The Encryption Apocalypse Is Coming!

This Deep Dive was originally sent on August 24th, 2025.

You probably did at least three things this past week that you assumed were completely private: checked your bank balance, sent a personal message, and made an online purchase.

And why wouldn’t you feel safe? Everything’s encrypted, right?… Yeah, we need to talk about that. Because right now, cybercriminals are quietly collecting your encrypted data: credit card numbers, private messages, medical records, the works.

They’re not trying to crack it today, but to decrypt it tomorrow with quantum computers that could make today’s strongest encryption as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

And yes, I know that sounds like science fiction.

But here’s the uncomfortable reality: every piece of sensitive data you’ve ever encrypted could potentially be sitting in some hacker’s database right now, waiting for quantum computing to mature enough to crack it wide open.

This isn’t some distant threat either.

The post-quantum cryptography market is exploding—from $1.22 billion in 2024 to a projected $29.95 billion by 2034.^[1] That’s a 37.72% annual growth rate.

It’s happening because every tech company, government agency, and security expert knows the same thing: The quantum revolution isn’t coming. It’s here. And our current encryption methods are about to become as obsolete as telegraph machines.

But here’s the thing that makes this story fascinating: we’re not just sitting around waiting for the encryption apocalypse. The race to build quantum-resistant security is one of the most intense technological competitions happening right now, and the solutions being developed will fundamentally reshape how we think about digital privacy.

So join me as we dive into why your encrypted data is already at risk, what quantum computers can actually do, and how the cybersecurity world is scrambling to build defenses that can withstand the most powerful computers ever conceived.

The Quantum Threat: Why Your Encryption Is Already Doomed

First, let me explain why quantum computers are so terrifying to anyone who cares about digital security.

Every piece of encryption protecting your data today works like a sophisticated digital lock. When you send information — whether that’s a credit card number or a private message — encryption scrambles it into gibberish that only someone with the right “key” can unscramble back into readable text.

The widely-used RSA encryption system creates these keys by using a mathematical problem that’s easy to do in one direction, but nearly impossible to reverse. Think of it like mixing paint: it’s easy to mix red and blue to get purple, but if someone hands you purple paint, it’s incredibly hard to figure out exactly which shades of red and blue were used to make it.

This mathematical difficulty is what keeps your data safe. Your typical computer would need thousands of years to “unmix the paint” — that’s why we feel secure using RSA encryption for everything from online banking to secure messaging.

But quantum computers don’t work like regular computers at all. Instead of processing information in bits that are either 1 or 0, quantum computers use “qubits” that can be both 1 and 0 simultaneously through something called superposition. This allows them to explore multiple solution paths at once, making them exponentially more powerful for certain types of problems.

The result? A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break RSA-2048 encryption — the current industry standard that protects most of your online activities — in a matter of hours or even minutes.^[2][3]

Here’s what makes this threat immediate and terrifying: cybercriminals don’t need to wait for quantum computers to become mainstream. They’re already executing “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, collecting encrypted data today with the plan to crack it once quantum technology catches up.

Think about what that means. All your digital history could potentially be sitting in storage somewhere, waiting for the day quantum computers become powerful enough to unlock it all.

Today’s quantum computers operate with only a few hundred qubits. According to experts, we need 4,099 stable qubits to break current encryption standards–but that’s assuming a perfect, error-free quantum computer. In reality, quantum computers suffer from constant errors and require massive error correction systems, meaning we’d likely need millions of physical qubits to achieve those 4,099 “logical” qubits needed to crack RSA encryption.^[4][5]

This engineering challenge explains why most estimates put quantum computers capable of breaking encryption somewhere between 10 to 20 years away.

Still, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been so concerned about this timeline that they’ve been working on quantum-resistant standards since 2016. In August 2024, they finally published three official post-quantum cryptography standards specifically designed to replace our vulnerable encryption methods.^[3]