The Future of Cybersecurity, AI & Quantum Computing with Anna Murray

You're listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, your host, your guide, and your coach. On this journey. Today's guest is someone very special, a wonderful woman and someone I'm happy to have gotten to know and call friend. Anna Murray has spent nearly 3 decades helping organizations solve complex challenges, and now she's helping leaders prepare for the next major shift in cybersecurity and digital trust, the quantum era. Anna is the co-founder of a post-quantum secure information exchange company, a nationally recognized technology consultant, author, speaker, and systems thinker. Our conversation will probably go far beyond— well, I'm gonna guarantee it'll go far beyond technology into leadership, uncertainty, adaptation, and what it means to prepare for a future most people don't see coming. Anna Marie, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

I'm really excited to be here, Wayne.

I'm really excited to have you. This is so good. We, uh, we had quite the conversation, uh, yesterday, and our previous conversations, um, have, have just left me, uh, inspired and also wanting to explore more. And you were really the first to bring to market the book on Quantum Computing 101, the basics, what everybody should know. And I was really excited. That book, it's eye-opening, it's reassuring, it's uncomfortable. It's all of those things. Because there's so much going on with— Yeah. You know, everybody's focus is on AI these days and nobody's looking at what the real capacity of it is and what it means to us. Let's talk a little bit about your background, what got you here, and how come you're so savvy with quantum these days?

Well, you know, I have had a career in new technologies. So back in the late '90s, I founded one of the world's first web companies. I mean, it didn't feel like that at the time. You didn't know how groundbreaking it was, but the internet was new and I built some of the internet's first websites.

Yes.

And, you know, we forget that in the '90s, you know, I was talking to people who were like, wait, wait, you're gonna connect the phone to the computer somehow and it's gonna transform communication. Oh, come on. So, you know, people now, they say like, wow, you know, the, you know, dawn of the internet, you must have been, you know, selling websites, building websites hand over fist. And not really. That's not how new technologies look when they first come out. It's a lot of like, wait, what's happening? And why do I need a website? And you might recall back to people saying like, Why do I need a flip phone? I have a perfectly good phone in my home. And then when they have a flip phone, they say, why do I need a smartphone?

I mean, if you go back, if you go all the way back to things like, hey, my horse and my carriage do just fine. Why do I need this motor car thing or this horseless carriage? It's like, I'll get around okay. Yeah.

I mean—

Yeah.

I mean, people, the introduction of new technologies always feels— in my career anyway, has always felt that way. So there's this stage of like, actually almost rejection, like disbelief. It's not gonna be that big. It's not gonna influence things. And then gradual acceptance, you know, back in the website days, it was like, oh, well, maybe your neighbor got a website, or your competitor got a website, and suddenly it starts to feel more natural, and then suddenly it's like it was there all along. You forget what the adoption stage is like. And with AI, we were probably at that spot maybe 5 years ago where it seemed very science fiction as if it wouldn't influence things. And now actually, to be perfectly honest, the pendulum has swung completely in the other direction where if you listen to news reports, it's like AI, it's like almost like we all have chips, AI chips embedded in our brains.

Mm-hmm.

Because AI has— the conversation has shifted from, wait, I don't understand that, or that's never going to be a thing, to it's going to be everything. So that's— that is where I've made my career, sort of at the frontier of tech and the adoption of tech, which is oddly— it's a story that repeats itself.

It over and over again. How did you— do you just naturally have this, I'm an early adopter kind of thing? Like, how do you see it coming and go, this, of course, this is the wave. I've got to be in it so that I can lead it. Like, that's who you are. How do you see it coming?

I will say that when I now talk to young professionals, I do think that there probably is something in the wiring of people who are entrepreneurial.

Yes.

