Trump signs orders to build a quantum computer and protect against the one that could break encryption

The U.S. government wants to build a quantum computer – the ultra-fast machine that could theoretically break the Bitcoin BTC$63,338.33 blockchain – and protect itself from it at the same time.

On Monday, the White House issued two executive orders. One pushes to build the quantum machine while the other calls for building defenses against the damage that such machines could do to encryption.

The build order

Executive Order 14411 pushes for an effort called QC-ADDS to produce a large-scale quantum computer, with the "intent to deliver at least one such computer to a Department of Energy facility and, to the extent possible, make it available to the scientific community."

The order also tells the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, to get quantum sensors into the field by 2028, and lays out plans for workforce training and supply chains

"Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of War shall identify at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects to prioritize in order to field these sensors by September 30, 2028," the order says.

The defensive order

Executive Order 14409 focuses on what happens once a quantum computer is powerful enough to break today's encryption.

It explicitly says that adversaries may already be collecting encrypted U.S. data, or information mathematically scrambled into an unreadable format to protect it from unauthorized access, and could decrypt it in future with the help of quantum computers.

That's the "harvest now, decrypt later" problem. Steal the locked box today, crack it open whenever the tool to do so finally exists.

The fix, according to the order, is a hard post quantum cryptography (PQC) migration timeline. Federal agencies must move their most sensitive systems to post-quantum cryptography for key establishment by the end of 2030, and for digital signatures by the end of 2031.

In other words, the government plans to replace the current method for setting up secure, encrypted connections with a new way that remains secure from future quantum computers.

The crypto angle

Quantum computing has been a buzzword in the crypto industry since Google researchers said a sufficiently powerful machine could crack Bitcoin's blockchain with significantly less firepower than previously expected.

The March paper, co-authored with Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, said that breaking the elliptic curve cryptography behind Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains could take fewer than 500,000 physical qubits. That's a 20-fold drop from earlier estimates.

Google has set 2029 as its own internal deadline to migrate its infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography. Ethereum has set a similar target. Several other blockchains, including Bitcoin, have been weighing their own defenses.

Read: Bitcoin's $1.3 trillion security race: Key initiatives aimed at quantum-proofing the world's largest blockchain