Technology, Connected - When Will Quantum Computers Be Able To Steal Your Bitcoin?

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

IBM's Lory Thorpe warns that quantum computers could soon crack the encryption protecting our banks, health records, and personal data, enabling "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks that threaten global security. Through IBM's collaboration with NIST and major institutions, she's racing to develop quantum-resistant algorithms before current encryption systems become obsolete. Join hosts Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson to explore how organizations and individuals can prepare for this looming cryptographic crisis, featuring insights from Apple's quantum-safe iMessage initiative.Please enjoy the show. --TIMESTAMPS(00:00) Intro: Disruptors and Curious Minds(02:30) Meet Lory Thorpe of IBM Quantum(03:21) Lory’s Journey: From Telecom to Quantum Security(07:01) Why Healthcare Needs Post-Quantum Protection(09:41) "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later": The Quantum Data Risk(12:00) IBM’s Work with Governments and Regulators(16:30) Cryptography 101: What You Need to Know(18:47) The Cost of Quantum and the Threat to Today’s Encryption(21:20) IBM & NIST: Setting Quantum Standards Together(22:08) Inside the 3 Quantum-Resistant Algorithms(25:17) Apple Adopts Post-Quantum Encryption in iMessage(25:52) Crypto Agility Explained: A Key to Future-Proof Security(29:54) The RSA Encryption Debate: Is the Quantum Threat Overblown?(38:45) Thought Experiment: November 1st, 2031 – The Quantum Deadline(42:51) Where Cryptography Touches Everyday Life(46:57) How AI and Quantum Shape IBM’s Strategy(52:35) Carryover Question for Next Episode--Follow Thinking On Paper:Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/thinkonpaperpod⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/thinkingonpaperpodcast/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@thinkingonpaper/videos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/thinkingonpaper⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠--Past guests on The Thinking On Paper Show include: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ciaran Murray⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (web3 for journalists), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Torrey Smith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Robotics For Medicine), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jason Lynch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Quantum Computing), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joe Fitzsimons⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Quantum Computing), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Dana Sydorenko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Gaming), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Don Norman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Humanity Centered Design), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mercina Tillerman Perez⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Circle & Crypto), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tyler Adams⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Blockchain), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Todd Haselhorst ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠(Blockchain for Logistics), ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vince Yang⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (ZK Proofs)

Disruptors and Curious Minds. Welcome to another episode of Thinking on Paper. My name's Jeremy. This is Mark. We talk about people building the future rooted into what we're doing today, looking down the road to tomorrow and trying to make sense of it all. There's a lot of stuff coming at you. There's a lot of things on the horizon.

And we're busy enough. I've got four kids. I'm busy enough just trying to get my kids dressed and out the door. So we're here to help digest this stuff, give some tangible takeaways. Our topic today is amazing in light of our quantum season. And what happens when quantum computers figure out how to break stuff? Mark, how are you feeling, man? Overwhelmed with stringing these episodes together with an amazing quantum season.

And today bridges my two interests. So my writing is all about blockchain and crypto quantum season. My curiosity is all about quantum. So this episode will combine those two interests. I'm very excited about it. I think there's a little disclaimer. So we're going to be talking about post-quantum cryptography. As we've said, we're quantum dangerous, we're crypto-dangerous.

So we're going to be using some acronyms that we probably don't understand. So bear with us. We'll be trying to explain these different types of cryptography as we go. So if anything, you don't get anything, just leave a comment and we'll get back to you with those answers. But yeah, looking forward to it, Jeremy. Have you done your homework? Yes, I have. I have done my homework.

I always do my homework, Mark. Good. Yeah, so post-Quantum cryptography, before we bring our guest on, literally this is, this is the point in time on the horizon where quantum computers have figured out how to, how to unlock what, cryptography does to protect things, kind of in a very basic, basic realm. So we're looking at a point in the future that's either cryptography has to change a little bit or regulations have to do something to make sure things don't happen. I don't know, there's a whole bunch of things that we can explore. But instead of me pontificating, let's bring in the expert, Mark.

Hopefully we'll get to make some real sense of some of the news stories of late as well about cryptography being cracks and all not. So yeah, welcome. Our guest is Laurie Thorpe from IBM. She's going to be speaking to us about NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Standards for post quantum cryptography and how the industry is collaborating together to make those a reality, how different industries can prepare,

how what they should be preparing for and lots of other things. So welcome to the show, Lori, and thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. Excellent. We're in England this week, so we've gone from the American now in England. So that's good news for our English fans, Jeremy. That's right. That's right.