You know, there's a sense of risk-taking, embracing of change, you know, wanting to be at the forefront, wanting to do things that are exciting. I started out my life as a journalist. So that's a career where, you know, if your editor says, go out and cover a nuclear power plant, right? Your answer cannot be, oh, I don't know anything about nuclear power plants because you gotta learn, you gotta master it, you gotta discover it. And I think the journalistic training sort of for me dovetailed into what is probably a natural entrepreneurial spirit. It's just like, if you don't know about it, find out. You can find out, you just talk to people, you interview them, you ask questions.

Right.

So that was an advantage in starting out. So it started out with web and then broadband and then phone apps and, you know, all of these things. We all, I think, can feel intimidated that we don't know. But the answer is just find out. You probably know as much as the next guy. Yeah.

Yeah. This is great. I'm making notes as we talk. So, you know, here we go. It's so good.

And then, you know, you asked about this. So I forgot to answer the question. You asked about the journey to quantum computing.

Oh, yep.

And so So I didn't know anything about quantum computing. Like many people, you know, we didn't know in 2010, we didn't know about cryptocurrency, right? So it was just one of another thing that I didn't know about. And I was asked to co-found a company in secure post-quantum information exchange. So I'll unpack a little bit about what that means. But first things first, I was introduced to the advent of quantum computing. Well, what is quantum computing? Classical computers work on zeros and ones. 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1. That's it. And you might say—

Binary code, right? We're all familiar with binary code, right?

And really, in decades, compute— computing hasn't changed. Now you're gonna say, wait, no, computing has changed. That's true. The 10101, which powers the oscillation of chips, has gotten faster. We've parallelized the chips, which just means, you know, putting a whole bunch of them together. Our material science and our cooling technologies have gotten better. So we've taken the same technology and made it a lot faster and a lot better. And we've perfected things like specialized chips the GPU, graphical processing unit that we hear so much about, NVIDIA's chip, which was originally invented to power computer games and graphics process, you know, high-speed rendering of graphics.

Bam.

Turns out that's great stuff for AI. But again, still the fundamental had not changed. In quantum computing, which works at the, you know, atomic level, something can be a 0 or a 1. Or a 0 and a 1 at the same time, or any— a weighted average of anything in between, which is a little bit mind-blowing. So, but 2 things about that. One is, okay, if you are spinning a coin, is that coin heads or tails? You don't know until it lands.

Right? It's both at the same time.

Yeah. At the same time. So that if you keep that metaphor in your head, that, that's the principle behind quantum computing. Well, why do we care? Because quantum computers, and they, they exist in the world, they exist in experimental forms, we're perfecting them all the time. They are good at certain types of problems, and they're good at what people call in the tech industry the traveling salesman problem. So I'll give an example of a traveling salesman problem. That is where the solution— many, many solutions are possible at the same time. Take the weather, right? So when was the last time you ever got an accurate weather report? Like, pretty much never, right?

Right.

That's because there's so much data that needs to be crunched simultaneously with different factors coming in. So like, a seal burps in the North Sea and a wind blows in Fiji and suddenly the weather report in New York for Tuesday has changed, right? So that's all of these factors. Turns out we actually can get an accurate weather report, only it's gonna take like a month to get it and then it's no good to you. So, but quantum computers are really good at that.

Can I just, can I label that? That's the, When we talk about, so I've had a probability theorist on, and that's where the stochastic model comes in, right? This is, so stochastic modeling is all about what is the highest probability that this thing will happen? And that's great. It takes as much data as it can, which is why you said to get a really accurate report, it's gonna keep getting data and keep getting data. And then, ta-da, here's your accurate report for something that you no longer need. Right? And quantum time compresses all of that, right?

Correct. Correct. Another metaphor that I think works for people is in current computers, let's say you had, we just had the Kentucky Derby, we're about to have the Belmont Stakes in the horse world. And if you imagine the problems that that classical computers solve, it's as if they're sequential. So it's as if you let one horse out of the starting gate and timed it, and another horse out of the starting gate and timed it, and another horse out of the starting gate and timed it, and from that you pick the winner, right? In quantum computing, all of the horses are let out of the gate at the same time, at the, in unison. So they're all of those, again, spinning quarter, all the possibilities are running at the same time. Where that's going to make a huge difference is in, for what we just talked about, weather, materials science. There's a lot of sequential testing of candidate materials to go on satellites or whatever, and then you get the, the best 3 candidates, and then you have to put them into the physical environment. Quantum computers are going to be able to give you the best candidates working at the atomic level and suggest those and even do the trials for them. So it's going to compress the time in material science. Ditto in drug trials.

