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Its zeitgeist appeal has been stuck for like 20 years.

The problem with it is that unlike sell-side mortgage fraud, self-driving cars, crypto, and current AI… quantum computing doesn’t have a simple, approachable, mass appeal parlour trick to rally around.

Until it gets one, it’s never going to facilitate the scale of grift and graft as the others.

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The threat of breaking all encryption has been a slow-burning $1 trillion or more grift for the field over the last 20-30 years. Not that anything has materialized from it. I am somewhat convinced that PQC is primarily being rolled out so that we can all stop funding those clowns (and because lattice-based cryptography is finally ready for prime time).

I don't know if breaking encryption will even matter if we just keep handing over all our data anyway.

Depends on machine availability.

If all crypto can only be broken by a machine that can itself only be made by 3 companies all of which are very careful about who they sell to, we get a few governments spying on everyone (including each other), while keeping normal criminal hacking (and insufficiently important governments) locked out.

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