AI is speeding up the quantum threat to crypto, security experts warn

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AI is speeding up the quantum threat to crypto, security experts warn Researchers and builders believe that artificial intelligence may be accelerating the quantum timeline and forcing a broader rethink of how digital security works. What to know: - AI is accelerating the development of quantum computing and forcing the crypto industry to prepare for a future where today’s encryption systems, including those securing blockchains and the broader internet, may no longer be reliable. - Security researchers say the combination of AI and quantum computing is creating a new cybersecurity arms race, where crypto networks and internet infrastructure will need to evolve continuously to defend against rapidly advancing threats. The crypto industry has spent years debating whether quantum computing poses an existential threat to blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Now, researchers and builders believe artificial intelligence may be accelerating that timeline, and forcing a broader rethink of how digital security works altogether. Leaders working on post-quantum cryptography and blockchain security described a rapidly changing landscape in which AI is simultaneously becoming a weapon for attackers, a defensive tool for developers, and an accelerator of quantum computing research. “The security landscape of the future is going to be different,” said Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, a company focused on quantum-resistant infrastructure for crypto. “Between quantum and AI, we’re going to go into a world where security, and this is more broadly than just crypto, you simply cannot count on the way you’ve always done things,” Pruden said. The convergence of AI and quantum computing has become increasingly urgent following warnings from major technology firms and researchers that cryptographically relevant quantum computers may arrive sooner than previously expected. While experts remain divided on exactly when a quantum computer capable of breaking modern encryption will emerge, many believe AI could dramatically compress development timelines. “AI is definitely being used to accelerate the development of quantum computing,” Pruden said. Researchers are already using machine learning systems to optimize quantum error correction, one of the field’s biggest engineering bottlenecks. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and a former Google AI researcher, said AI has already been accelerating scientific discovery for years. “AI is becoming more and more of an accelerator,” Polosukhin said. “The rate of research is going to accelerate from here, and we have already seen progress that people didn’t expect would come this early.” Polosukhin pointed to his time at Google in 2016, when machine learning systems were already being used to discover new materials. “It might be that the next generation quantum computer will be built with AI and quantum computers of this generation,” he said. “It’s feeding into itself.” For security researchers, the threat is no longer simply theoretical. The growing concern is that governments and sophisticated actors are already collecting encrypted internet traffic today with the expectation that future quantum computers will eventually be able to decrypt it, a strategy often referred to as “harvest now, decrypt later.” “If I know quantum computers are coming in a couple of years, I will start trying to capture all possible data that’s going around,” Polosukhin said. “Everything we’re putting on the internet, if you’re identifiable as a person of interest, you can assume will be decrypted in two years,” he added. “It’s most likely happening already.” The implications for crypto are especially severe because most blockchain networks rely on the same elliptic curve cryptography used across the broader internet. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive private keys from public keys, allowing attackers to compromise vulnerable wallets and systems. But researchers increasingly argue the bigger story is not quantum alone, it is the combination of quantum computing and AI creating a permanent security arms race. Artificial intelligence is already becoming increasingly effective at identifying software vulnerabilities and implementation flaws. “I would expect the advent of AI to accelerate… even more hacks,” Pruden said. “You have these AI models that are able to find either implementation bugs in the underlying cryptography or increasingly, I think, break the cryptography itself.” At the same time, developers are deploying AI defensively for code auditing, testing and formal verification, mathematical techniques used to prove software behaves as intended. “AI can help with formal verification of post-quantum systems,” Pruden said. “That theoretically makes them more secure.” The result, researchers say, is a future where security can no longer be treated as static infrastructure that gets upgraded once every decade. “Nothing is going to be as static as it’s been in the future,” Pruden said. “Either a quantum computer comes online to break some fundamental assumption, or AI gets smart enough to break that assumption too.” That shift is already beginning to force blockchain networks to rethink how quickly they can evolve. Several ecosystems, including Ethereum, Zcash, Solana, Ripple and NEAR, are actively researching or implementing post-quantum migration strategies. NEAR recently announced plans to integrate post-quantum cryptography directly into its account infrastructure, allowing users to rotate cryptographic schemes without migrating assets to entirely new wallets. “Back in 2018, when we were designing [NEAR], we were like: ‘Hey, quantum will come, we should have an easy way to do it,’” Polosukhin said. Still, the transition remains technically difficult. Post-quantum cryptographic systems are often significantly larger and slower than current standards. “The cryptography that’s currently standardized for post-quantum is very big and slow,” Polosukhin said. The broader implication, according to researchers, is that both AI and quantum computing are undermining a foundational assumption of the digital age: that encryption remains reliable for long periods. Instead, security may increasingly become an adaptive, continuously evolving process, in which systems must constantly upgrade just to survive. Read more: Here's how bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks are preparing for the looming quantum threat

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