So quickly, so before we jump in, Lori, on the carryover question from the last show, we had D-Wave-on, quantum computing, one of the earliest players in the quantum computing game. give us just a touch of background. I looked at your background a little bit, and it's, you've done a lot in the telecom world, right? So give us, give us a little background about your experience in telecom and how that translated into security and privacy protection and all that good stuff. Sure. So, yeah, so my background is definitely in telecom many, many decades.

I've been working in the telco space since the very early days of mobile. So I've lived through all of the various Gs. So from 2G, from to 3G to 4G to 5G. For many years, I was a solution architect and security was always very much part of the remit. since I've joined IBM, I've been working in the context of the IBM quantum team looking at what is the impact both of quantum computing on telco and looking at the potential benefits that quantum can bring to telecommunications, but also then looking at what does post-quantum cryptography mean, how the telcos can protect them. themselves and continue to guarantee the security, the privacy that everybody expects from the connectivity that we rely so much on today. And that is sort of one of the things that I've been doing over the last few years. 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, I remember the early days.

It must have been a very interesting process to be part of it. It was moving so quickly. Is it still moving as quickly now? as it was when the progression from 2G to 3G? I think that, you know, at the time, to give you an anecdote, when I started working in telco, my mom was asking me, you know, why would anybody want a phone that they bring with them? You know, you've got a phone at home.

Why would you want to bring a phone with you? What's wrong with you? So that gives a little bit of a measure of how much things have actually changed. I think that Telco is in probably a challenging place at the moment in terms of its evolution and the business model that has sustained it up until now, which I think now is facing some sort of challenges. But I still think it's a hugely exciting place. And I also think, you know, we shouldn't just be thinking of Telco as our phones. we need to be thinking of telco as an enabler for digitalization. It's an enabler for digital society, for digital economy.

And that is really what makes a lot of this really exciting because we're not talking about a single sector. We're really talking about a capability that enables everything we do as a society. It literally is the connected tissue for the digital experience, right? So if you don't have that, we can't have these interactions back. and forth. We can't collaborate. We can't share data. We can't work with data. We can't pull it in. We can't push it out. Like, yeah, it's really, really good to think about it from that perspective. So let's do the carryover question. I know we're changing going from Telco to health care real

quick, but I wanted to do this, do this handoff because like we always like stitching these shows together. So Mark, ask that carryover question we had from DeWay from last week. Yeah, Murray Tom, head of evangelism at D-Wave Quantum. His question for you was about cybersecurity from different perspective, and he was particularly interested in the healthcare industry. And his question was, what advice do you, IBM, or the greater community, provide for healthcare professionals and what should they be doing to prepare short-term and long-term? So healthcare is an interesting one,

Because if we think of the sensitivity of the data that's involved, and we think of the long-term impact of that, healthcare is actually one of the sectors that really needs to be thinking about how to protect data, not just against a future quantum computer, but how do we ensure that data isn't harvested now to be then decrypted later? and the recommendation I would have is to start looking now at, first of all, a plan for post-quantum cryptography going forward, but also how to protect some of that long-shelf life, important data that sort of people rely on being kept safe. I've got a silly question already, Jeremy. That didn't take long, but silly questions are the best.

Something you just said then, you said you don't want the data to be harvested now to be decrypted later. And I hadn't really thought about it in that way. So we'll get into this and again, apologies for we're jumping around a little bit with, if the cryptography is updated at a later date, if it's changed to encrypt the data, but if they have the data now that's encrypted in a certain way and the quantum evolves that it can crack this cryptography, but it can't crack what comes later, if they already have this data that's encrypted in this way, obviously the data can't be back encrypted, so they would be able to hack what they have now, and that would be the same across industries,

so military as well. So is that right? Okay. That is right. And that's why when we talk about post-quantum cryptography, often people think that this is a problem for the future. So a lot of people ask the question of when will a cryptographically relevant quantum computer appear, which in my view is the wrong question because we don't know for certain. We don't have a definite date. So if we think of the comparison with Y2K, there isn't a corresponding, you know, 31st of December 1999 at 1159, that's your sort of D-Day. Here it's a little bit more uncertain. But I think what we need to be doing is thinking about what are the things that we can do now to mitigate something that we know is going to happen because we are seeing quantum computers that are evolving. We are seeing algorithms that are being optimized, which mean that actually maybe some of these capabilities will actually appear sooner than people expect.

