Preparing for Q Day: The Future of Post-Quantum Cryptography

Hi everyone. Alan Hummel. We're back here in our part two of our interview with Rebecca Auer.

Uh, Rebecca is the CEO of a company called Q Secure. com. We've had a few videos with the Q Secure team.

I including Rebecca's dad, David, my friend Jennifer Legio, and part one of our interview with Rebecca. And all three of those really talked about Q Secure post Quantum Cryptography and how Q Secure is helping organizations large and small, uh, get ready for, as we call it, Q Day. Um, but Rebecca, first of all, thanks for joining us.

Secondly, there's a lot of people out here, you know, you mentioned quantum computing, and they say, oh yeah, that's something I gotta worry about in five years. That worry about it in five years kind of mantra has been a consistent thing with, with quantum, it's kind of the same thing we hear with fusion nuclear fusion too. It might have a working model in five years, right?

Where we're making more energy than we expect to make it. Um, but from everything I know about quantum computing, it's not five years anymore. We're getting much closer.

There are people, I think IBM has committed to having a commercially available quantum computer. I wanna say by 2029 or 2028, something like that. Um, another friends of ours behind a company called, uh, ionic, I think it's called IONQ, uh, Nicholas, who's actually, so we're part of the Futurum Group, and Nicholas Nicolo, excuse me, who's the CEO of Ionic is the chairman, just six degrees of separation of futurum.

So I've had a chance to talk to him, but you know, everyone I speak to, including my friend John Willis, shout out to John, says that quantum is quickly approaching us in the rear view mirror. Yeah. Um, first of all, I want your thoughts on that, on, you know, timelines for Q Day, but secondly, if you wouldn't mind, Rebecca, your dad did a great job a little bit in Las Vegas, and we talked a black hat bring quantum down to everyone's level out here.

What, when we talk about quantum computing, why the excitement? What exactly does it do? What will it be game changing about?

What won't it be game changing about? We've got 20 minutes, we rock and roll. All right.

We're gonna cover all of quantum physics and quantum computing in 20 minutes, so, okay. No, IJ it on. Yeah, go ahead.

This is one of my favorite things because it's, uh, it's such an important technology and the implications are so important, right? We know that quantum will do incredible things. We also know at a certain point, it will break encryption that keeps my data safe, your data safe, the government's data safe.

So it's really important to be talking about h how it works so that it brings everybody into the conversation, and it doesn't have to be that complicated. So we started working in quantum computing. I came from the AI world and got into quantum computing in 20 18, 20 19.

And the idea was we, we started a venture studio to connect, uh, research that was coming out of academia with pathways to commercialization. And looking back then, it was a little bit early to be building commercially viable applications on early Quantum Peters. Now, fast forward six, seven years, things really feel different.

And if, uh, if anyone is of sort of the venture capital persuasion, for example, and you're thinking about investing in quantum the next 10 years, there's gonna be the Google, the Microsoft, the Atari of quantum computers that's gonna be started, maybe not in a garage, but, uh, it's worth, it's worth paying attention to the space really closely. Mm-hmm. Quantum computers, they are not just bigger, better, faster, stronger, regular computers.

And that's where a lot of people kind of get, get caught up. They're not gonna solve every problem, but there are certain problems that they're gonna solve a lot better than regular computers. And one of the most exciting things is we're still figuring out what those problems are, but we know a handful of them.

And a lot of those problems can be boiled down to the problems where we wanna solve a really complicated problem. For example, self-driving, car fleet route optimization. That's a harder problem than it looks like because you need to know where every car is in relation to every other, and you need to know exactly what route each is taking in relation to the other.

And as soon as you start getting multiple stops on each of these routes, it sort of multiplies and multiplies and multiplies the amount of combinations you can see. So that's a ultimately impossible problem to solve on regular computers. But with quantum computers, if you come up with the right algorithm, that's the kind of thing they're really good at.

The way that I always tell people to start building intuition for how a quantum computer thinks is, if you imagine that you're trying to solve a maze as a person, how do you think about doing that? So you enter into this maze and you hit your first t you have to choose right or left, right? Okay, I go left, I hit another T, right or left, let's go right, and so on and so forth.

I iterate through that maze and ultimately find my way out. Quantum computer enters a maze. Quantum computer hits its first t, the quantum computer doesn't have to choose, Goes Both, goes both at the same time, and then again, hits the next T both at the same time, and so on and so forth.

And with the right algorithm, the right quantum algorithm, it can hold all of those paths through the maze in memory at once, and then ultimately chop off the ones that are not the most optimal path through the maze. So that when you're, when you open the box at the end, it gives you that most optimal, uh, that most optimal path through the maze. So that's, that's the power of quantum computing and that that intuition can help understand some of the problems that we can start to look at with a quantum computer that we can never look at with a regular computer.

There's, uh, there's more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atos in the known universe, right? Really? Yeah.

Yeah. It's true. Okay.

And if you tried to, to compute all of these different combinations of just 52 cards, you'd never be able to do that on a regular computer? No. No.

