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"Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack."

— Dr. Strangelove

The MAD world of quantum cyber security 

Last Monday’s mini selloff in bitcoin (which took it all the way to the bargain price of $94,000) was coincident with news from Google that its new Willow chip for quantum computing had "performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years."

These two things appear to have been related: Bitcoin went down because Google’s advance announcement made people worry (again) that Bitcoin could soon be hackable (Satoshi’s coins would particularly be at risk).

There have been some reassuring explainers since then, like this one from NYDIG, which notes that the 105 physical qubits achieved by Google is still a long way from the 8.56 million required to hack Bitcoin’s digital signatures.

And bitcoin’s subsequent ascent to new all-time highs suggests that the market’s hivemind agrees that quantum computing does not pose a clear and present danger to either bitcoin or the broader crypto ecosystem.

But the future may come at us quicker than we think.

Google’s statement on Willow said that quantum processors are improving at a "double exponential rate" — an assertion that supports the Neven’s Law prediction that quantum computers will advance at a far greater clip than Moore’s Law, which has ruled classical computing.

Moore’s Law progresses exponentially: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.

Neven’s Law progresses double exponentially: 2, 4, 16, 256, 65,536, 4.29×109.

That last number is 4.29 billion — and the next number in a double exponential sequence would be 1.8 × 10^19 or eighteen quintillion.

I don’t know what this means for the future of mankind, but here’s how Hartmut Neven himself explains it: With double exponential growth, "it looks like nothing is happening, nothing is happening, and then, whoops, suddenly you’re in a different world."

It’s reasonable to worry about whether there will be any unhackable systems in that different world — and we should especially worry about our financial systems (Bitcoin or otherwise).

A large-scale cyber attack on the US financial system threatens a "complete collapse of our societal infrastructure," according to Jeff Engle of Conquest Cyber. "It would be hard if not impossible to recover the same way of life we have today."

Yikes.

But here’s the good news: These attacks might already be possible.

If that sounds like bad news to you, think of how Dr. Strangelove learned to love the bomb — because we may already live in a world where our financial system is secured by the threat of mutually assured destruction. 

Engle believes that nation-state adversaries of the US already have the capability to cause the kind of chaos that we fear quantum computers may bring: "Adversaries that are lying in wait that could take the system down," he warns.

If so, that might imply that the means of preventing these attacks — the fear of retaliation — is already in place.

"Do [US adversaries] have the ability today? 100%. Do they have the intention today? No. Because it’s more valuable as a threat than dealing with the consequences of taking the action."

As an executive at a for-profit cybersecurity firm, Engle may have a vested interest in sounding the alarm — but the US government is sounding it, too.

The DOJ warned in 2021 that "Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors" were "pre-positioning" for future cyber attacks against "multiple government, commercial and technology services networks."

More specifically, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned earlier this year that "People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors are seeking to pre-position themselves on IT networks for disruptive or destructive cyberattacks against US critical infrastructure in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States."

The US government appears to be doing the same — its stated policy of "operational preparation of the environment" (OPE) for cyber operations sounds synonymous with "pre-positioning" to my non-expert ear.

If so, the hope is that the credible threat of mutually assured cyber destruction will deter both sides from launching an attack. 

Could this be what saves Bitcoin, too?

Maybe!

If Bitcoin’s core developers can't build quantum resistance in time, Bitcoin’s soon-to-be status as a strategic reserve asset might come into play — an attack against Bitcoin would be an attack against the US.

That’s not exactly how Satoshi drew it up, but it might someday save his coins.

— Byron Gilliam

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June 24-26, 2025 | Brooklyn, NY