And the harvest now decry later. once data is stolen and even if it's encrypted, so it can't necessarily be decrypted immediately, but once a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is available, then it can be decrypted. And once it's stolen, it's stolen. So, you know, there's not a lot that we can do with data that's been stolen, which is why we need to be thinking about that data that has a longer shelf life. we need to be protecting it now. We shouldn't be waiting for a cryptographically relevant quantum computer to be appearing

because then it will be too late. Then you need to call the lawyers. Yeah. So absolutely. So IBM talks to is relied upon by a lot of large companies for technological advice and foresight and all of that stuff. Herein lies the challenge with some of these large, actually all companies really, really. So you have an IT organization that, you know, isn't always funded necessarily the way that

IT organization would want to be funded, right? Because they're getting all these directives and like, hey, I need you to do XYZ. And then the money that comes to them is not always matching what needs to, what needs to be done. So a lot of things can get pushed off, right? So if there's no immediate threat, then it's kind of like, all right, well, we can wait, we can wait, we can wait. How are you helping bring in the focus now for some of that stuff? Because are you seeing some of the challenges like, oh, we've got plenty of time on this. And how are you dealing with some of those conversations? So there are different aspects to how we're dealing with it.

So the first is working very closely with government, with policymakers, with regulators, to help them understand and gain awareness of the threat. We're also working very closely with our clients to ensure that there is an understanding and awareness. I think the awareness piece is really, really critical because I think once it is understood, then the right decisions can be made based on risk appetite, based on business priorities. So we are aware that obviously there are a lot of priorities and a lot of the particularly the security organizations are under a lot of pressure

because they're seeing a lot of threats that are materializing and some potentially they'll be seeing them as more imminent than the quantum threat. But I think raising awareness is a really critical part of the work that we do. But I know it would be But the other aspect is the industry level engagement. And here, IBM has put a lot of effort into working with different industries.

And basically, again, raising that awareness, but also coalescing around how to act as an industry. Because a lot of these capabilities are not going to be, these problems are not going to be solved by one individual company. It will take, you know, as it were, it takes a village. We need to ensure that we have the supply chain lined up. We need to align with regulation and government, and we need to ensure that, you know, that all of these different elements fall into place. So if we think of standards, if we think of supply chain,

if we think of the products that we're expecting, these are all things be somehow, how aligned and coordinated, and that takes effort. And IBM has taken a very, very central role in bringing together industries to be able to, to be able to do that. Mark, you talk about recently in the last couple of shows, you referenced something happened, something that happened with some researchers in Shanghai that cracked some kind of cryptography. Laurie, are you familiar with that? And what are your thoughts on what happened there

and what does that mean? Well, I think we've over over the last sort of few years, we've been seeing a lot of, a lot of announcements, you know, some more accurate than others. I think the paper that you're referring to was later sort of analyzed and sort of disproved. There had been some some errors made in the in the calculation at a certain step of the way I think at the the seventh step there was an error in the calculation so the papers basically said you know we've we cracked our essay and um and I think what that shows is that there are a lot of people that are thinking about this this is something that a lot of people are thinking about and are working on so the fact that that particular paper was disproved, that doesn't mean that others are working on this.

And it doesn't mean that maybe the next time, actually, there won't be an error in the paper. And we will actually have to potentially accelerate when we thought that this was going to be possible. I think that so from what I know so they cracked a 20 digit or something RSA code but in reality RSA is like 2000 bit cryptography and then obviously it's exponentially high so it's nowhere near that but that's a nice segue maybe so I'm from crypto and Bitcoin uses an elliptic curve cryptography or something that are different types of cryptography. Maybe we could just for our more advanced or for our beginners as well, maybe outline three or four of the most commonly used cryptographies, including that one of Bitcoin and the RSA, maybe a little bit in how they differ and how susceptible they are to attack or being hacked first and then move on to the kind of the standards that NIST are trying to build around those. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the first thing we can start with is what is sort of majorly affected by the quantum threat is public key cryptography. So there has been some work done on symmetric key cryptography. We believe it's less sensitive to the quantum threat, even though there will need to be some work done to ensure that the key length,

