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Andersen Cheng's wife wanted him to take it easy after he sold his cyber-security companies for ~$200 million in 2006 at the age of 43. But he returned to the fray for one last missionto save the world from quantum computers, whose immense power he believes threatens total social and economic collapse.

They can hack into any cell phone, laptopsanything, he told Decrypt in a recent interview. Even Bitcoin wallets.

For the past 14 years, Cheng, now 57, has run Post-Quantum, a British company building an encryption algorithm resistant to quantum computers. Quantum computers, still prototypes, are thousands of times faster than supercomputers and could crack all modern encryption within seconds.

It'll be about a decade until Googles quantum computer hits the shelves (Google is believed to be a frontrunner in the race to build a quantum machine.) Yet Cheng said he was tipped off by anonymous friends from the British intelligence world, to whom he has sold cybersecurity software since the 80s, that quantum computers produced in secrecy by governments could crack encryption within three years.

While the timeline might be debatable, the end result is not: Unless we get in front of the problem, a quantum computer, once operational, could reveal every governments secrets, drain any bank account and overpower nuclear power stations, said Cheng. The machines could also destroy Bitcoina hacker could use a quantum computer to reverse-engineer your public keys to work out your private ones, then drain your Bitcoin wallet.

Its like walking into a bank vault without drawing a gun: Its totally wide open, he said.

Cheng claims that unless we act soon the computerized world could devolve into complete and utter financial collapse. And thats precisely what his company wants to avert.

Post-Quantum believes it has created a quantum-resistant encryption protocol that banks and governments could use to re-encrypt their files, and that blockchains could use to prevent people from hacking the network.

According to CJ Tjhai, one of the co-founders of Post-Quantum and an architect of the protocol, heres how it works. Post-Quantums algorithm encrypts a message by padding it out with redundant data and deliberately corrupting it with random errors. The ciphertext recipient with the correct private key knows which fluff to cut and how to correct any errors.

You add some extra data to the filesome garbage thats only meaningful to the private key holder. And you then also corrupt the file: you add errors to itflip the bits, he said. Its a little like how archivists use artificial intelligence to restore grainy videos of WW2 dogfights.

Tjhai said that this algorithm is far more secure than todays common encryption algorithm, RSA, whose private keys are forged from the factorization of two numbers. It would take thousands of years for even the most powerful supercomputer to guess the numbers, though a quantum computer would have no problem.

Of Post-Quantums encryption method, Tjhai said, People can try to break this thing using quantum computers, but from what we understand now, they can do it, but it will take an extremely long time. Thats because quantum computers arent designed to be efficient at cracking these kinds of codes.

Post-Quantums algorithm is based on an algorithm created in 1978 by Caltech professor Robert McEliece. It doesnt require a powerful computer and is pretty fast. But its only feasible today because hard drives are larger and internet speeds are faster. RSA-2048 has a public key size of 256 bytes, while a code-based algorithm like Post Quantum's can be a minimum of 255 kilobytes.

Tjhai said the algorithm could also project Bitcoin. It would be trivial for someone using a quantum computer to work out the private keys to your wallet, so long as they knew the public key. With quantum computers, we will be able to reverse that [public key] into the private key, he said.

In July 2020, the National Institute of Standards and Technologythe US agency that sets global standards for encryption protocolsannounced that Post-Quantums encryption algorithm had beaten 82 others to become one of 15 finalists of a four-year-long competition to build a quantum-resistant algorithm.

Post-Quantums algorithm is up against three finalists from another class of cryptography: lattice-based schemes, whose algorithms crack codes by finding lines in a grid. Its expected that NIST will choose a finalist from each scheme for standardization by early 2022.

To reach the final round, Post-Quantum in February merged its submission into one created by one of the worlds foremost cryptographers, Daniel Bernstein.

