re: Quantum tech is something we need to back off from as a human species

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The winner sees all and controls all.

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Better win then

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if the get quantum decryption, couldnt they also have quantum encryption?

serious question

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Quantum encryption already exists and it is utterly unbreakable.

I'm not talking "it's really hard to break like modern public key schemes, but maybe vulnerable in the future", but "absolutely, 100% provably mathematically, physically, and informationally secure and unbreakable".

As always with cryptography, the devil is in the details and proper implementation is still a bit difficult and improper implementation can leave it vulnerable to attack, but it's getting better.

Essentially, it uses a one-time pad, which is provably 100% secure if implemented properly. Spies have used it for decades. The idea is that you and I have exact copies of a pad of random characters that serves as the key. You use your pad to encrypt, I use mine to decrypt. If you don't know what's on our pads, the best you can do with an intercepted message is generate every possible plaintext of the same length. The problem is in me and you sharing that pad of random characters without someone else seeing it. It's logistically difficult and keeping that pad absolutely secret is crucial to keeping the message unbreakable, so there are issues with ensuring nobody ever has access to a pad to make a copy of it.

Quantum cryptography is simply a method by which you and I can agree on a one-time pad at will when one of us wants to send a message by freely communicating over a distance AND assuming that anyone in the world can listen in. The scheme uses the polarization of light as a means to share a one-time pad without giving anyone listening in the middle any information as to what parts of the transmission will actually be used to form the one-time pad. Sender and receiver can agree on a one-time pad without the eavesdropper in the middle being able to gain any useful information, even with full access to all information transmitted. Further, the scheme provides the sender and receiver at either end an almost perfect indication if someone in the middle is eavesdropping in the first place.

What should we do?

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It’s us or Russia/China/whoever. Let’s get it first.

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The military likely already has it. Probably for decades.

Best encryption is printing it on a typewriter and then physically securing the document in a military facility like Fort Knox. All these data security problems for highly classified stuff is simple, don’t use computers.

If quantum computing becomes a thing, there will be no such thing as digital security anymore. It truly is frightening. Passwords, encryption, blockchain...all rendered useless

But muh free 2 Day Delivery....

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So is there some 100,000 year old scientist laying around still composing the problem? If the answer takes 10,000 years, then the question must take much, much, longer, no? Or at least the same amount of time. And how do they know if the answer takes 10,000 years to solve? How do they know the answer is correct? Wouldn't it have taken the computer programmers/scientists a minimum of 10,000 years to answer said question in order to check said question?

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You can't seriously be this obtuse.

In the simplest terms, create a problem that then as X number of possible input combinations to test and the best supercomputer can test them at Y speeds; therefore, X/Y yields time required to solve. It's not this simple and I presume they are using a lot of statistics to calculate the time to solve but that's the general premise.

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Essentially, it uses a one-time pad, which is provably 100% secure if implemented properly. Spies have used it for decades. The idea is that you and I have exact copies of a pad of random characters that serves as the key. You use your pad to encrypt, I use mine to decrypt. If you don't know what's on our pads, the best you can do with an intercepted message is generate every possible plaintext of the same length. The problem is in me and you sharing that pad of random characters without someone else seeing it. 

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Wasn't this basically the German Enigma machine concept which Turing cracked?

Can I get one to mine bitcoin? I'll have thousands in a month.