So all of these say same kind of problem goes for modeling things like interactions between molecules when you're doing drug discovery, uh, route optimization. And that's things that people hope to be able to use sufficiently powerful quantum computers to solve, is these problems that are just too complex, too many combinations of things to look at and find the optimal answer. So obviously one of those use cases is encryption, which we spoke about in earlier.

Mm-hmm. Right. Where you have, whether it's, was it 124 or 248 bid encryption mm-hmm.

24, right. With traditional computers, you have to sort of brute for some, if you will, which I mean, the amount of horsepower needed is measured in decades, if not hundreds of years, with the most powerful computers where in quantum, much like the route algorithm, it fills the whole every conceivable route up, you know, simultaneously. Mm-hmm.

And therefore renders that brute for it's no longer brute force. It's just, it's almost like the Borg assimilate force, right? Uh, and, and it does that.

So Q day, what does Q day mean? Q day is, is now what people are starting to call this day. When a cryptographically relevant quantum computer comes online, that is sufficiently powerful enough to break today's encryption, like you were saying.

Yep. The stuff that keeps us safe as we share data across networks, share Network, or it gives us the, uh, the appearance of safety anyway. Right.

Right, right. Um, what's stopping us from achieving Q Day right now? That's a great question.

Q Day, a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is a quantum computer that has on the order of 4,000 air corrected qubits and qubits being on the, the, where we have bits for regular computers. Mm-hmm. Quantum computers have qubits and they behave a little bit differently.

They're not quite binary. So a quantum computer to break today's standard encryption, you need something on the order of 4,000 error corrected qubits. Well, What's stopping us right now is two things.

We don't have a quantum computer that is that powerful in terms of number of qubits, and we don't have a quantum computer where those qubits are sort of harnessed where they are error corrected and stable. So, like you were saying, there's, there's a number of really exciting quantum computing companies that are making breakthroughs and have now committed to these, these really aggressive timelines for when they'll have uhs. Quantum is a company that just raised a billion dollars Yeah.

And they're building a quantum peter, and they've, for the first time come out with a timeline to say, I think 2029, they wanna have a million non hair corrected Cupids. A million. A million.

A million. Yeah. And there's a few other companies that have come out and said something similar.

Right. And, and if we have a million non-air corrected cubits, we can start to do some really, really exciting stuff with a quantum computer, whether it's psych quantum or IBM, or there's also billions of dollars going into quantum research across the globe. We know that China, for example, has spent over $15 billion on a government quantum computing research program where they're looking to build more and more powerful quantum computers.

DARPA has started a program where it puts funding into these different US companies mm-hmm. To build that commercially viable, relevant quantum computer by, uh, early 2030. So, So are we, you know, over the course of my life, I've seen cycles and cycles of innovation and discovery.

Are, are we in strictly the research, the r and d phase right now? Or do you think we're sort of coming to the end of that and starting to, you know, really think about commercialization here? I always tell people the same thing.

The moment that you hear there's a quantum computing breakthrough on a problem that you recognize. You know, if you hear, you'll hear a lot in the news, quantum computers solved boon sampling or sort of these esoteric terms, millions of times faster than regular computer. But the thing to be listening for is, quantum computer solves drug discovery problem, or materials problem, or route optimization problem, or, or something that you recognize and is perhaps relevant to your life.

That's when you know something has really changed. And we're getting, they call that quantum advantage. Okay.

When we get that quantum, when we start getting that quantum advantage, that's the big inflection point. And we're close. We're getting, we're getting close to that.

Uh, so it's an exciting time. Absolutely. Now, there are other people who say, you know, what we're doing now with AI is phenomenal to, to people who don't understand how AI works, it's almost automagical.

Mm-hmm. Right? Like, you know, fire the caveman or rain to people who, you know, do rain dances for rain.

But, you know, people say that, wait, you haven't seen anything. Once we combine AI with quantum, that's like craziness squared. Right.

Um, how does, so they're not mutually exclusive. Obviously there's some sort of connection here between what we could do on AI and what we could do with AI on a quantum computing platform. Talk to us about that.

Is it like peanut butter and chocolate, or what are we doing? It's, it's one of the most exciting and interesting areas of, of active research. And like you said, right?

The, the difference between regular computing and quantum computing, uh, is gonna be like the difference between a candle and a microwave or, uh, going from alchemy to chemistry, it's gonna open our eyes to so much. Uh, the Richard Feynman mm-hmm. One of the, the, the fathers of modern physics, he said that if you wanna understand the nature of the universe, the nature of nature, essentially you need a computer that can model that directly rather than simulate.

And that's what a quantum computer do. So when you think about combining AI and quantum, there's an incredible amount of potential to gain the advantage of that, that power of quantum to solve and look at problems that we never will be able to in regular computing and then build on automation. And not only, one thing that's interesting to point out too, is not only quantum and AI is an exciting field, but we have the advantage when it comes to advancements in quantum technology of using AI to accelerate quantum development.

And that's something we didn't have in the 1960s, seventies for regular computers. Right? No.

So it's, uh, you know, in part, it, it remains to really be seen how quantum and AI are gonna play off each other. But it's, it's absolutely inevitable that, that, uh, yeah. It's in some specific areas.

