Quantum computers could break today’s encryption. Washington needs to prepare now.

The country is consumed right now with debating artificial intelligence and whether increasingly powerful AI systems could escape human control. Those are valid concerns, but lawmakers are overlooking another technological threat: quantum computing. Unlike AI safety debates, this risk could render today’s encryption obsolete – compromising everything from emails to financial transactions to government communications and military systems.

Quantum computers harness unusual properties of quantum physics to solve certain problems far faster than conventional computers. That potential offers major scientific and economic advances. But a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could crack widely used forms of encryption protecting sensitive digital information globally.

This threat differs from AI safety concerns. Quantum computers won’t develop goals or outsmart humans. The risk is simple: extraordinarily fast quantum machines could break the mathematical “locks” securing data.

Researchers now believe breaking some encryption may require fewer resources than previously thought. This spring, Caltech spinout Oratomic published research suggesting a cryptographically relevant quantum computer could need dramatically fewer physical resources than earlier estimates. Google has accelerated its own preparations, setting 2029 as its target for transitioning to post-quantum cryptography.