are sort of fit for purpose, which even now in some cases, you know, we've sort of left cryptography, less sort of old cryptography in there and haven't necessarily been actively managing that may be as well as we could have. When we talk about different algorithms that will be affected, So when we look at public key cryptography, ultimately think of RSA, think of elliptic, elliptic curve cryptography, think of Diffy-Helman. These are some examples of the cryptography that will be affected by a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. These are the algorithms, but obviously then the implementation of the algorithms, not all algorithms are created equal and not all implementations are created. equal and that is also why we can't just give a single D day or Q day, as it were, around when cryptography will be, will be compromised. I think one thing maybe to think about is that obviously

when the first cryptographically relevant quantum computers will become available, to be able to crack cryptography, it will be potentially quite an expensive and quite a difficult thing to do. Then as time goes on and the capabilities sort of become more democratized, then it will become easier and cheaper to crap cryptography, which may also determine which are going to be the targets of that, that cryptography, if that makes sense. Yeah, I don't remember who was on the show, Mark, that kind of put this thought in my brain, but it's kind of more about, you know, instead of taking 10 years and $100 million to break, you know, cryptography, maybe it'll take $7 and like $50 million and maybe

$5 and $30 million, right? So like the appeal to try it might start to be a little bit more palatable for the malcontents out there, maybe. The malcontent. Well, that's what I've been I think I was equal one that put that. Jason Lynch, I think he put that in your... Well done. Well, done. Okay. Well, let's move on to the NIST work that you've been doing and maybe give us a high-level detail about some of the outputs that you're starting to see as it would relate to a chief technology officer at an organization. Okay, so I guess the first thing is NIST stands for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST a few years ago back in 2016, they initiated a program, which is the post-quantum cryptography program. And the intention of that program is basically to standardize algorithms that are resistant not just to classical computers, but also to quantum computers. So that process, it's very much a global process and it has evolved a lot of, a lot of sort of entities from all over the world.

This includes sort of the entire sort of global cryptography community, if you like. and what they did is they put out a call for proposals for algorithms that they could standardize. And when they first started this process, I think initially there were something along the lines of around 80 algorithms that were submitted. Now, that process, it lasted for many years because what NIST has done, they've done a fantastic job of basically looking at the same. security of the algorithms, but also looking at things like the performance of the algorithms in an attempt to standardize the best ones. What has happened recently, which is very exciting for us, is we've reached a first milestone where they've standardized the first three post-Quantum cryptography algorithms. And this happened at the end of August. Those first

three algorithms are, we're happy to say that IBM was co-developer in two of those three algorithms. So they selected these algorithms or the draft standards were issued. Now we have the standards. And what that means is that effectively we've got a first set of standards that we can start to implement into products, into protocols. to be able to start to make our systems quantum safe. So it's a huge milestone for us, very, very excited because obviously this is, if you like, it's a starting point for the implementation.

And can those three algorithms be used today in, if somebody made another WhatsApp, for example, it could be incorporated to that as a means of encryption. if somebody made a new, a new meme coin on Solana, they could use that encryption today to make, and would that be quantum resistant to an indefinite future or 100 years or 1,000 years or forever? Well, I think, I mean, security is saying that something is indefinitely secure is always challenging, you know, there's always, I think it's tempting fate

in some ways. Everything is secure until it isn't. So we could argue that the algorithms have gone through very, very rigorous testing, and we have absolute confidence that they are secure. It doesn't mean that they'll be indefinitely secure. And maybe later we can talk a little bit about crypto agility, because I think that's a really important part of, the whole post-quantum cryptography discussion.

But fundamentally, yes, the answer to your question is, yes, we can start to implement them. In fact, in the case of IBM, we started a couple of years ago, we implemented what then became one of the standardized algorithms. We started to implement in our main, in our Z-16 platform. And this was really a great, first of all, a great learning curve because understanding how to implement the algorithms is sort of going to be, you know, part of that journey towards a quantum safe architecture. But yes, I mean, the short answer is definitely we should be starting to implement them. And even if we look at what, for example, Apple have done recently, so they have implemented a hybrid scheme in the iMessaging solution, and they are using the post-quantum cryptography algorithms that have then since been standardized.

Now, Mark, no Apple Rants today. We're going to have to hold you back on the Apple Rants. But you, so, Lori, you had me. No, that's a plus one, I think, for Apple. or that kind of, like they've gained a bit more, a bit of their respect back. Oh, okay, okay. Lori, you had my curiosity peaked at crypto agility. Can you explain that?

