Countdown to "Q-day"! Reuters Special Report: U.S.-China Quantum Race, Who's in Charge?

The encryption technology that protects digital communications may one day be broken by quantum computers. That day is known as "Q-day", and it could upend global military and economic security.

Right now, all the major powers are sprinting to get ahead of the game.

In February, a Canadian cybersecurity firm issued an ominous prediction to the U.S. Department of Defense. The team at Quantum Defense (QD5) warned that America's secrets-indeed, everyone's secrets-are now at risk of exposure.

Tilo Kunz, QD5's executive vice president, told officials at the U.S. Department of Defense's Information Systems Directorate that the world could be on the verge of what has been dubbed "Q-day" as soon as 2025, when quantum computers will render current encryption methods useless. He told the Defense Information Systems Agency, which is responsible for protecting U.S. military communications, that machines far more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers would be able to break the codes that protect almost all modern communications.

At the same time, Kunz told the panel that a global effort was underway to plunder data in order to decode intercepted messages after "Q-day," an attack he called "harvest now, decrypt later," according to recordings of the meeting that the agency later made public. The military's long-term plans and intelligence-gathering efforts.

The military's long-term plans and intelligence-gathering efforts would be exposed to the enemy. The intellectual property of businesses could be stolen. People's health records could be exposed.

Kunz said, "We're not the only ones collecting information, and we're not the only ones hoping to declassify it in the future. All information sent over public networks is at risk."

Kunz is one of a growing number of people issuing such warnings. Many cyber experts believe that all the major powers are collecting information before "Q-day". The United States and China, the world's leading military powers, have accused each other of mass data collection.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in September that China's "hacking program is larger than all the other major powers combined". In a September report, China's Ministry of State Security accused the NSA of "systematic" attacks to steal Chinese data.

The NSA declined to comment on China's allegations.

Even more dangerous than cracking codes are quantum computers. Quantum computers, which utilize the mysterious properties of subatomic particles, promise breakthroughs in science, armaments and industry, researchers say.

There are many opinions about the arrival of "Q-day". Quantum computing is still in its relatively early stages: so far, only small, error-prone quantum computers with limited processing power have been built.

Some researchers have even estimated that "Q-day" may not arrive until the middle of this century.

No one knows who will be the first to achieve this goal. The U.S. and China are considered leaders in this field; many experts believe the U.S. still has the edge.

As the race to master quantum computing continues, so does the battle to protect critical data.

Washington and its allies are working on a new encryption standard known as "post-quantum cryptography" - essentially, codes that are difficult to break even for quantum computers.

Beijing is trying to pioneer a quantum communications network, a technique that researchers say is theoretically impossible to hack. The scientists leading the Chinese government's effort have become little known in China.

Quantum computing is very different. Traditional computers process information in bits: either 1s or 0s, and only one number at a time. Quantum computers process information in quantum bits, which can be 1, 0, or any number between 1 and 0. All information is processed at the same time, which physicists say is an approximate way to describe complex mathematical concepts.

These computers also utilize a mysterious property of quantum mechanics - entanglement. Particles such as photons or electrons can become entangled and remain connected even when they are far apart; at the same time, changes in one particle are immediately reflected in the other. Physicists and computer scientists say the properties of quantum bits and entanglement are the basis of quantum computers, potentially enabling calculations that today's large supercomputers cannot perform.

Business consultants predict hundreds of billions of dollars in additional revenue from such processing power by the middle of the next decade. Even before these computers appeared, some predicted that advances in quantum technology would dramatically improve the performance of some military hardware.

Michael Biercuk, founder and CEO of Q-CTRL, a quantum technology company, explains, "Quantum technology may be no less transformative in the 21st century than the utilization of electricity as a resource in the 19th century."

Michael Biercuk, a former Pentagon advisor who founded Sydney-based quantum technology company Q-CTRL, says the potential for quantum computers to break encryption is driving growth and investment in the field

Q-CTRL's Bill Cook, an American who is now a professor of quantum physics at the University of Sydney, served as an adviser to the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's innovation incubator. He says the US government saw quantum as a "big opportunity" in the 1990s and has been funding research ever since.

