A new generation of fear entrepreneurs in the IT industry are promoting anxieties and fatalism about the threat quantum computing poses to the future of encrypted data, cyber-security and our way of life dubbed Quantum Apocalypse.
You can’t make this stuff up. Just when we can breathe a sigh of relief as we appear to have overcome the Covid pandemic, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ draws us back into new anxiety about life on Earth – just like Al Pacino in ‘The Godfather’ trying to escape his criminal past, but being pulled back in.
However, this is not a Hollywood movie. It is a real thing. And just like the doomsday predictions of environmentalists, ‘the quantum apocalypse’ is being presented as a real existential threat to life as we know it.
So, what is this ‘quantum apocalypse’? Well, to put it simply, it is the imagined outcome of a world where encrypted, secret files are suddenly cracked open by quantum computers.
It is essential to understand that quantum compute...