Yeah, let's not wait. So crypto agility, it's, so we've been very, very fortunate over sort of the last few, the last few years, the last few decades, the, the cryptography that we've been using has actually held up very, very well. And, you know, with the, obviously with the few exceptions, there are the, we have done some cryptography migration, but actually there's a lot of cryptography out there that has held up for decades. And that is really good news.

But what it's also done is it's put in a situation where potentially we may have, have become a little bit, what's the word, complacent in how we manage cryptography. So one of the big challenges that we have today, and we're seeing this across different industries, one of the big challenges that we have is that we don't necessarily know where and how cryptography is used in the systems that we use today. And this is doubly true in the sectors where there's a lot of legacy. So if we think of financial services or we think of telco where potentially you have multiple generations of technology that are being sort of built one on top of the other, knowing where that cryptography is actually being used and how it's being used, that is not at all obvious. Now, what does that mean?

it means that if something happens where the cryptography needs to be changed, like as is the case for the quantum threat, the first thing we need to do is understand where we're using the cryptography, understand how relevant it is in terms of what it's protecting, what would be the business impact of sort of if that cryptography were to fail. but also it means that we're not really in a position to very quickly swap out cryptography and going forward, the quantum becoming quantum safe is a little bit of a catalyst to maybe managing cryptography better going forward and ensuring that we're building security

in a way that is able to in an agile way respond to threats going forward, whether it's a quantum threat or whether it's a different threat. And that's why we're really building that crypto agility message as part of the quantum safe journey. Very interesting. Jeremy, I don't know if you saw it's kind of crypto agility, but Vitalik Boutran was talking about with Ethereum that one of their post-quantum solutions is to, to hard fork Ethereum, and then I guess they would input, how they don't know how the data,

reprogram it with this new algorithm to make it quantum. It's cool. Do you mind if I push back? So, although this question isn't really very useful now, because what you said about kind of stealing the data and decrypting later makes it a little bit less valid. I think, I think that's, for me, that's the big takeaway is that it doesn't actually matter how good the cryptography gets in the future if you steal the data now.

now you can decrypt it. And obviously some of the information that you steal, it will be diluted over time. But a lot of it won't be. And if it's however many years in the future, if you get hold of it, if the wrong people, if in the various parties, get hold of it, then it could be detrimental to everything. I want to just read, it's from a, I'm not sure who it's from. It says current estimates are that quantum cracking of a single 2048 bit RSA key, would require a computer with 20 million qubits running in superposition for about eight hours.

Okay. The coverage of the September, so those Shanghai researchers, is essentially overblown because symmetric encryption, unlike RSA and other asymmetric siblings, is widely believed to be safe from quantum computing. As long as bit sizes are sufficient, PQC post-quant cryptography experts are confident that AESD 256 will resist all known quantum attacks. Is there a threat of overblowing the threat or are we not? Are we overblowing the potential danger of this? I mean, that is kind of a million dollar question.

But I guess maybe just to the point that you made around the AES 256. So there are two, I mentioned earlier, around symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. So the main risk that we see around a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is down to Shores algorithm. And that's why it affects asymmetric cryptography mainly. That doesn't mean that symmetric cryptography will be completely unaffected. And I think that you're right. I think we need to be looking at key length and we need to be making sure that there is sort of sufficient, you know, that we've got sufficiently long key length implemented. Now, does that mean it's 100% sort of, you know, we can definitely say 100% that it won't be affected?

again, I think that's always a dangerous thing to be doing when we talk about security. So I think a lot of these things, we need to be looking at what is really the art of the possible and how that evolves. And what are the things that are actually causing that risk to materialize? So on one side, obviously, you've got the evolution of the performance of quantum computers. you'll have things like error mitigation and error correction that is evolving and quantum computers are becoming more and more powerful. And you've also got ultimately algorithms that are being optimized and that are becoming more effective and more efficient at doing certain things. And I think the combination of all of these things happening, you don't know what it is that is actually going

to cause, for example, something to all of a sudden become possible. I don't know if that has really answered your question. Is there a risk of this being overblown? Maybe, maybe there is. But on the other hand, we need to be thinking about, you know, are we ready to take that risk? And then going back to the Harvest Now, DeKrip later, I mean, that risk is it's here now.

