Quantum computers will supercharge the world but they present serious national security risks
The alleged dangers of AI have been shoved down people’s throats for years, led by doomerism about it eliminating human jobs or wiping out mankind itself.Yet, there are far fewer discussions about how scientists are on the cusp of a breakthrough more powerful and much more worrying: Quantum computing.The tech — pursued by Amazon, IBM, Google, Nvidia and others in the US — will revolutionize what computers can do, based on quantum physics.Giving a glimpse at what’s possible, Google claimed its Willow quantum chip took just five minutes to solve a computational problem so complex it would have taken today’s most advanced super-computers approximately 10 septillion years to crack, according to one of the company’s blog posts.“Quantum computers are exceptionally good at breaking codes,” John Preskill, Caltech’s Director of the Institute for Quantum Information, told The Post.“When quantum computers are sufficiently capable, the [encrypted security systems] we’re using now every time we send our credit card number over the internet or connect to a website will no longer be secure.”In the wrong hands such tech could prove extremely dangerous — and both China and Russia have made no secret of the ambitions in this area.The field is developing so rapidly, President Trump signed two executive orders on Monday directing urgent federal attention to the experimental research.Trump fast-tracked the development of a US government supercomputer, ordering “the first-ever quantum computer powerful enough for scientific research” to be built within two years in a federal laboratory.He also anticipated a looming global telecommunications security crisis by ordering quantum-safe security updates to “high impact systems” by 2031 — stepping up a previous deadline of 2035.Google agrees with that thinking, announcing in April that “Q-Day,” the moment when quantum computers will be able to crack general encryption, is rapidly approaching — possi...