Post-Quantum is the smaller fishthough Cheng said that it is by no means less able. Bernsteins work has thousands of citations and hes a professor at two leading universities; Chengs 14-person-strong company (plus ten contractors) receives no government funding (in 2016 it raised $10.3 million in a Series A), and until the pandemic, operated from an office above a busy McDonalds abridged to a central London train station.

Andreas Hlsing, a cryptographer from the Eindhoven University of Technology and a finalist on a digital signature submission to the NIST competition called SPHINCS+ and a public-key encryption algorithm called NTRU, told Decrypt that the NIST competition feels more cooperative than a fight to the death; Hlsing, for instance, has worked with many of his competitors and once studied under Bernstein.

The schemes which made it to the end are actually the schemes which were around already for the last maybe 10 years, and were essentially tweaked, he said. Post-Quantums submission is a tweak of a scheme created back in the 70s.

There were a bunch of proposals which really tried to do a lot [of new things], and sadly, most of them actually failed, said Hlsing. The finalists, such as Post-Quantums proposal, are well-studiedthey just werent suitable for the last generation of computers.

You don't have many different options. Theyre all old schemes, which people try to optimize in a certain way," he said.

Post-Quantums ambitions extend beyond the NIST competition. The protocol powers a forthcoming VPN and was the backbone of its short-lived quantum-secure chat app; the company removed it from the Google Play store after ISIS started using it to coordinate attacks. Too much hassle, said Cheng.

Dont get me wrongwe still want to make some money out of it, said Cheng, who headed JPMorgans credit risk department in Europe back in the late 90s, saving the world from Y2Ka computer bug many feared would crash the programs holding society together on January 1, 2000, because programmers in the 60s hadnt the foresight to believe that people would still use them in the new millennium.

It sure beats retirement. "There's only so much golf you can play," he said.

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Inside the Competition That Will Save Bitcoin From Quantum Computers - Decrypt

Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted to connect with other people and cultures for his work and social life, he says, so he learned Vietnamese, French, German, and Russian, and is now taking an MIT course in Mandarin. But this drive to push past obstacles really comes to the fore in his research, where Nguyen is trying to crack the secrets of a new and burgeoning branch of physics.

My dissertation focuses on neutron scattering on topological semimetals, which were only experimentally discovered in 2015, he says. They have very special properties, but because they are so novel, theres a lot thats unknown, and neutrons offer a unique perspective to probe their properties at a new level of clarity.

Topological materials dont fit neatly into conventional categories of substances found in everyday life. They were first materialized in the 1980s, but only became practical in the mid-2000s with deepened understanding of topology, which concerns itself with geometric objects whose properties remain the same even when the objects undergo extreme deformation. Researchers experimentally discovered topological materials even more recently, using the tools of quantum physics.

Within this domain, topological semimetals, which share qualities of both metals and semiconductors, are of special interest to Nguyen.They offer high levels of thermal and electric conductivity, and inherent robustness, which makes them very promising for applications in microelectronics, energy conversions, and quantum computing, he says.

Intrigued by the possibilities that might emerge from such unconventional physics, Nguyen is pursuing two related but distinct areas of research: On the one hand, Im trying to identify and then synthesize new, robust topological semimetals, and on the other, I want to detect fundamental new physics with neutrons and further design new devices.

On a fast research track

Reaching these goals over the next few years might seem a tall order. But at MIT, Nguyen has seized every opportunity to master the specialized techniques required for conducting large-scale experiments with topological materials, and getting results. Guided by his advisor,Mingda Li, the Norman C Rasmussen Assistant Professor and director of theQuantum Matter Group within NSE, Nguyen was able to dive into significant research even before he set foot on campus.

The summer, before I joined the group, Mingda sent me on a trip to Argonne National Laboratory for a very fun experiment that used synchrotron X-ray scattering to characterize topological materials, recalls Nguyen. Learning the techniques got me fascinated in the field, and I started to see my future.

During his first two years of graduate school, he participated in four studies, serving as a lead author in three journal papers. In one notable project,described earlier this year in Physical Review Letters, Nguyen and fellow Quantum Matter Group researchers demonstrated, through experiments conducted at three national laboratories, unexpected phenomena involving the way electrons move through a topological semimetal, tantalum phosphide (TaP).