In his briefing to the Pentagon, QD5's Kunz cited what he called one of the most successful "harvest before declassification" operations in history: the Venona project.

Launched in 1943, Project Venona was a 37-year U.S. effort to decipher Soviet diplomatic communications collected by Americans during and after World War II. According to CIA documents, U.S. codebreakers, with the assistance of the Allies, deciphered more than 2,900 cables from thousands of messages sent by Soviet intelligence agencies between 1940 and 1948.

The cables revealed extensive Soviet intelligence activities against the United States and its allies. CIA documents show that the code-breaking coup led to the discovery of Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to build the first atomic bombs, and the existence of the Cambridge Five, a group of high-ranking British civil servants who spied for Moscow.

The breakthrough for the West was the realization that the Soviets had misused what is known as a one-time password: a time-tested form of encryption that uses a key to encode messages sent between two parties. The method got its name because, in its earliest form, the key was printed on a pad, each page of which contained a unique code; after one use, the top page was torn out and destroyed.

The Soviets blundered by printing and using duplicate code pages on a disposable code book for a limited period of time. This allowed Allied analysts to painstakingly decrypt some messages years later, according to CIA documents.

To be truly unbreakable, a one-time cipher key must be a set of random numbers equal to or greater than the size of the message and used only once, cybersecurity experts say. The party receiving the message uses the same key to decrypt it.

A disposable keypad used by agents of the Stasi, the East German secret police, to send encrypted messages during the Cold War.

Invented more than a century ago, this method has been used for decades by most major powers to transmit secret messages. However, due to technical factors, this method is too unwieldy for large-scale secure communications in modern times.

In its place, most communications today are secured using what is known as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a system developed in the 1970s to enable mass encryption.

PKI enabled the rise of the Internet economy and open telecommunications systems. Passwords for e-mail accounts, online banking, and secure messaging platforms all rely on it.PKI is also critical to most government and national security communications.

Bill Cook says that the security provided by PKI stems largely from hiding information behind a very difficult math problem. The most widely used algorithm for creating and managing difficult mathematical problems for encryption is known as RSA, derived from the last initials of its inventors: computer scientists and cryptographers Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman.

What may be about to change is that quantum computers will solve these problems with ease.

Bill Cook says, "If you have a computer, this math problem is not hard for it, and all of this is at stake."

Montreal-based QD5 is a privately held company where Kunz serves as executive vice president. The company has developed an advanced one-time password keypad: a device called the Q PAD, which it claims customers can use to communicate over existing networks and never be able to crack. In February, Pentagon officials asked Kunz questions about the technology, but noted that the information session did not necessarily indicate an interest in purchasing the Q PAD system.

In an interview, Kunz, a former Canadian soldier, said he first learned about disposable pads while serving in a reconnaissance unit.

He said, "It's very simple and straightforward. Every time you use them, you have to destroy the paper. If you only have these two keys and follow the rules, the information may be intercepted, but the enemy will never be able to crack it."

Gary Swatton, chief technology officer, also said that QD5 overcomes some of the limitations of the original disposable cryptographic keypads. One obstacle to using this method on a large scale is the need to generate a large enough set of truly random numbers to provide encryption for modern communications networks. Before the advent of quantum technology, this took a lot of time and effort.

Now, the researchers say, specially designed semiconductor chips and hardware, called quantum random number generators, can take advantage of the truly random nature of subatomic quantum particles to generate large sets of numbers. Swarton says, "Technology has caught up and is solving these problems."

Other companies are hoping to capitalize on the demand for better security. SandboxAQ, a New York-based company spun out of Google Inc.'s Alphabet, has created a division to help clients deal with threats from quantum computing and take full advantage of the powerful technology.