See, that's where it gets really interesting. When you talk about at the atomic level, is that computing at the atomic level or is that analyzing atomic-level data?

It's computing at the atomic level. So we, in classical computing, we talk about bits and bytes.

Yeah.

In quantum computing, we talk about qubits, which is the quantum bit that is the thing that is a 0 and a 1 at the same time, or a weighted average of anything, the spinning quarter, so to speak.

This is so much fun for me. There are a lot of people that can't tolerate gray. It's one or the other. And for me, I've always loved the exploration of what if it's both? What if it's not either or until we make the decision that it's either or? And that's, that's sort of the— there's, there's almost a metaphysical aspect to this, isn't there?

Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I think a lot of people who work in metaphysics speak about quantum a lot because it sort of mind bends us away from, you know, maybe more rigid paradigms that we may have had in all kinds of ways in our lives.

Yeah, amazing, amazing. So there was an old experiment with the particle, the beam of light going through two slits, and when it was captured, it was actually a wave. It wasn't a beam until it was monitored. And then it turned into a particle, a single— so observation changed the nature of the particle. Does that happen in quantum computing as well?

Yeah, so this is the— there are many, many There are many, many challenges that it's, and it's fascinating how quickly scientists are overcoming it. There are many, many challenges in coming up with a stable, functional, commercially available quantum computer. And one has to do with observation. So two particles, entities, can be separate in both time and space. And if you observe one, you change the other without impacting the other. And so this is one of the— it's a bit of a mind-blowing issue, but it's one of the many phenomena that are true about things at the atomic level in quantum physics, quantum mechanics, where that one needs to overcome that challenge in coming up with, you know, a computer.

Yeah.

But what is interesting is that in so many different ways, the various competitors in the quantum computing space, it's a race just like the AI race. And the challenges that must be overcome have to do with noise, quantum noise, like the unstable number of qubits and overcoming the noise, which I suppose maybe it's easiest to think of that just as another term for instability. But Google has recently come out with an announcement that has said that they believe the quantum computing era will arrive as soon as 2029. So that's, you know—

That's close.

That's coming.

That's very close.

And we've talked about the positive impacts of quantum computing. There are a bunch of negative impacts because we've talked about the fact that quantum computing is, quantum computers are gonna be good at solving certain problems in material science and data science and weather and, you know, all these things, these traveling salesman problems. Here's another thing that quantum computers are gonna be good at, breaking classical asymmetric cryptography.

Which—

And what is that?

Yeah, so that means everything that we have encoded, our banking, our Social Security, our anything that we consider private, that is protected by other institutions and sometimes by us, but mostly we, we simply trust, right? And so we've given up our, uh, we've given up our own governance in some ways.

Yeah.

Um, and you're saying that by 2029, that's where people talk about Q-Day, but by 2029 the ability to break that encrypted, secure wall is possible, likely even.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's a given, right? It's possible, likely. It is, it is a given. It is going to happen because we know mathematically speaking that quantum computers can do this. They can break cryptography. Which just to break, just to, you know, sum that up, break it down, it means the, the, your car key has a form of encryption that unlocks your car.

Oh, right.

