High-tech and telecommunications

While quantum computing could supercharge scientific discovery, materials design, and AI, it simultaneously threatens to break the foundation of today’s cybersecurity. Current encryption standards, such as RSA and ECC, which protect everything from online banking to classified government communications, rely on the near impossibility of solving certain mathematical problems with classical computers. But with quantum algorithms such as Shor’s algorithm, these problems can be solved exponentially faster, rendering today’s public-key encryption useless almost overnight. This looming threat has led to a new urgency in cybersecurity circles. Experts are calling it the Quantum Apocalypse—a scenario where powerful quantum computers could decrypt vast troves of previously secure data. Experts fear this scenario to be only decades away. The threat is not just in the future: data harvested today can be decrypted tomorrow once quantum machines are operational. The only way forward is to upgrade our cryptographic infrastructure before it is too late.

July, 2025