by Amara Graps
One of my current favorite books at home is Cal Peternell’s Twelve Recipes. He is a professional chef who wrote the cookbook to codify a core set (dozen) of recipes for his sons to carry with them into their future lives. Each recipe has a basic form, then Peternell adds variants that transform the cookbook into a multi-year meal plan. The recipes use simple ingredients and are presented in the style of a story, making them extra-memorable.
With Peternell’s cookbook in mind, a tempting meal for clicks on the news headlines occurs roughly once-per-year, using the following recipe ingredients:
- China
- Quantum
- Encryption
This mix of ingredients invokes fear and clicks every time. The most recent ‘meal’, one week ago, included a potential cryptographic attack using a D-Wave quantum annealer that was published online in the Chinese Journal of Computers and stories of impending doom from the popular press. (See examples here, here, and here.) This naturally triggered a response from D-Wave and several others.
Next time you meet a ‘meal’ in the popular press with these ingredients, I suggest some resources to guide your fingers away from the headlines so that your heart-rate won’t set trigger your smart watch.
The China Ingredient
When we analyze China quantum technology results, there is a mix of ‘we should pay attention’ and ‘this is not particularly newsworthy’.
New trends -are- appearing beyond China’s well-known communication strengths, in the quantum computing domain. For example, see the growth of quantum computing with research, patents, and QuantumCTek’s new 504-qubit superconducting quantum computing chip, in QCR’s article: China’s Quantum Technology Strengths.
From last winter’s GQI Quantum Tech in China Focus Report (*), the key take-away quotes:
The breadth and depth of the Chinese program spans R&D, academia, private enterprise, startups, investors, politicians, the media, and hundreds of other influencers – a program so wide and deep unlike any other on the planet.
With all this, we were unable to find a “smoking gun” and none of our data, research or interviews leads us to believe that there is an immediate “quantum threat” coming out of China that would jeopardize Western cyber security or commercial success.
We do know that China makes a concerted effort to spread misinformation on the goal and progress of their quantum tech program.
The Encryption Ingredient
About a decade ago, Michele Mosca’s ‘theorem’ (see page 21 of pdf- presentation) about quantum technology’s growing capability versus current encryption standards, helped justify the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) 2016 post-quantum-technology (PQC) strategy to establish a handful of PQC algorithms with the international community. The ‘store now and decrypt later’ concept in PQC circles describes the risk from bad actors who intend to steal encrypted datasets now and wait for quantum encryption to break those RSA keys. The day when RSA will be broken is called ‘Q-Day’. According to Peter Clay at Aireon, who spoke last week at Quantum Security and Defence Association’s weekly QKD/QSAT lecture, bad actors started storing such datasets, already at that time, ten years ago. Therefore, it -is- time to move on this topic today, but don’t panic. The industries most advanced in this field to implement new security protocols, according to Clay, are the Financial institutions and the Air Traffic Controllers.
As for ‘Q-Day’, there are reasonable worst case and most likely scenarios. See the next figure from GQI’s 74-page Quantum Safe Outlook report (**).
For those who want to dive into the mathematical details, Frank Leymann has a terrific lecture about post-quantum cryptography. In Leymann’s Q-Day estimate, when he says that a quantum computer that has 372 qubits and ~1500 layers is powerful enough to break RSA, he estimates Q-Day to be a few years away.
GQI’s approach to Quantum Safe might be best described as multi-layered with a combined physics (QKD) approach and the mathematical approach (PQC). See IEEE Spectrum’s interview with GQI’s Doug Finke to explain these quantum technology differences. GQI’s 74-page Quantum Safe Outlook report can provide more information to guide companies ready to implement these changes (**).
The Quantum Ingredient
Of course we can say more. You can search in Quantum Computing Report for the latest quantum news and find Reports that track quantum hardware and algorithm developments at our Reports page.
In Summary, if the next Quantum Hype Omelet headline is too much of a magnet, you have choices:
- Don’t panic
- Read the latest assessments for Q-Day from GQI
- Check your company of their status for their Quantum Safe transition
- Ask GQI
- Join groups like Quantum Security and Defence Association
- Again, don’t panic.
(*) Quantum Tech in China by GQI and QuIC is a nearly 80-page report that is the most comprehensive analysis of China’s quantum technology to date. If you are interested to learn more, please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].
(**) Quantum Safe Outlook Report. Despite the challenges, the transition to quantum-safe cryptography is essential to ensure the security of our digital infrastructure in the future. Organizations that start planning now will be well-positioned to meet this challenge. If you are interested to learn more, please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].
October 19, 2024
