In brief, quantum supremacy has not been achieved, but he still has hopes based on theoretical considerations from 30 years ago, and recent progress in quantum gate fidelity.
And he hints that at some point, researchers might hold back on public announcements, just as 1940 research into fission bombs avoided publishing how to build a bomb.
I think that artificial general super intelligence is potentially a lot more dangerous than quantum computers, and so there would be more reason to hold back on that. Maybe OpenAI or Google or Microsoft is holding back, but I doubt it. They are locked in a high-stakes competition.
He makes this ominous comment:
Similarly, at some point, the people doing detailed estimates of how many physical qubits and gates it’ll take to break actually deployed cryptosystems using Shor’s algorithm are going to stop publishing those estimates, if for no other reason than the risk of giving too much information to adversaries. Indeed, for all we know, that point may have been passed already. This is the clearest warning that I can offer in public right now about the urgency of migrating to post-quantum cryptosystems, a process that I’m grateful is already underway.The US government is migrating to post-quantum cryptosystems, but I don't think those estimates will help any evil-doers. So far, the quantum computers can only factor 15 = 5x3. It will take quantum computers 50 years to crack today's cryptosystems, even if it is possible.
So Scott is demanding a headlong rush into abandoning well proven ciphers and switch to cockamamie "quantum proof" nonsense? One of the foremost cryptographers around, Dan Bernstein, has spoken out about his reservations about these newfangled ciphers, and with good reason. It's foolhardy to rush into changing away from proven systems for the sake of ......exactly WHAT threat??
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