You’ve been told since the first time you heard the term “computer” that they are all about bits and bytes, right? Computer geeks (like me) are sometimes referred to as “bit twiddlers”. I even wrote a novel called The Bit Dance that has a bunch of ones and zeros on the cover. Computers are all about binary choices, right? It’s either yes or no, on or off, this way or that way, or some other branching logic that has to do with a selection from a choice of two paths.

Programmers write instructions for computers that sometimes look like this …

IF LIGHT = BLUE
THEN RING BELL
ELSE
IF LIGHT = GREEN
SOUND HORN
ELSE
BANG DRUM
END
END

That’s a really simple example and it doesn’t really follow any actual programming language syntax, but you get the idea. A decision is made based on data given. Programs that you use every day while surfing the web, using your mobile phone, and even driving your car have countless thousands of lines of code in them that make decisions like the one above over and over again. It’s all pretty fast, thanks to modern processors that churn through the data quickly. But – design like this does have its limitations.

One of the things that takes advantage of the limitations of binary computing is security. Your online activities at your bank and other places where you exchange money are protected from the prying eyes of hackers by a scheme designed to frustrate the efforts of anyone attempting to intercept your private data. That scheme relies on encrypting all of the back and forth exchange of data with a secret key.

Bank security, and pretty much every other form of online encryption, relies on the fact that a hacker would need an almost unlimited amount of time and computing power to figure out the secret key used. The concept at the root of it all is called large prime number factorization. As it turns out, you can multiply two very large prime numbers easily, but you can’t easily go the other way. This is a complex topic that is outside the scope of this article. If you want to know more about it, start here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-01-20/how-prime-numbers-rsa-en…

The beauty of this kind of approach is that anyone attempting to decrypt the messages encrypted this way would need a powerful computer running literally for years and years before yielding a result.

Until now.

Let me (very briefly) introduce you to quantum computing. Quantum computing does not rely on ones and zeros being mutually exclusive. In traditional systems, a bit can be on or off, but not both at the same time. That means that only one possibility at a time can be considered for any given situation. Using my rudimentary example above, the computer must check to see if the light is blue. Is it? If the answer is in the affirmative, ring the bell. If it’s not blue, but instead green, then sound the horn. Otherwise, bang the drum. That’s very simple and you might think it took no time at all, but it actually did involve multiple decision steps. Under the covers, all of that boils down to ones and zeros. Each decision point is evaluated for one condition at a time and the answer is always “yes” or “no” – “on” or “off”.

Quantum computing doesn’t work that way. Quantum computing takes advantage of the truly weird nature of the emerging field of quantum physics and is based on something called qubits rather than bits. A qubit doesn’t have to be just a one or a zero. It can be both simultaneously. Yeah, I know. That doesn’t make sense. The explanation as to how and why this can happen reaches beyond the scope of this article and the limits of my intellect. Trust me. It’s been proven. It’s true.

The upshot of all of this is that a quantum computer is able to consider all possible outcomes of a decision at once. My simple example above becomes even more simple when you already know all of the possibilities of all of the decisions beforehand. That means that the formidable math problem around large prime number factorization becomes trivial. All encryption falls before the might of the qubit.

So, you might ask, how long do we have to prepare for the impact that quantum computing will have on how we keep our online information safe? The answer might surprise you. IBM is already forging ahead with quantum technology and has created a whole arm of their company to focus on it. It’s here. It’s not fully mature, but that day will arrive soon.

https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/

You’re probably wondering now if you should go completely off the grid and hide your money in a hole in a tree like a squirrel stashes nuts. I wouldn’t go that far. A whole new strategy for meeting the security challenge posed by quantum technology is already moving forward. Companies are putting together key technology that also uses quantum physics and its bizarre qualities to create locks that even qubits can’t pick.

We shouldn’t fear quantum computing, but we should be aware of it and we should prepare for its impact. At full maturity, it will fundamentally change how information is processed. It is the next giant leap forward in the evolution of technology.

This article was written by Tilmer Wright, Jr. Tilmer is an IT professional with over thirty years of experience wrestling with technology. In his spare time, he writes books. One of his books, The Bit Dance, weaves honey bee behavior into the fabric of technology. You might be surprised where that ends up. You can find links to Tilmer’s books at the following location.

https://www.amazon.com/Tilmer-Wright/e/B00DVKGG4K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_s…

The picture of the quantum computer chip is from D-Wave Washington and is used under the Creative Commons license agreement. Links to the original file and attribution agreement are below. No changes were made to the file.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/D-Wave-Washington-1…
Mwjohnson0 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]