The Perils of Quantum Cryptography?

[Dr Wu]

A suggestion for a short story or film script: governments around the world, concerned about the rise of criminality and social instability as a result of quantum supremacy, promptly ban all quantum-based communication systems across the social media landscape: in short usher in the equivalent of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but for QS.

The underlying premise behind such a moratorium is that QS-based communications - viewed here as a kind of truly impenetrable Dark Web - would plunge human civilisation back to how it was before the invention of the telegraph. . . with all its implications intact. Of course, it could be argued that QS is needed precisely to protect individuals from governmental snooping.

That's not the premise here, though. Rather, it's an attempt to foresee how future developments in both AI and quantum computing could create the conditions for distilling widespread civil anarchy in the not-too-distant future. Slightly histrionic, perhaps. But this is SF, after all, and not all SF gets it wrong.

Any thoughts?

 

[.Scott]

It's tough to forbid a specific technology indefinitely. As technology improves and becomes easily available, it usually favors the creation and used of weapons, communication, etc over the enforcement measures.
In the case of private communications, I do not favor a government-citizen relationship where government is overseeing citizen communications.

 

[Dr Wu]

Yes, I suspect it will be impossible to enforce such a global ban given the seemingly unstoppable march of technology. If so, it must surely spell the end for intelligence-gathering agencies like the NSA, although old-fashioned bugging methods and similar forms of surveillance could still continue to exist perhaps. Strange, all the same.