GSMA announced a Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce last week at MWC Las Vegas to develop quantum-safe cryptography standards within the telecom industry. While a fault-tolerant quantum computer is still many years away according to IBM VP and Fellow Ray Harishankar, that doesn’t mean both it’s possibilities and threats aren’t nascent.  

“When such a computer is available, what does it do to cryptography? That's the question,” Harishankar told SDxCentral.

Current computers rely on bits for calculations while quantum computers harness exponential power of quantum bits (qubits) – which can compute a simultaneous mix of ones and zeros to create or solve intensely complex problems that challenge even the most powerful supercomputers today, GSMA stated in the press release about the Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce.

Harishankar explained that while it may be easy to discern the prime factors of 55 [11 and 5], with larger integers, this process becomes harder and extremely time consuming to calculate. “If I were to give you a number that is 637 digits now and ask you to compute that, you can’t even survive enough time to figure it out,” Harishankar explained. “It's going to take hundreds of years for classical computers to do that, whereas quantum computers can do that in a relatively short period of time.”

“And that speed up is what concerns us," he continued. Because now, when a fault tolerant, scalable, quantum computer is available, people will be able to crack the asymmetric public key encryption mechanism.”

With the sensitivity of information going increasingly digital – be it financial, medical, or otherwise – developing a preemptive safeguard is urgent. “That's why we want to create algorithms that will solve that problem both on classical and quantum, so it cannot be broken in the future.” 

Harishankar holds a background in physics and computer science, and while he leads the business and technical strategy for IBM Quantum Safe, he had much to offer within how quantum will propel progress across many industry standards.

“I wish I was a student today; this is fascinating stuff,” he exclaimed. “The solving of the problem is one thing. But the downstream impact of that and its impact on communities is significant.” 

“The positive side of it is certainly what we accentuate. You have no idea what people are going to apply quantum for, and the potential is immense,” Harishankar said.

“I think you will find in the next 20 years or so – when quantum becomes mainstream – a significant explosion in innovation. The types of problems people are able to solve and the impact that it has is going to be unbelievable.”

While Shor's algorithm was the original quantum algorithm to break the encryption within public key cryptosystems, Harishankar explained “a parallel algorithm called Grover's algorithm, which is essentially doing a faster search," can be applied to revolutionize AI advancement. 

“An AI model can be construed as a sparse matrix, and you have to go and search for the right information. Quantum enables you to do that much faster, right. So many of the advances that we wish to make in AI can be made possible,” he explained.

Among additional use cases, Harishankar listed widespread optimization, where network, traffic, and delivery optimization will offer not just monetary benefits, but societal and environmental solutions. Additionally, all the modeling for portfolio balance and actuarial analysis within financial services stand to benefit.

Within battery technology, Harishankar said quantum will guide development for 3D visualization of molecules and elements like never done before. “That is going to be a significant breakthrough for not just biologists, but solid state mechanics and material science folks who can go look at this and create new materials," he said, adding, “That's where most of the work is being done in applying quantum to solve key challenges that we couldn't solve before.”