Again, materials discovery, drug discovery, uh, AI and quantum together are gonna be, it's, it's why I got into the field. 'cause I came from ai. Mm-hmm.

There are gonna be fundamental doors that get unlocked by leveraging quantum and ai. Wow. Exciting times, exciting times.

You know, we're here in Boca Raton in our offices, in our studio. I don't know if you know this, but the I-B-M-P-C was actually developed right here in Boca Raton. I, I, Boca used to be an IBM town, uh, if if on your way home Yeah.

If you go to ADA Road, which is right out the main road off of our Congress here at Congress Avenue, there's a place called Brick, which is now the Boca Raton Innovation Center. It's actually the old IBM campus. Wow.

And they, they still have a room there if you do a press release, uh, where Bill Gates signed the DOS licensing agreement, licensing dos to IBM, they'll let you use it for a press conference or whatever if you're a tenant there. Wow. So cool.

But literally, the IBM PC was designed here, and then they decided to make manufacturing other places, other countries, obviously. And eventually they moved out of here. Boca Raton went into a depression for about 10 years in the nineties and became more well-known for retirement and financial, uh, advisors.

But anyway, um, funny thing back then, and I remember, 'cause I was old enough, a good IBM PC was five to $7,000 a Mac, a good Mac five to, or Apple before Mac even five to $7,000. It was a standard running thing that yeah, you could buy a PC for $2,000, but basically if you wanted a good computer, it was $5,000. That was always kind of the bench line.

Now, $5,000 when I was 18 was a tremendous amount of money. When I was 40, it wasn't. Right.

I have a few PCs. Um, but of course with the advent of cheaper electronics and globalism and everything else, computers, PCs got less expensive. I think a lot of people worry.

Is Quantum going to be another, like only the Mag seven are in it and some nation states, or do you ever think us little people get to work on a quantum computer? I, I, I like to be a pragmatic optimist. Okay.

When it comes to technology. 'cause I think we have to be, to build a, to build a future that we wanna see. We gotta think and mm-hmm.

And, uh, and visualize that future. So one of the things that I love about Quantum is it started out on the cloud. So I can access, we could all access a quantum computer right now when IBM's, um, probably smaller chips, but we could, we could go on right now.

So could someone in Nairobi really, or Seoul or, yeah. And I, that kind of democratizes it in a way that, that, like you're saying, it was prohibitively expensive for a lot of people to be able to, to learn how to program on an, on earlier computers. So that's, I absolutely hope that that continues.

Now, I have heard that some of these companies, as they develop more and more powerful chips, they have to think about, do I release this kind of power to the public or do I not? Mm-hmm. And so that's, that's a kind of, with great power comes great responsibility sort of question.

Should we leave that power in people's hands or should that be governments making those decisions? That is a fantastic and fundamental question. I, for one thing, I hope we get the option to choose Really both.

So Right. We, one thing I like to remind people about when it comes to Q Day that day, that that Quantum Peters will become cryptographically threatening is not just that we have to think about getting ahead of it today and, and deploying protections because that data's being actively harvested and stockpiled for, for, for QA to unzip it with QA when QA comes, the thing I like to remind people is that we probably, as the general public, will not know when that computer comes online, because if you have that powerful of a tool, you are not gonna release a press release about it. Right, right.

Just like in World War II, when Alan Turing and the team figured out how to break Enigma Enigma, right. They didn't advertise that to Yeah. To Germany.

Right. They, that was, that was something that they kept close to the vest and were able to save many, many lives because of that. So, uh, when that, that 4,000 air corrected cubic quantum peter comes online, we probably won't.

No. So that's something that people have to keep in mind is that there, there are things that are going on behind the scenes and while I think we, we should all kind of demand and push forward this democratization of how we access these really powerful computers and train people to use them. And, uh, there's also, inevitably it's a very, very powerful tool when it gets to scale.

Absolutely. Alright, we've got time for one last question. I'm gonna put you on the spot.

Pick a day for Q Day. Oh man. I, I'll give you a day, but I'll, I'll also say that anyone who tells you definitively is, is a little in their mind is out of their minds.

But We'll put it out there just 'cause what the heck, it's, you might as well plant the flag in the ground. Totally. Well, I'll, I'll tell you.

Gartner for example, says, good chance by 2029. Yeah. So be ready.

Um, it could be 2029, it could be beyond, it could be sooner. Uh, But like you said, we may not know, or in two quantum fashion we may know and not know same time. No.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, we might start seeing this data, these data breaches that are kind of suspicious and, And that that'll give us a clue.

Give us, well, look, God willing, I hope it's not the bad guys who get this first. It's Gotta be the good guys. We gotta, we gotta make sure That's one thing we do have to make sure.

Yeah. Rebecca, I want to thank you for coming up here to our studio. This was great.

If you haven't seen part one of this interview, please go back and check that out. Again. com.

Check them out if you want to stay on top of this whole post quantum cryptography, uh, security dilemma and problem. They've got answers, but for now, this is Alan Shimmel for Text on tv. Thanks very much.