Google’s Willow quantum computer Google Quantum AI A quantum computer capable of breaking the encryption that secures the internet now seems to be just around the corner. Stunning revelations from two research teams outline how it could happen, with one suggesting that the current largest quantum machine is already more than halfway towards the size needed. The two studies concern an encryption technique built around the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP). The particulars of how this mathematical problem is solved made it a good candidate for encrypting data and led to its widespread adoption for securing lots of internet communication, including bank transactions, and nearly every major cryptocurrency, including bitcoin. It is extremely difficult for conventional computers to crack elliptic curve-based encryption, but since the 1990s researchers have known that quantum computers wouldn’t have the same trouble. Building a quantum computer large enough, however, was an engineering impossibility, so seemed a distant worry. In recent years, both theory and engineering have advanced with staggering speed, greatly squeezing the timeline. On the theory front, researchers …