These materials inherently withstand perturbations such as heat and disorders, and can conduct electricity with a level of robustness, says Nguyen. With robust properties like this, certain materials can conductivity electricity better than best metals, and in some circumstances superconductors which is an improvement over current generation materials.

This discovery opens the door to topological quantum computing. Current quantum computing systems, where the elemental units of calculation are qubits that perform superfast calculations, require superconducting materials that only function in extremely cold conditions. Fluctuations in heat can throw one of these systems out of whack.

The properties inherent to materials such as TaP could form the basis of future qubits, says Nguyen. He envisions synthesizing TaP and other topological semimetals a process involving the delicate cultivation of these crystalline structures and then characterizing their structural and excitational properties with the help of neutron and X-ray beam technology, which probe these materials at the atomic level. This would enable him to identify and deploy the right materials for specific applications.

My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer, says Nguyen. With infinitely better heat management, these quantum computing systems and devices could prove to be incredibly energy efficient.

Physics for the environment

Energy efficiency and its benefits have long concerned Nguyen. A native of Montreal, Quebec, with an aptitude for math and physics and a concern for climate change, he devoted his final year of high school to environmental studies. I worked on a Montreal initiative to reduce heat islands in the city by creating more urban parks, he says. Climate change mattered to me, and I wanted to make an impact.

At McGill University, he majored in physics. I became fascinated by problems in the field, but I also felt I could eventually apply what I learned to fulfill my goals of protecting the environment, he says.

In both classes and research, Nguyen immersed himself in different domains of physics. He worked for two years in a high-energy physics lab making detectors for neutrinos, part of a much larger collaboration seeking to verify the Standard Model. In the fall of his senior year at McGill, Nguyens interest gravitated toward condensed matter studies. I really enjoyed the interplay between physics and chemistry in this area, and especially liked exploring questions in superconductivity, which seemed to have many important applications, he says. That spring, seeking to add useful skills to his research repertoire, he worked at Ontarios Chalk River Laboratories, where he learned to characterize materials using neutron spectroscopes and other tools.

These academic and practical experiences served to propel Nguyen toward his current course of graduate study. Mingda Li proposed an interesting research plan, and although I didnt know much about topological materials, I knew they had recently been discovered, and I was excited to enter the field, he says.

Man with a plan

Nguyen has mapped out the remaining years of his doctoral program, and they will prove demanding. Topological semimetals are difficult to work with, he says. We dont yet know the optimal conditions for synthesizing them, and we need to make these crystals, which are micrometers in scale, in quantities large enough to permit testing.

With the right materials in hand, he hopes to develop a qubit structure that isnt so vulnerable to perturbations, quickly advancing the field of quantum computing so that calculations that now take years might require just minutes or seconds, he says. Vastly higher computational speeds could have enormous impacts on problems like climate, or health, or finance that have important ramifications for society. If his research on topological materials benefits the planet or improves how people live, says Nguyen, I would be totally happy.

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Cracking the secrets of an emerging branch of physics - MIT News

WILMETTE RESIDENT SALLY SCHOCH IS NUTS!AT 86-YEARS YOUNG AND DURING A PANDEMIC SHE OPENSSALLYS NUTS AND SNACK SHOP IN THE RAVINIA DISTRICT OF HIGHLAND PARK

This year may be a bit nuts but nothing is stopping 86-years young Sally Schoch from fulfilling her dream. She and daughter, Kari Guhl are the proud owners of the newly opened Sallys Nuts and Snack Shop in the Ravinia District of Highland Park, offering their signature sweet & salty Sallys Nuts as well as a grab-n-go menu of fun, affordable simple sandwiches, salads, snacks, cheese boards, sweets, drinks, and fun inspired merchandise.

