It explicitly states that adversaries could already collect encrypted U.S. data, or information mathematically scrambled into an unreadable format to protect it from unauthorized access, and could decrypt it in the future with the help of quantum computers.
This is the “harvest now, decipher later” problem. Steal the locked box today, open it whenever the tool to do so finally exists.
The fix, according to the order, is a hard post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration schedule. Federal agencies must migrate their most sensitive systems to post-quantum cryptography for establishing keys by the end of 2030 and for digital signatures by the end of 2031.
In other words, the government plans to replace the current method of establishing secure, encrypted connections with a new method that remains secure against future quantum computers.
The crypto angle
Quantum computing has been a buzzword in the crypto industry ever since Google researchers said a powerful enough machine could crack Bitcoin’s blockchain with significantly less firepower than previously expected.
The March paper, co-authored with Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and Dan Boneh, a cryptographer at Stanford, said breaking the elliptic curve cryptography behind the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains could take fewer than 500,000 physical qubits. This represents a 20-fold drop from previous estimates.
