this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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So the thing with useful quantum computers is that if they ever do make it actually work and manage to scale it up, the first thing they will do is render most modern encryption obsolete over night. My guess is that Bluffdale has a mountain of encrypted data they'd start cracking immediately.
My cynicism can't allow me to think that we'd hear about it until years after that backlog is cleared and the NSA (and now by extension Israel and Russia) have backdoored any network of interested 10 times over.
The far more likely scenario is that this like stable/cold-ish Fusion, practical graphene, CRiSPER miracle cures are still way more theory than driveable cars at this point and for next several years at least. These folks just want more money and have to keep claiming they are close to get it.
Post quantum cryptography is already standardized and is being actively rolled out.
https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography
https://www.openssh.org/pq.html
Yes. Which is good, because it's easy to imagine that every intelligence agency is either over or under-reporting how much quantum decryption they have available.
https://signal.org/blog/pqxdh/
Many companies already have transitioned to mathematically proven quantum resistant encryption.
Sure, some old stuff will be vulnerable, but we've known the risk for a while and have already started preparation.
There's an area of research producing "quantum ready encryption", which uses algorithms that are believed to be secure against quantum attacks. There's been no wholesale migration to this yet, and the protection remains hypothetical until the attacks actually happen.