Its never too late to chase a dream!! says Highland Park-resident Kari Guhl of her moms 15-year fetish with making and perfecting nuts for her family and friends. Everyone would tell Sal she should sell her delicious creations and now I am so happy to see my moms dream become a reality. As Sal says, I want to achieve my dream and who knows what the future holds.

Sallys Nuts handcrafted sweet & salty pecans, cashews and almonds are the perfect accompaniment to the Snack Shops array of homemade sandwiches, salads, cheese and meat boards. Some of the affordable, simple options on the menu include peanut butter & jelly, bologna & cheese, cucumber or egg salad sandwiches, and dont forget the bag of carrots! There are also family favorite salads, dressings, and sweets recipes including the creative Junkanoos and Scrabble Mix (you have to come in for yourself to taste and learn more!).

Inspired by Karis son, Sallys Nuts offers a full line of merch perfect for bundling with the sensational nuts in terrific tote bags. The Merch Menu includes the ordinary Ts, sweatshirt, knit, beanie and baseball hats, to the more unique aprons, tea towels, sponges and cutting boards, making customizing a gift for any Sally or nut a great holiday gift option.

Gaining recognition as the nuttiest girls around, this dynamic mother daughter duo can be found making the handcrafted nuts and all the yummy snacks in the back of their shop at 481 Roger Williams Avenue. They invite the public to come get a little nutty and sample some of the best nuts around!

Hours are Tuesday- Saturday 10AM- 6PM. For more information visit https://sallysnuts.com or call (847) 226-7042.

ABOUT SALLY SCHOCH

A longtime businesswoman, mother of four, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate, Sally believes that you are never too old to live out your passions. Selling her art for 63 years, Sally is ready to live out another passion of hers, creating tasty treats. Her love of all things creative, delicious and celebratory has made Sallys Nuts possible.

Sally has been gifting her famous nuts to family and friends while fine tuning her recipe for the last 15 years. After receiving much encouragement, and the help of her daughter, Sally decided that she would start her own business and share her handcrafted nuts with the community.

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Neighbor discussion: Wishing you a Happy, Healthy and Safe Thanksgiving! - Patch.com

by Rania Toukebri

Cyberattacks are exponentially increasing over time, improving the security of communications is crucial for guaranteeing the protection of sensitive information for states and individuals. For states, securing communications is mandatory for a strategic geopolitical influence.

Most technologies have been based on classical laws of physics. Modern communication technology transfers encrypted data with complex mathematical algorithms. The complexity of these algorithms ensures that a third parties cannot easily crack them. However, with stronger computing power and the increasing sophistication of hacking technologies, such methods of communication are increasingly vulnerable to interference. The worlds first quantum-enabled satellite is the Chinese Satellite (Micius). The purpose of the mission is to investigate space-based quantum communications for a couple of years in order to create future hack-proof communication networks.

In a classical computer, each processing is a combination of bits. A bit can either be zero or one. A qubit, the quantum bit, can be a zero and a one at the same time. So, processing qubits is processing several combinations of zeroes and ones simultaneously, and the increased speed of quantum computing comes from exploiting this parallelism.

According to quantum theory, subatomic particles can act as if they are in two places at once. This property is manipulated so that a particle can adopt either one of two states. If the particle is not observed, it will be in a state of superposition.

There have been successful quantum encryption experiments with some limitation. The messages were sent through optical fibers, the signal would be absorbed by the medium and then it wont be possible to make for long distance. Making such communications over long distances would require quantum repeaters that are devices that capture and retransmit the quantum information.

China found another solution by beaming entangled photons through the vacuum of space, so they wont be absorbed.

Micius satellite works by firing a laser through a crystal creating a pair in a state of entanglement. A half of each pair is sent to two separate stations on earth.

The objective of this method is to generate communication keys encrypted with an assembly of entangled photons. The information that will be transmitted will be encoded by a set of random numbers generated between the transmitter and the receiver. If a hacker tries to spy or interfere with one of the beams of entangled photons, the encryption key will be changed and will become unreadable due to the observer effect of Quantum theory. In consequence, the transmitter will be able to change the information in security.

