How the United States Is Developing Post-Quantum Cryptography

Quantum Computing is slowly becoming more feasible, and when it becomes powerful enough, anywhere within the next decade, it will render all current cryptography obsolete. This field is already slow-paced, with algorithms designed in the 1980s (ex: Elliptic curve cryptography) just getting deployed in practice today. In this post-quantum world, a new class of cryptography will be required to keep communication and information safe. The US NIST (National Institute of Standards) has declared an objective to standardize such a class of algorithms by 2022. This research is crucial for national security, since the first nation to develop this technology will be theoretically be able to decrypt anything on the internet. Peter Schwabe, a computer security researcher at Radbound Universiy in the Netherlands believes there “is a good chance that the first large universal quantum computers will be available only to government agencies who will not exactly advertise that they have such computing capabilities.” This revolution will usher in a new era of cyberwarfare. This articles explains how the US is trying to get ahead of the curve.