The White House issued two executive orders requiring the United States to accelerate the construction of large-scale quantum computing capabilities while pre-engineered the federal encryption system to address the security risks that may arise from future quantum computing. The arrangements involved not only the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Defence, but also, once again, bringing back to the market view the resistance of the block network of bitcoin, e.g. the Taifung.
The two executive orders are advancing simultaneously.
One of the executive orders focuses on building basic capacity for quantum computing. The document requires the United States Department of Energy to carry at least one advanced quantum computer and to make it available to the scientific community when conditions permit. The White House hopes to promote large-scale quantum computer development, talent development and critical supply chain development.
The Executive Order also required the Ministry of Defence to give priority to the deployment of the next generation of quantum sensors. Based on the content of the document, the relevant departments are required to identify at least three priority projects within 60 days, with the goal of completing deployment by the end of September 2028.
- The Department of Energy will carry at least one advanced quantum computer.
- The Ministry of Defense needs to prioritize 3 quantum sensor projects.
- Quantum sensor deployment target time is 2028
The federal system set a migration deadline.
Another executive order focuses on the defence end, the core of which is to facilitate the migration of federal agencies to the anti-quantifiable encryption system. The White House mentioned in the paper that potential opponents might already be collecting United States encrypted data before decrypting the future quantum computing capacity.
Such risks are often referred to as “collected first, declassified later”. In other words, the data that cannot be broken today may lose protection in the future as a result of a quantum breakthrough.
According to an executive decree, the most sensitive systems of the federal agencies are required to complete the encoded transfer of the resistance to key creation links by 2030 and the associated migration of digital signatures by 2031.
The encryption industry is again focusing on quantum risk.
The impact of quantum computing on the encryption industry is mainly concentrated in bitcoin and the elliptical curve encryption system used in the Taifung. It was mentioned that a paper published in March this year suggested that the number of physical quantum bits needed to decipher the bottom encryption of such blocks could be lower than previously estimated.
The paper was co-signed by Google researcher Justin Drake, a researcher of the Etherwood Foundation, and Dan Boneh, a Stanford password scientist. According to the paper, the number of physical quantum bits required to decipher bitcoin and encryption associated with the Taifeng is probably less than 500,000, which is about 20 times lower than earlier estimates.
Currently, Google has moved its infrastructure to the internal target time of 2029 for anti-quant encryption. The Ether Workshop also proposed a similar timetable. Multiple block chains, including bitcoin, have recently been assessing their respective defence programmes.