🌅 Today’s stat: 1-in-3

SOURCE

Global Risk Institute

WHAT TO KNOW

• Without getting lost in the weeds, traditional encryption essentially relies on complicated equations that would take a classical computer billions of years to solve, hiding the encoded information by taking advantage of the computers’ formulaic 0s and 1s and limited ability to run possible solutions one at a time.

• leveraging the computers’ formulaic 0s and 1s and limited ability to run possible solutions one at a time to hide the encoded information. Quantum computers, on the other hand, harness the mechanics of subatomic particles to run on 0s, 1s, or anything in between, allowing the computers to explore several possible solutions simultaneously and potentially break any form of modern encryption.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The day a quantum supercomputer is capable of rendering most forms of encryption obsolete is known as “Q-Day,” an aptly ominous descriptor for the chaos such an event would cause. On Q-Day, everything would become vulnerable for everyone: emails, texts, public records of any kind, control over electric grids, locations of nuclear submarines, and the functioning of the global financial system itself. Cybersecurity experts say there’s a one-in-three chance Q-Day comes within the decade, while others believe it may have already happened in secret.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• President Barack Obama and his administration took the quantum threat seriously, launching an initiative to standardize quantum-resistant algorithms back in 2015. In 2022, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology debuted four quantum-resistant algorithms designed to counter the quantum threat, followed by the first three post-quantum encryption standards released in August 2024.