasing urgency to act,” wrote Ryan Babbush, director of research and Hartmut Neven, vice president of engineering at Google.

Google’s decision to accelerate its shift to post-quantum encryption reflects a growing consensus.  Over the past year, CyberScoop has heard similar concerns from tech and government officials, typically centered on two quantum-related threats facing governments and business players today.

One is the capability of foreign nations and cybercriminals to collect sensitive, encrypted data today in the hopes of breaking it later with a quantum computer. This “harvest now, decrypt later” technique is one of the main reasons proponents push for faster adoption of post-quantum encryption.

The second stems from a string of notable quantum computing breakthroughs over the past two years, many led by researchers in China.

Andrew McLaughlin, chief operating officer for Sandbox AQ, a cloud computing firm that focuses on application of AI and quantum computing technologies, said concerns can be summed up as “hardware, math and China.”

Advancements in areas like neutral atom arrays have given scientists more powerful hardware, while breakthroughs in mathematics like that in the Google research paper have found ways to use that hardware more efficiently. 

But he also pointed to what he described as exciting (and worrying) advancements in the field from some of America’s greatest international rivals.

Beijing has invested heavily in quantum computing, empowering top scientists like Pan Jianwei, a professor at China’s University of Science and Technology, with the resources and support to push the boundaries of technological development and position China as a world leader in quantum science.

Late last year, Chinese state media reported that Huanyuan 1, a 100-qubit quantum computer developed by researchers at Wuhan University on a Chinese government grant program, had been approved for commercial use. The reports claim that orders worth more than 40 million yuan (or $5.6 million dollars) have already been processed in sales, including to subsidiaries at domestic telecom China Mobile and the government of Pakistan.

Experts say quantum computers pose a potentially exceptional threat to blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.

Nathaniel Szerezla, chief expansion officer at Naoris Protocol, a firm that develops quantum-resistant encryption for blockchain infrastructure, said the paper from Oratomic and Caltech has “shifted the timeline” for planning around quantum encryption, particularly for cryptocurrency and blockchain platforms.

The underlying assumption was a “fault tolerant” quantum computer (i.e. one capable of threatening classical encryption) would require millions of qubits, but the paper suggests that it may actually only need as few as 10,000 qubits.

“Ultimately, we have gone from planning for a threat two decades out to one that overlaps with systems actively being deployed and funded,” Szerezla said.

For digital assets like cryptocurrency, the implications are “immediate” because the private key encryption underpinning billions of dollars on the blockchain were never designed to withstand attacks from a quantum computer.

“Migrating a live blockchain to post-quantum standards is a different problem entirely from upgrading a centralized system,” Szerezla continued. “You are dealing with immutable ledgers, billions in locked liquidity, and decentralized governance that cannot mandate a coordinated upgrade.”

Not everyone believes that we are on the cusp of a quantum hacking apocalypse.

On BlueSky Matthew Green, a computer science professor and cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University, called the Google and Oratomic papers a good “precautionary” analysis of the long-term challenge of quantum encryption.

However, he expressed skepticism that quantum computing had enough “lucrative immediate applications” to push the field beyond its foundational research stage to more practical applications. He also questioned whether some of the newer quantum-resistant algorithms vetted by NIST would truly stand up to a real quantum computer. They were designed to protect against a threat that is still largely theoretical, and several of the post-quantum algorithms initially evaluated by NIST have turned out to contain vulnerabilities that could be exploited by classical computers.

That’s if one does indeed arrive in the next decade. Green said this week that he’s not convinced quantum-enabled hacks will be something to worry about in his lifetime, though he acknowledged that prediction might “haunt him” someday.

Nevertheless, “I’d bet huge amounts of money against a relevant quantum computer by 2029 or even 2035,” he wrote.

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