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While the battle for high ground in artificial intelligence (AI) dominates global headlines, a team of Chinese researchers has announced a major advance in the field of quantum cryptology – a race in which the stakes could be even higher.
Professor Wang Chao, of Shanghai University, has successfully factored a 90-bit RSA integer using a D-Wave Advantage quantum computer – an achievement that not long ago was thought to be impossible.
Quantum cryptology studies the art of writing or solving codes by exploiting the principles of quantum mechanics in the subatomic world. In this realm, AI and quantum computing are combined to usher in a “fourth industrial revolution”, where such technology could one day be used to crack any code.
This pursuit has raised many concerns about risk. For instance, advances in the field, according to some experts, are taking the world closer to Q-Day – a hypothetical point in the future when quantum computers become powerful enough to decipher even the most secure encryption – which would pose a serious threat to personal privacy and data security.
To stay ahead of this looming threat, scientists around the world have been racing to develop quantum technologies – or countermeasures – that include post-quantum cryptography. A breakthrough by Chinese quantum researchers has just added new momentum to this global debate.
RSA encryption, widely used in securing digital communications, relies on the mathematical difficulty of factoring large integers. Until now, no efficient method had been found to accomplish such a task within a reasonable time frame.
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