So depending on what data you're sitting on, what is the data that you're protecting, if the data has a short shelf life, then you might say, well, actually, I don't see it as a huge risk. But if the data that you're protecting is data that is going to be relevant in 10 years time. So if we think of healthcare, if we think of defense, if we think of some of the areas where, you know, data is really, you know, these are the crown jewels. You know, it depends how gung-ho you want to be with your security and with the data that you've been tasked to protect. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the key. I was going to ask Jeremy to paint his worst-case scenario. And if you're taking the risk and of that coming to reality, to fruition, then, yeah, why take the risk? Yeah.

Sorry, go ahead. No, please. No, I was just like to say that the other thing maybe to consider is that the implementation of post-quantum cryptography, this isn't something that we are going to do next week. This is something that takes a significant amount of effort in time. So one of the things that we are doing is looking at how we can make it more efficient, more effective and more secure. And really, the answer to that is the sooner you start in that process, the better you'll be able to manage the journey. So if you think of how you can, for example, combine your post-Quantum cryptography transformation with other technology transformations that are going on, in parallel anyway, that is sort of one of the areas.

Actually, you can do it a lot more efficiently if you start early rather than waiting and then having to sort of do it either in a rush or sort of go back and and fix things that you're building today. So one of the things you don't want to do is be, is to build more cryptographic debt. What do you mean by cryptographic debt? I think I know where you're going, but what do you mean by that? So if I'm implementing a new widget and I have the opportunity to put, for example, to secure it against a quantum risk, so to implement post-quantum cryptography and secure it against a post-quantum risk, that means I won't be increasing the cryptographic debt. If I'm implementing the new widget and I decide that I'm just going to put old cryptography in there,

a classical cryptography in there, that means that at some point I need to go back and change that cryptography. So there is a case for particularly if we think, you know, I'll go back to telco. If we think of the next generation of telco capabilities, I want to be implementing post-quantum cryptography from the start. So one thing that I don't want to do in the case of, for example, 5G evolution or 6G is to implement classic cryptography that I then need to go back and change. Because that will effectively, that will cost a lot more as well as sort of having an impact in terms of effort. So where possible we want to be building post-quantum cryptography into any new capabilities that we implement as soon as possible. Yeah, it's like Mark, Mark, you go into the pub and just keep putting everyone's tab on your credit card and then dealing with it down the road. Yeah, it's always going to come back and buy you in the air.

That's right. No, that makes a lot of sense. I like that. And, you know, where are my heads going with a lot of this? And I've got a fun thought experiment that we could run into if you're up for it. And then maybe we can deal with our takeaway question. But what I gathered from listening to you is the idea of like the cryptographic. you know, agility kind of thing is really interesting because, you know, it's no longer a set

it and forget it kind of thing. It's no longer, hey, did you click the encrypt? You know, click the security button. Are you doing your thing? Yeah, it's just kind of good. It's more of, hey, we put something in today, but we got to monitor it. And maybe there are some things that we could do on a monthly basis to increase that, to add code to it, to do something a little bit better with that, right? So I thought that was an interesting takeaway because a lot of people are just like, yeah, my stuff's encrypted. Well, let's unpack that a little bit in, and see. So that's really cool. All right. My thought experiment for you, and, you know, no is a perfectly acceptable response to this. But let's imagine, let's imagine during this, during this interview, you get a

call, like a WhatsApp just pops up and, and it goes, hey, yeah, Lori, so here's what's happening right now. It's like your NIST, your buddies from NIST. So it looks like, they figured out of date. It's going to be November 1st, 2031, Quantum is going to be all cryptography. That's where we are. We got to get to work. How are we sitting today? And, you know, what would the message be to everybody if we now have, like, the asteroid date, you know, up and running as November 1st, 2031? Well, to be honest, I think the answer, regardless of whether we have a date or not, I think the answer, would be the same, maybe with slightly different senses of urgency, but I think the answer would be the same. I mean, the recommendation would be start to get a plan together, start to do an analysis

of where you're using cryptography, how you're using cryptography. And I mentioned this earlier. this is sort of far from obvious because sometimes people don't really think about cryptography too much, but one of the analogies that I like is, you know, imagine you've built a house, and imagine you've built that house over the last 30 years. And the house is there, it's standing, everything is working as it should. And someone comes and says, you know, what the nails that you've used for that house, house, they're going to disintegrate at some point in the future. Do you know where all the nails are? And cryptography is a little bit like that because actually even understanding where and how you're

using cryptography in a complex enterprise, that is a really good starting point. And it takes a lot of time to be able to do that. It takes a lot of time and there are a lot of challenges in doing that. This is why one of the things that IBM has been doing is trying to automate some of that process to be able to get that information. We've also been standardizing some of the sort of how the information is actually ingested. So some of the work that we've been doing with the cryptography billet material really is to try and get to a point where it's easier to gain that information than it is today. Because today we don't have a standard way where our vendors are saying, okay, you've bought this. Here is how, this is how we're using the cryptography.