You know, beep beep, right? Your dog's GPS collar, your oven's Wi-Fi, your router, your phone, the internet, the little lockbox in the browser bar of your internet, that thing is classical asymmetric cryptography. Almost every form of cryptography we use can be broken by the advent of a quantum computer. So, so yikes, right? And it's a, it's a, it's a big multilayered problem that needs to get solved. One solution which we have now is that the, the encryption that we currently have classical asymmetric cryptography, which is a lot of syllables, but just means the current encryption that we rely on mostly will be replaced by post-quantum encryption. And that will all be in the pipe. So anything that relies on quantum, on current encryption methods will be at first supplemental. There'll be a phase that we call hybrid post-quantum, which is that we'll have the old algorithm in place, along with a new algorithm. And when this one is deprecated, this one will take over. So we are headed towards that. Now you might say, okay, problem solved, right? Well, there's a couple of issues with that. First of all, Microsoft, just take Microsoft, you know, so you say, okay, wait a minute, I'm gonna wake up one day and let's say the end of 2028, before 2029, I'm just kidding. Click upgrade. Is that what it's gonna be like? Microsoft has billions of endpoints, billions upon billions of endpoints. So we're gonna do click, I believe that all of that's just gonna magically be post-quantum overnight. Feels, I don't know. Oh, okay. Maybe. So that's problem number 1, just the click, I believe upgrade thing. This is the most, extensive infrastructure impact than ever. So one. Number two is that some cryptography is baked into the actual chip. You can't do upgrade, right?

Mm-hmm.

Think of your oven and the Internet of Things, right? That chip has cryptography in it. So that's a physical swap out. And there's things like that in routers and other things. And maybe, maybe we don't even know all the places that it is.

Okay.

So, so that's a problem. And the third problem is the internet, that lockbox in your browser. Well, there ain't no Bill Gates of the internet, right? There isn't. There's, we have something called the Internet Engineering Task Force, and there's layers and layers and layers and layers of something called protocols. That all have to align, certificate authorities and browser encryption and all this kind of stuff. And the Internet Engineering Task Force is kind of like the UN. Everyone has to come to agreement on what they're gonna do, what encryption they're gonna use, how it's all gonna play together. And the last time there was a security upgrade in the internet itself from TLS 1.2 to 1.3 took 10 years. Oh.

So we have, we have 3 years or fewer, and here we go. This has an impact on governmental security as well, right? Where there's, and I assume that they, that the government will be the first adopters that, you know.

Yes. Right.

Because somebody hacking into government systems is not going to be great. So I assume that they are already working on that, and they'll, they'll be the first adopters to figure it out and then use it or not use it or roll out. Do you think we're subject to being given a light version?

So I think, you know, I think the whole issue of It's one of the things that I've discovered in technology over the years is that we have a, we have a sort of belief that the greater technology powers are going to take care of things. We're doing that a little bit in AI right now. We know the dangers of AI, and because it's so overwhelming, we sort of hand wave and say, well, surely the greater powers that be are going to take care of that and prevent the bad things from happening. And That's not always true. I do know based on the fact that I'm now working in the quantum computing industry that this is something that the government is very concerned about. They're looking for solutions. My visibility into the time, obviously I don't work in the government, I'm sitting here in my office, but my visibility in the topic is I think for a period of time things are gonna be broken, asymmetrical, and messy. Because there's all kinds of system, you know, it's just, it just, it just seems likely that that's what's gonna, I mean, I often call it Y2K without a date, except the Y2K problem was really pretty specific. You know, it was, can we roll over and have 2020? And I mean, 2000. And people say, well, oh, well, Y2K, it was a nothing burger. It was a nothing burger because we spent billions of dollars to make it a nothing burger. And I think people remember that, well, maybe half of that was wasted and maybe it was, but the, and which half was important? I don't know. You know, it's like your advertising dollars, half of your advertising dollars are wasted. You just don't know which half, right?

That's an old saying.

Exactly.

Right. Exactly.

So, so it's, so I, I think for sure that, you know, military systems and, you know, people are focused on the problem. It's just that it's a big, big, big pervasive change that is going to take place. And to say that it's all going to click upgrade, be fine the day that quantum computers come online is probably a little overly optimistic.

Hmm.

Not to mention the problem of You and I were talking about this yesterday, harvest now, decrypt later.