Marc Manzano, general manager of quantum security at SandboxAQ, said, "Even if 'Q-day' is a decade or more away, it's important for organizations to start preparing now for the migration to post-quantum cryptography. "

Some expect turbulence. Skip Sanzeri, founder and chief operating officer of QuSecure, a quantum security company in San Mateo, California, says that "the entire Internet and the devices connected to it" will be affected. The World Economic Forum estimates that 20 billion devices will need to be upgraded or replaced over the next 20 years to meet quantum security standards.

This will be a $100 billion or trillion dollar upgrade," says Sanzeri.

While quantum computing has the potential to upend existing security measures, it is also possible to use the physics behind the technology to build networks that are theoretically unbreakable.

In a quantum communications network, users encrypt and decrypt data by exchanging keys or codes through subatomic particles called photons. This is known as quantum key distribution, or QKD. it is one of the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics that secures communications.

Physicists explain that any attempt to monitor or interfere with these quantum particles changes them. This means that any attempt to intercept communications is immediately noticeable to the user. If the encryption key received by both communicating parties is not compromised, they can be confident that subsequent communications are secure.

Gregoire Ribordy, a physicist and CEO of ID Quantique (IDQ), a private Swiss company that provides quantum communications technology, said, "With quantum networks, the security of our technology comes from the laws of physics. It is impossible to intercept communications without leaving a trace."

Quantum communications is an area in which China has invested heavily. The technology has the potential to protect Beijing's data networks even if Washington and other competitors are the first to reach "Q-day".

According to the official Xinhua news agency, President Xi Jinping emphasized the "strategic value" of quantum technology in a speech to China's top leaders in 2020. Under Xi's leadership, China has set a clear goal of dominating quantum science. It is estimated that China has invested more in quantum research than any other country.

McKinsey & Company estimated in an April report that the Chinese government has announced a cumulative investment of $15.3 billion in quantum research, more than four times the $3.7 billion spent in the United States.

A prime mover in China's quest for quantum technology is Pan Jianwei, a physicist who enjoys celebrity status and unanimous praise and support in China.

Professor Pan, 53, is a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), the country's premier quantum research institution, and in 2011 he was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an honor bestowed on scientists who have made significant advances in their fields.

In media interviews, Pan has said he wants to make China a leader in quantum technology while building a secure Internet that is impervious to cyberattacks. Security experts say this would serve an important strategic purpose. It would protect national security and the military from hacking, especially in conflicts.

They say a quantum-hardened Internet could protect critical infrastructure to stamp out any security challenges.

He studied for his doctorate in Vienna under renowned physicist Anton Zeilinger. Zeilinger shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum mechanics. Pan later moved to the University of Heidelberg before returning to China in 2008.

Upon returning to China, Pan led a team that launched the world's first quantum satellite, Micius, in 2016, which was used to establish a secure communications link with ground stations in China.

The following year, his team and Austrian researchers used Micius to hold the world's first quantum-encrypted teleconference, connecting Beijing and Vienna. Pan also reportedly led a team that built a similar terrestrial network in China, connecting the cities of Beijing, Jinan, Shanghai and Hefei.

Despite China's clear lead in official funding, some researchers say the U.S. remains the overall leader in the quantum field thanks to its private sector technology innovators, government labs, university researchers and collaborative allies. Washington is moving to limit U.S. investment in Chinese quantum capabilities.

In August, President Biden signed an executive order directing the U.S. Treasury Department to regulate U.S. investment in quantum computing, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. The annex to the order lists China and its special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macau, as countries of concern, which could lead to a ban on investment in quantum technology and equipment produced in China.

Globally, government security agencies and the private sector are working on strategies to defeat quantum computers.

In August, the U.S. National Security Agency and other agencies urged the public and companies to take new steps to secure communications using post-quantum encryption.

After extensive evaluation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last year selected four so-called post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms: new encryption standards that some cyber experts believe will provide long-term security.

In a May memo, Biden revealed that the U.S. government agency expects to release a new standard for post-quantum cryptography next year. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said in August that it was working to standardize these algorithms, which is the final step in getting companies to upgrade their encryption with widespread use of these tools.