The Quantum communication in Military and defense will enable China to be a strong leader in military sophistication and it will empower its geopolitical influence, decreasing by that the US authority.

China has already started the economic and technological development while US foreign policy is declining her dominance on the global geopolitical scene. Technically, Quantum technological development will speed up a multipolar power balance in international relations.

On another hand, USA is also making research on Quantum Technologies but the US investments remains limited compared to ones in China and Europe. Which is making China the leader in quantum communication. But the USA recognizes the importance of this filed and started making more efforts technically and financially. But the question remains, who will be able to reach the frontier before?

Following the Chinese space strategy, in the last years, China invested a lot in technological development including the pioneer space program, her aim was to reach a dominance in air and force. Micius satellite will be able to make a boom in military advancement and an information dominance. This space program is symptomatic to the Chinese strategy on technological development.

The first Chinese satellite was launched after USA and Russia in 1970. The strategy followed afterwards enhanced an exponential growth in space and technological development by a huge financial investment gained after an exponential economical growth. Beidou ( China space navigation satellite) provides precise geolocation information for Chinese weapon systems and communication coverage for its military. Which is a strength point on military and geopolitical aspects.

The policy is still going in that direction by having a global network coverage of 35 Chinese satellites. The Chinese space program launched already two space laboratories, its aim is the launch of a permanent manned space station in 2022 knowing that the international space station will retire before 2028.

In consequence, China would become the only country with a space station, making it necessary to the countries and in consequence a center of power. More Chinese space missions including robotics and AI took place, preparing for the next generation space technology. Quantum is the accelerator to reach the ultimate goal of this space program and then became the first priority in the technological researches. By 2030, China aims to establish a network of quantum satellites supporting a quantum internet.

The network of quantum satellites (2030 China Project) is aiming to increase the record distance for successful quantum entanglement between two points on Earth. Technically, the lasers being used to beam the entangled photons between the stations will have to achieve a high level of precision to reach the selected targets. But the limitations are:

Rania Toukebri is a Systems engineer for spacecrafts, Regional Coordinator for Africa in Space Generation Advisory Council in support of the United Nations, Space strategy consultant and Cofounder of HudumaPlus company.

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#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: Quantum Technology and Impact of the Global Space Security - SpaceWatch.Global

Welcome to Neurals guide to the glorious future of AI. What wonders will tomorrows machines be capable of? How do we get from Alexa and Siri to Rosie the Robot and R2D2? In this speculative science series well put our optimist hats on and try to answer those questions and more. Lets start with a big one: The Singularity.

The future realization of robot lifeforms is referred to by a plethora of terms sentience, artificial general intelligence (AGI), living machines, self-aware robots, and so forth but the one that seems most fitting is The Singularity.

Rather than debate semantics, were going to sweep all those little ways of saying human-level intelligence or better together and conflate them to mean: A machine capable of at least human-level reasoning, thought, memory, learning, and self-awareness.

Modern AI researchers and developers tend to gravitate towards the term AGI. Normally, wed agree because general intelligence is grounded in metrics we can understand to qualify, an AI would have to be able to do most stuff a human can.

But theres a razor-thin margin between as smart as and smarter than when it comes to hypothetical general intelligence and it seems likely a mind powered by super computers, quantum computers, or a vast network of cloud servers would have far greater sentient potential than our mushy organic ones. Thus, well err on the side of superintelligence for the purposes of this article.

Before we can even start to figure out what a superintelligent AI would be capable of, however, we need to determine how its going to emerge. Lets make some quick decisions for the purposes of discussion:

So how will our future metal buddies gain the spark of consciousness? Lets get super scientific here and crank out a listicle with five separate ways AI could gain human-level intelligence and awareness:

In this first scenario, if we predict even a modest year-over-year increase in computation and error-correction abilities, it seems entirely plausible that machine intelligence could be brute-forced into existence by a quantum computer running strong algorithms in just a couple centuries or so.