So that's a big thing. I wanted to talk about that. There are 3 things I want to talk about. One is what you just said, because we were talking about it yesterday, yesterday, earlier, and it was, it was the idea of we can't break this. It's kind of like grabbing a safe. We can't, we don't have the way to break into this safe right now. But when we do, we'll break into it. And at least we have the safe. And so there are agencies out there that are harvesting data and saving it, right? So I wanted to talk about that. I would love to geek out with you just a little bit if you could. We'll go back to kind of, I guess it's particle wave theory for a second, and talk about— there's a term in quantum called entanglement.

And—

That's where one thing is— one thing that gets affected affects the thing that it's tied to, even if that thing that it's tied to is far remote and actually not specifically tied to it. And I understand that much of it, but I want to understand more. So if you can explain that, geek out with me on that. And then I want to shift into talking about what leaders need to know because I'm working, you know, when I do consulting with organizations, I'm working with leaders who are trying to figure it all out, right? They've got the latest printouts and this is going on and that's going on. And it's a big time of uncertainty. Fantastic. Like, it's supposed to be uncertain, which is great. How much do you think leaders need to know in order to lead? And I have my own opinions about that. I want to open it back to you. So those 3 things, if you don't mind.

Okay. Let's start with entanglement. You know, I think that there are some very glittering, interesting, mind-bending concepts around quantum computing, entanglement being one of them, that things can be distant in space and time, and even observing one item is going to affect the other, and that is phenomenon called entanglement. And actually, the impacts of entanglement and dealing with entanglement, the fact that entanglement is a thing, is one of the engineering challenges that people working in quantum computing are attempting to— I don't wanna say overcome, but harness and utilize in doing the things that they need to do, which is create operating systems, create software. You know, if you're in a system and suddenly the system is changing just because you're in it, that's not gonna work. So, but I also think that, I also think that some of the more maybe geeking out things or interesting things to us and scientists, I think actually they can be a little off-putting to audiences because, and business people, Because some people are intrigued by it and other people are, I'm never going to understand that. I mean, I remember having conversations about how a modem worked, you know, like I'm saying, you know, like, yeah, you know, all of that. And people wanted to know what— Well done. That was well done, by the way. People wanted to know what's going on in that handshake. You know, you could say all these metaphors we use, it's a handshake between the modem and the computer on the other side, between one computer and the other computer via a modem and a phone line.

Oh, that's all you needed to know.

Yeah. That's all you needed to know. And why do we care? And I don't even think we talk about that anymore. So, so, so that's—

We don't talk about baud rate or, right? No, we don't. Or any of that.

How does the internet work? I don't know. I mean, I think I do once, but I don't know. Yeah, so premise number 2 has to do with this harvest now, decrypt later, and your metaphor of stealing a safe. That is super important because we just said, well, Q-Day is coming in 2029, right? Google has said Q-Day is in 2029. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. It's certainly not 2049, right? So, but, What does Q-Day mean? It means the day where a quantum computer can break all current cryptography. Well, to your point, we, the Chinese, the Russians, probably British, Israelis, all the big governments and powerful computing centers of the world are capturing data through hacks and non-state actors, right? I mean, whole databases of, of data are being stolen and those databases are, are protected by encryption. And current computing technology, it'd take 10,000 years to break that data. Well, when a quantum computer comes online, now you don't have to get the data, you have the data, you've not been able to crack it, but now you can. The minute a quantum computer comes online. Now, some of that data will age out, of course. My Amazon order from yesterday for a lipstick does not matter to anyone. Right. But if I have the same credit card and the same password, that matters. The schematics for, let's say, a nuclear power plant matter, right? Your Social Security number matters. There's a whole lot of, of that data that is going to be relevant still. And here's where the topic of AI and quantum computing come together. We now have the computing power to comb through all that data, to digest all that data, to have it barf out the stuff that matters.

Mm-hmm.