SandboxAQ's Manzano said his company is working with some of the world's largest companies and government agencies to integrate the upcoming PQC encryption algorithms into their systems. Sanzeri also said QuSecure is working with government and private customers to upgrade to PQC.

However, not everyone agrees that the new algorithm will provide reliable security. Kunz told Reuters that as quantum computers improve, the new cipher could eventually be cracked. "The problem is that PQC is not unbreakable." "It doesn't solve the 'harvest first, decrypt later' problem," he said.

IDQ's Ribaudy said it is also possible for today's classical computers to crack these new codes. He noted that the complex mathematical problems at the heart of PQC are "very new" and have not been studied extensively.

A NIST spokesman said the agency is "confident in the security of the PQC algorithms selected for standardization, [otherwise] we would not have standardized them. Experts have studied these algorithms and gone through an intensive evaluation process." He added that it is not inevitable that these algorithms will be cracked, and it is not even a "safe assumption."

Meanwhile, one challenge facing digital secretaries is that quantum codebreakers are unlikely to announce their breakthroughs whenever "Q-day" arrives. Instead, they are likely to remain silent in order to capitalize on it for as long as possible.

Kunz told the Pentagon team, "We don't necessarily know when the code will be broken. We may find out the hard way. But it's predictable that they will be broken."

Indeed, the world is now on the cusp of a revolution in computing based on quantum mechanics.

Scientists in the United States Government explain quantum science as "rules that describe the behavior of tiny things".

The field is full of surprises, even for experts. The late theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate and quantum computing pioneer Richard Feynman described the field as "strange and mysterious to everyone, novice and experienced physicist alike, because of its relevance to the experience and perception of the behavior of larger objects". experience and perceive the behavior and properties of larger objects in a very different way."

Quantum mechanics was developed incrementally in the early decades of the 20th century by some of the biggest names in physics. A range of potential applications, including computing, have emerged in recent decades, and research is now underway in more than a dozen countries, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies.

The turning point for quantum computing came in 1994, when American mathematician Peter Shor proposed an algorithm - a mathematical program to perform calculations - that showed quantum computers could be used to solve problems that classical computers could not.

Code-breaking is likely to be an important early application. Cybersecurity experts believe that these computers are expected to break encryption codes in minutes, rather than thousands of years as current computers do.

North America is the center of quantum computing, according to industry experts. U.S. companies making quantum processors include IBM, Amazon, Intel, Google, Quantinuum, IonQ, Microsoft, Quantum Computing Inc. and Rigetti Computing. in Canada, D-Wave Systems and Xanadu Quantum Technologies have emerged as pioneers.

Dr. Maika Takita, an IBM researcher, studies quantum computers at the company's Quantum Lab in Yorktown Heights, New York, in 2020

A recent McKinsey report showed that the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have the highest number of startups in the field as of 2022.

In January, a Chinese quantum computing company based in Anhui province announced that it had delivered a fully home-built quantum computer to a user, according to media reports. Some Chinese tech giants, including Tencent, are also working on quantum computing.

To be sure, there are huge engineering challenges that must be overcome before these computers can actually be put to use. So far, laboratories around the world have only built small computers with a relatively small number of quantum bits, physics researchers say. These computers are so fragile that the hardware is susceptible to "noise," such as fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field or other electromagnetic signals, which can cause errors.

And they were still too small to solve some challenging problems, including code-breaking.

However, some early quantum computers are now being used in preliminary research in a number of fields. For example, automotive giant Mercedes-Benz is using IBM quantum computers to design better batteries, according to IBM. Some technologists predict that these computers will soon become even more useful. Combining these early machines with conventional processors could lead to major improvements in solving complex problems, they say.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) predicted in a report in May that businesses will benefit from quantum computing as early as 2025. By around 2035, quantum data processing has the potential to generate as much as $850 billion in revenue for users, the company said in the report.

[3]https://thelaymanspeaks.medium.com/a-quantum-encryption-battle-between-world-powers-ca7b2b5700a5