My opponent assumes that because post-quantum cryptography exists, the world will adopt it in time. History says otherwise. Critical infrastructure, governments, banks, hospitals, industrial control systems, and billions of IoT devices often take decades to replace or upgrade. Many still rely on outdated cryptography today. A quantum computer doesn't need to break every system—it only needs to break the systems that haven't migrated.
Even more importantly, attackers are already using a strategy called "harvest now, decrypt later." They can steal encrypted government, military, medical, and corporate data today and simply wait until quantum computers become capable of decrypting it. Data with long-term value doesn't stop being valuable because encryption improves later.
Finally, quantum progress is accelerating. Error correction, logical qubits, and hardware fidelity have improved dramatically over the past decade, with governments and major technology companies investing billions of dollars. Predicting that engineering challenges will remain insurmountable for 20 years is speculation, not evidence. Given current momentum and expert forecasts, it's more likely than not that quantum computers capable of breaking today's widely deployed public-key encryption will emerge within that timeframe.
08:04 AM