Quantum computers will soon be able to break the public-key encryption that protects much of the world's digital infrastructure — from financial systems and medical records to state secrets and military communications. A 2048-bit RSA key that would take a classical supercomputer roughly 300 trillion years to crack could be broken by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer in under eight hours.

Anne Neuberger argues that this is not a distant theoretical threat. Adversaries, particularly China and Russia, are already executing a "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy — collecting and storing vast amounts of encrypted data today in anticipation of future quantum decryption capabilities. At the same time, they are advancing quantum sensing and navigation technologies that could enable GPS-denied military operations and detection of stealth assets.