So there are a lot of challenges to be able to get an understanding of where cryptography is being used, which means it can also be challenging to understand what the impact of that cryptography being broken is going to be for the, for the organization. So before you can even start to go and start to fix things, you need to really understand where, where do the risks lie, what is, what is the actual threat? Where, what are the things that you need to start working on as a priority and what are maybe the things that are that are lower priority. So that would be my recommendation would be to start getting on top of the cryptography estate, start looking at what are the things that you want to protect as a priority. So the first one would be Harvest Now to Quit later. What are the

mitigation or remodiation solutions that I can put in place today to ensure that my data is not harvested, for example, or sensitive data with long shelf life is not harvested. Some things may not matter. So just because something is vulnerable doesn't mean we need to fix it. We want to be fixing the things that are really important. Yeah, there's a prioritization of which nails are going to disappear faster. Are those nails at a joint on the house? That's a wonderful analogy.

Well, on those nails, so not to give people nightmares, who are listening to this. But where is cryptography being used in our daily life? The people who are not involved in this would be surprised about it. Because people might be listening to this who have no impact, no crypto experience,

no quantum experience going, ah, that doesn't affect me. And obviously it does, but where? Well, I think, I mean, ultimately, I think cryptography affects us all, whether we realize it or not. So, you know, who, you know, who's used their phone today? Who's gone and done some online banking or who has sent an email or locked into,

locked into, you know, made an Amazon purchase. So these are all areas that ultimately cryptography is involved. Is there anything in our digital life that isn't, anything in our digital life that isn't? So if your digital life is based on cryptography. Yeah. Well, here's the philosophy, too, that's happening right now is that that most people rely on these platforms, these apps, these organizations to, oh, they've got it all encrypted. It says right here, like all my stuff is encrypted on WhatsApp. It's great.

But, you know, then what if that team is not, you know, staying on top of where the disappearing nails are? And then it starts to trickle down to people with it. Right. So I think, yeah, there's almost like an offloading of risk on the individual level, I think, to the platforms, wouldn't you say? I think, I mean, I think there is a risk that people just think that it's somebody else's problem. And, you know, and even with some enterprises, I think, you know, one solution could be, well, my vendors are just going to take care of it so I can just sit back and relax. which could be an approach. I'm not sure that it would be an approach that I would be comfortable with

because ultimately, we, you know, our vendors, the vendors will do what what the companies that are buying their services require. And if that require, if that market demand isn't coming in loud and clear, they might be sort of, they might think that it's okay to postpone that. So I think there's, we all have a responsibility to make sure that the things that we're

responsible for, that we're accountable for, that these things are really happening. And then if the vendors are doing what they, what, what we expect them to do, then that's great. But I don't think it's something where we can just sit back, relax and rely on somebody else, to take ownership of that problem. As individuals, one of the things that certainly I'll be doing is looking at the platforms that I'm using and looking at what they're doing

to protect my data against a quantum threat or any other threat. I mean, quantum threat is the example we're using here, but that would equally apply to any other threat that might be coming. So if we think of our online banking, I would want to know that HSBC is doing the right things. And I've used that as an example. And actually HSBC are probably one of the most proactive companies in this space.

But I think we all have a responsibility to take ownership for this as a risk. Just one last question before I hand it over to Jeremy for the closing force. And this might be a very short answer. It might be a very long answer. But you talk about handing over responsibility to somebody else. And so we're in the AI era of handing over all our tasks to AI. How, if at all, has the explosion, the acceleration of AI affected? How NIST and IBM and of your cloud?

collaborators are thinking about this. Are you using AI to help you? Are you using, is AI hindering you? Has AI made it more urgent to get this done? Like how is AI fitting into the NIST's quantum cryptography world? I mean, that's a good question. And ultimately, AI is a very powerful technology, as is quantum. And, you know, in the words of Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility.

