Google just put a date on the end of modern encryption: 2029.
That is three years from now. Not “sometime in the future”, not “a theoretical concern”. Three years.
Their assessment is more aggressive than the US government’s 2035 mandate and the NSA’s 2031 deadline. When Google says it is happening faster than the government thinks, you should pay attention.
The attack that is already happening
Here is the part most people misunderstand: you do not need a quantum computer today to exploit this.
Most people think that once this technology drops, then we have to worry about it. But the internet remembers everything. What is encrypted today can be stored and unlocked tomorrow. And state actors know this.
The attack is called “store now, decrypt later”. It works like this:
- An attacker intercepts encrypted data TODAY. Bank transactions, medical records, government communications, corporate secrets.
- The data is encrypted with current algorithms. The attacker cannot read it. Yet.
- The attacker stores the encrypted data. Storage is cheap. Patience is free.
- In 2029 (or whenever quantum decryption becomes available), the attacker runs the stored data through a quantum computer and reads everything.
This is not hypothetical. Intelligence agencies, large private institutions, and governments have been doing this for years. What was a secret in 2024 can be unlocked in 2029. That is the scary part, and it is bound to happen.
A personal connection
In 2018, I was invited to IBM’s research lab in Switzerland for a day. They were going to show us an actual quantum machine, but just that week they signed something and could not show it anymore because things were picking up the pace. I think at the time they were talking about around fifty qubits.
That was almost eight years ago. Things have evolved enormously since then.
I also know the CEO of a quantum computing company, a university spin-off from Barcelona. She has been working on this for years and is still at it. So I know from firsthand conversations that the technology is real, it works, but it needs a lot of money and the error rates still need to be stabilized before it becomes a daily useful technology.
The Chinese, from what I understand, are extremely advanced in this area. So the race is very much on, and I have my own theories about who gets there first.
Why current encryption breaks
Modern encryption relies on mathematical problems that classical computers cannot solve in a reasonable time. Factoring large prime numbers, computing discrete logarithms. These problems are hard for traditional processors.
Quantum computers solve them differently. Using quantum properties like superposition and entanglement, they can explore solution spaces that classical computers have to traverse one path at a time. Problems that take a classical computer thousands of years can be solved by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer in hours.
RSA, the encryption standard that protects most of the internet, falls to quantum computing. So does ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography), which is used in modern TLS, cryptocurrency, and secure messaging.
When a capable quantum computer arrives, the locks on everything change overnight.
What is being done
The good news: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) exists. New algorithms designed to resist both classical and quantum attacks. NIST finalized its PQC standards in 2024. Google is already implementing quantum-resistant cryptography in Android 17.
But implementation takes time. Every system, every protocol, every application that uses encryption needs to be updated: TLS, SSH, VPNs, messaging apps, banking systems, government networks, medical records, all of it.
Three years to update the entire digital infrastructure of civilization. That is the timeline.
The thought I cannot shake
Here is what keeps me up at night: what happens when you combine state-of-the-art AI with a state-of-the-art quantum computer?
AI that can reason, plan, and adapt, running on hardware that can break any encryption in existence. That combination is not science fiction. Both technologies are advancing on converging timelines. By 2029, we could have AI systems that are dramatically more capable than today, running on quantum hardware that makes current encryption meaningless.
Nobody is talking about that intersection. Everyone discusses quantum and AI as separate threads. But they will meet. And when they do, the implications go far beyond cracking passwords.
That is food for thought. And it is getting closer to reality faster than most people realize.
Sources: PCWorld, Help Net Security