Speaking on a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ana Paula Assis, IBM’s general manager of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), painted a stark picture of the cybersecurity havoc that quantum computers could unleash by the end of the decade.

Quantum computers, with their ability to perform parallel calculations, are set to render existing encryption systems obsolete. According to her, two-thirds of developers using quantum computers rely on IBM’s open-source toolkit Qiskit to write their code, showcasing IBM’s significant influence in the quantum computing landscape.

With widespread use poised to be upon us as soon as the 2030s, Assis poses the question, “is quantum going to really create a cybersecurity armageddon?”

“It’s going to.”

However, the panel came to the revelation that regulating quantum may be more achievable for states than artificial intelligence, due to its dependency on infrastructure. 

“I would be more optimistic that we can regulate this in a better way than AI,” said Joel Mescot, president of ETH Zurich.

Another member on the “Quantum’s Black Swan” panel, Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ, highlighted the lack of preparedness among businesses to utilise quantum machines and cope with the disruptions they may cause.

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“Most companies do not have a robust roadmap yet as to how they’re going to use AI and quantum together to solve core problems,” he said, predicting a potential “trainwreck.” 

According to him, it could take banks eight to ten years to transition to post-quantum protocols, even though scalable quantum computers could be available as early as the end of this decade. However, Hidary emphasised that it is progressing faster than initially projected. 

This would pose a significant risk to anything relying on encryption such as e-commerce and online banking. 

Another revelation from the panel was that China is making substantial ground in quantum computing. Mescot described it as “a very serious and very confident effort along many lines.”