Post-quantum defaults

[Bruce Walzer]

On Mon, Apr 06, 2026 at 10:22:48PM +0200, john doe via Gnupg-users wrote:
> On 4/6/26 9:54 PM, Robert J. Hansen via Gnupg-users wrote:
> > details, but the bottom line is there are three pillars on which I have
> > set my projections and this week it looks as if two of them are
> > beginning to crack.
> > 
> Can you elaborate on why  you think  this is the right time to do so?

There seem to be two papers that have sparked the recent excitement. One involves boring old superconducting qubits. AFAIK, it assumes a significant improvement in noise performance to work. So the fact that it uses less qubits isn't very interesting in the absence of increased noise performance. Impossible is still impossible.

The other one involves something called neutral atoms. This technology has better noise performance. But it is a different technology. It appears that we don't know how to run a relevant algorithm on it at this time in a useful way. The paper refers to "engineering challenges". So I think this is the one to pay attention to in the next few months. We need to wait for comments from knowledgeable critics.

Bruce