Basically, this means the incredibly potent combination of exponentially increasing power and self-replicating artificial intelligence could cook up a sort of digital, quantum, primordial soup for AI where we just toss in some parameters and let evolution take its place. Weve already entered the era of quantum neural networks, a quantum AGI doesnt seem all that far-fetched.

What if intelligence doesnt require power? Sure, our fleshy bodies need energy to continue being alive and computers need electricity to run. But perhaps intelligence can exist without explicit representation. In other words: what if intelligence and consciousness can be reduced to purely mathematical concepts that only when properly executed became apparent?

A researcher by the name of Daniel Buehrer seems to think this could be possible. They wrote a fascinating research paper proposing the creation of a new form of calculus that would, effectively, allow an intelligent master algorithm to emerge from its own code.

The master algorithm idea isnt new the legendary Pedro Domingos literally wrote the book on the concept but what Buehrers talking about is a different methodology. And a very cool one at that.

Heres Buehrers take on how this hypothetical self-perpetuating calculus could unfold into explicit consciousness:

Allowing machines to modify their own model of the world and themselves may create conscious machines, where the measure of consciousness may be taken to be the number of uses of feedback loops between a class calculuss model of the world and the results of what its robots actually caused to happen in the world.

They even go on to propose that such a consciousness would be capable of having little internal thought wars to determine which actions occurring in the machines minds eye should be effected into the physical world. The whole paper is pretty wild, you can read more here.

This ones pretty easy to wrap your head around (pun intended). Instead of a bunch of millionaire AI developers with billion-dollar big tech research labs figuring out how to create a new species of intelligent being out of computer code, we just figure out how to create a perfect artificial brain.

Easy right? The biggest upside here would be the potential for humans and machines to occupy the same spaces. This is clearly a recipe for augmented humans cyborgs. Perhaps we could become immortal by transferring our own consciousnesses into non-organic brains. But the bigger picture would be the ability to develop robots and AI in the true image of humans.

If we can figure out how to make a functional replica of the human brain, including the entire neural network housed within it, all wed need to do iskeep it running and shovel the right components and algorithms into it.

Maybe conscious machines are already here. Or maybe theyll quietly show up a year or a hundred years from now completely hidden in the background. Im talking about cloud consciousness and the idea that a self-replicating, learning AI created solely to optimize large systems could one day gain a form of sentience that would, qualitatively, indicate superintelligence but otherwise remain unnoticed by humans.

How could this happen? Imagine if Amazon Web Services or Google Search released a cutting-edge algorithm into their respective systems a few decades from now and it created its own self-propagating solution system that, through the sheer scope of its control, became self-aware. Wed have a ghost in the machine.

Since this self-organized AI system wouldnt have been designed to interface with humans or translate its interpretations of the world it exists in into something humans can understand, it stands to reason that it could live forever as a superintelligent, self-aware, digital entity without ever alerting us to its presence.

For all we know theres a living, sentient AI chilling out in the Gmail servers just gathering data on humans (note: there almost certainly isnt, but its a fun thought exercise).

Dont laugh. Of all the methods by which machines could hypothetically gain true intelligence, alien tech is the most likely to make it happen in our lifetimes.

Here we can make one of two assumptions: Aliens will either visit us sometime in the near future (perhaps to congratulate us on achieving quantum-based interstellar communication) or well discover some ancient alien technology once we put humans on Mars within the next few decades. These are the basicplots of Star Trek andthe Mass Effect video game series respectively.

Heres hoping that, no matter how The Singularity comes about, it ushers in a new age of prosperity for all intelligent beings.But just in case it doesnt work out so well, weve got something thatll help you prepare for the worst. Check out these articles in Neurals Beginners Guide to the AI Apocalypse series:

Published November 18, 2020 19:50 UTC

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Neurals guide to the glorious future of AI: Heres how machines become sentient - The Next Web