Quantum computing could break the internet. This is how
Shor says that the “toy” quantum computers we have today are not reliable enough to run his algorithm. It will take several conceptual breakthroughs and a huge engineering effort before we can scale quantum computers to the necessary 1mn qubits.
His best guess as to when this might happen? “I would predict between 20 and 40 years,” he says. But he does not rule out the possibility that the physics challenges will prove too hard and we will never build workable quantum computers. Shor, who has worked as a maths professor at MIT for 20 years, has also published poetry on quantum computing.
“The best quantum computers today, produced in countries like China and at Google, can do on the order of 100 operations before failure”, explains Steve Brierley, founder and chief executive of Riverlane — a company building operating systems for quantum computers. “To implement Shor’s algorithm you need something like a trillion quantum operations before failure.”
But researchers are employing all kinds of ingenious techniques to overcome these challenges. “Scientific breakthroughs don’t always come on a predictable time. But we’re looking at years and not decades for this level of innovation,” says Julie Love, product leader for quantum computing at Microsoft.
For several years, the US government has been planning for a quantum world and has been running competitions to find the most secure communication protocols of the future that would forestall the threat of Q-day. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology is in the process of approving new cryptography systems — based on problems other than factorisation — that are secure against both quantum and classical computers. “It’s really a race between quantum computers and the fix — which is to stop using RSA”, says Brierley.
But whatever new security protocols are finally approved, it will take years for governments, banks and internet companies to implement them. That is why many security experts argue every company with sensitive data should be preparing for Q-day today.
However, the obstacles to developing 1mn-qubit quantum computers remain daunting, with some private sector investors predicting a “quantum winter” as they lose faith in how quickly a quantum advantage can be achieved.
Even if private sector investment slows, the escalating geopolitical rivalry between the US and China will provide added impetus to develop the world’s first robust quantum computer. Neither Washington nor Beijing wants to come second in that particular race.
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