Comment by cubefox
5 hours ago
The fear-mongering tone is likely due to the fact that this was posted (though probably not written) by a company promoting quantum-safe cloud storage.
Anyway, here is what Scott Aaronson recently said about quantum computing progress:
> Indeed, given the current staggering rate of hardware progress, I now think it’s a live possibility that we’ll have a fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm before the next US presidential election. And I say that not only because of the possibility of the next US presidential election getting cancelled, or preempted by runaway superintelligence! (...)
> To clarify — if, before the 2028 presidential election, a fully fault-tolerant Shor’s algorithm was used even just to factor 15 into 3×5, I would view the “live possibility” here as having come to pass.
> The point is, from that point forward, it seems like mostly a predictable matter of adding more fault-tolerant qubits and scaling up, and I find it hard to understand what the showstopper would be.
I was actually reading his blog again last night (after chatting with a friend about QQ), and he has a follow up post, titled: "Quantum Investment Bros: Have you no shame?"
Relevant quote:
> It’s like this: if you think quantum computers able to break 2048-bit cryptography within 3-5 years are a near-certainty, then I’d say your confidence is unwarranted. If you think such quantum computers, once built, will also quickly revolutionize optimization and machine learning and finance and countless other domains beyond quantum simulation and cryptanalysis—then I’d say that more likely than not, an unscrupulous person has lied to you about our current understanding of quantum algorithms.
And:
> In any case, the main reason I made my remark was just to tee up the wisecrack about whether I’m not sure if there’ll be a 2028 US presidential election.
So I would be careful posting those quotes without context, it makes Scott angry.