I mean, these are all technologies that are hugely powerful, have huge amount of potential to really change things for good. but they also have the ability to be used for nefarious purposes. And I think that's something that we need to accept that that is the case for all powerful technologies. So AI in particular, when we talk about the PQC transformation journey, we're using AI as part of the work we do around automation and around being able to interpret data and around being able to make that transformation more efficient, more effective, more accurate. So that's the part where we're using AI to help.

And we're using AI to make things better. But equally, I think we can look at what does AI mean for security? and there are people that will be using these technologies for nefarious purposes, and we need to be prepared for that, and we need to take a responsible view of how these technologies can be used. And this is sort of this also goes back. So I'm part of the IBM quantum team. Our mission statement is on one side to bring useful quantum computing to the world.

on the other, it's to make the world quantum safe. So I think we need to be looking at all of these technologies under this sort of dual hat, if you like. How do we leverage them for the good that they can bring, but also how do we protect ourselves against the potential damage that they can do? I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, I noticed maybe even a tinge of worry in your voice when I said AI is if there's something that it's so incredibly powerful that, yes, we need to move quicker than we were. Well, I guess it's down to, you know, all technology can be used for good and for not so good.

and I think AI is one of the, it is one of those technologies that does, you know, does create some concern. So because ultimately it is moving so quickly and because sometimes, you know, we tend to take a little bit of a, you know, the power of the technology is not necessarily understood. and that's where things could potentially go wrong. And we've seen, and I think AI is a very good example of that. So that's not to say that AI is bad because I think AI is, again, it's hugely powerful and can be hugely beneficial. But we do need to be careful and make sure that, you know, we look at both sides of the equation before sort of jumping into,

into some of these things. And that's why I think that the quantum threat aspect, that's something that actually a lot of really clever people have been looking at for a long, long time. That's why we're in the position we're in where we've actually got standards today that can help us to move forward towards a quantum safe situation. And that's why sometimes when people say,

well, can I wait? Well, yeah, of course you can wait. Should you wait is another question. 100% agree. So disruptors and curious minds, some takeaways that are swollen around in my brain. You know, as you're a user of these technologies using apps and platforms, as Lori said, you know, start to consider what they're doing in a post-quantum world or to prepare for a post-quantum world as an individual. And businesses, IT departments, CTOs, listen, you can either get started on this. I think, or you can start deleting all of your data and printing, you know, hard copies of it,

stuffing it in a, you know, lockable shelf somewhere and then crossing your fingers. So, yeah, so that's- Back to thinking on paper, Jeremy. That's right. We're going back to analog. You know, we're all going to have a spot in this. So, Lori, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed your insights and your work is going to lead to some very helpful things for people and companies down the road. Let's finish with our carryover questions. So next week, speaking of AI, next week we're talking to a studio, some executives from some large creation houses that aren't using AI to create animation. What would be your question for them related to anything? It doesn't have to relate to security or cryptography or anything,

but what would you leave for them as a handoff? Well, I'm going to continue with the theme that we've been discussing here today. And I would ask them, you know, I think the entertainment business is a really interesting one because of all of the sort of the copyright implications. And so, you know, what are they, what are they, have they started thinking about their transition to post quantum cryptography? I like it. I like it. Yeah. They're all about the kind of new IP. So the copyright question is very pertinent for what we'll be speaking about. Mark, tell him about the book club and we'll get on our way here. Do you know what? For the first time I think in 120 however many episodes, I don't have a book next to me because

it's a trick. We've got a book club. There we go, where we read books that have stood the test of time, books that will change your mind. We are the rebellion to the 15 minute book summary. We are the rebellion to that. We're going to read 150 books in a week. We're going to read one book very, very thoroughly together and then bounce our ideas around

to try to understand to read between the lines to make sense of books and we're reading as Jeremy showed you or if you're just listening to this quantum supremacy by Mitchukaku who still hasn't agreed to come on the show by the way and I'm still working on that one. You got any of connects

IBM, you have any of connects to him? And the next book. We'll see what we can do. Ah, and the next book will be Nexus by Noah Harare Yu, she were Noah Harari and I don't think he'll be coming on the show either unless you know somebody there.

But yeah, join the book club thinking on paper to X, Y, Z. Like, subscribe. And Lori, thanks for joining it again. We'll put out some notes. And if you have anything, any links or anything you want to send Mark, we have a great post show wrap up that we do. But thanks for joining. Audience, be curious.

Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on Patreon. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Thank you for a...