That could bring down the, you know, the electricity on the Northeast Coast of the United States. So in a very real way, because of harvest now, decrypt later, which is absolutely happening right now, our government is doing it, other governments are doing it, malicious actors are doing it. Q day is now. So that sort of dovetails into your point about what do leaders need to do, right?

Yeah.

So I think some of this is, some of what needs to happen next is on us in technology and us in the media. I think the media with, I'll get to the leaders in a second, but I think with regard to technology, the media historically has been like squirrel, right?

Squirrel.

Squirrel. So, and it's very sort of, it's very kind of weird the way media focuses attention. The example I like to bring up is the iPhone, right? For a decade, there would be There's a, you know, you'd see on the evening news when there was evening news, there's a new iPhone, there's a new iPhone, there's a new iPhone, and Steve Jobs would be up there with a new iPhone, right? There could be 100 Samsung phones released in that same time period, but for whatever reason, and I think it's a lot of things have to do with the romance of Apple Computer, the romance of Steve Jobs. We've been obsessed with this organization for a very long period of time. That's how the iPhone became important. It was a very important piece of technology, but other things were happening at the same time, but we just focused on that. Now that is happening with AI. AI is just sucking up all the air in the room in terms of media coverage. And there are other things that are going on, right? Quantum computing is one of them. So step one is just to sort of, for leaders, is to, leaders have to get kind of a plumb line, technologically speaking, a North Star, a centering around not just what they read in the media or see in the media or what's in, you know, the latest hype of the headline. Because I am here to tell you that is misleading. And in the ways that, I don't know, we seem to be able to cover the stock market and, you know, other industries in a more balanced way than we have ever covered technology. It's just a quality of the way the media covers technology. It's very misleading.

So leaders are juggling internal panic potentially because team members are like, will I ever use this? Do I need to know about this? And Why is my IT department messing with my stuff again? Leaders also need to not just manage their team members, but also manage that the IT department is in fact messing with their stuff again and upgrading as fast as possible. So that's both an operational expense and a capital expense, like both happening at the same time that they have to forecast for. So there's a business process to this. And by not doing it, there's a risk of implosion, right? Capital implosion that, that now we're behind, now we're vulnerable. And so leaders do need that North Star, they need to be that calming force, all the while not needing necessarily to be tech savvy. Yeah.

Correct. So that is a really good point.

So what do they need to be? So, and I think this is actually the answer to the rest of our audience who aren't in tech. What do, what do we who are not in tech need to be aware? And then what?

I think people need to, they first of all need to get away from the denial. Right. So denying that the future is going to get here, that is, we've seen cycles of this, right? So I mean, I say it's like smoking in seatbelts in 1979. Ah, we're okay. I've lived all my life without a seatbelt. I'm fine. You know, or smoking. My grandmother smoked until she was 97. So with unpleasant realities or change, human beings don't like change. So acceptance and getting out of the denial is important. Now, I have found it to be true that everyone thinks that everyone else is an expert in technology. And when you think of all of the things that a CEO— and technology has this kind of shamanistic aspect of it. Like there's this secret magic that these secret people have access to and you don't.

Right?

And, and that's again a concoction of the romanticization of, of technology, right? So, but I mean, you do plenty of complicated things on spreadsheets and accounting. I mean, there's plenty of CEOs who never took an accounting course and they somehow mastered that. That's pretty complicated. A balance sheet is a pretty complicated thing. So I think the other thing that one has to do is just to say like, it, this is, it isn't some special shamanistic magic. You, you became a CEO for some reason. You can understand this. And you need to really filter out for anyone who does create that special shamanistic kind of a, of an environment. What is that? What did you say? What did, what did you just mean by that? Explain it to me. And if that person can't explain it to you, get the other person, because there is a way to explain it. It's why I write books like Quantum Computing 101.

Which is a great book, Quantum Computing 101.

Yes. Thank you, Wayne. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, no, you can explain this stuff to people. There's somebody who learned how to run a nuclear power plant. You know, before the people learned this stuff. This is not magic. You don't need a special spell to understand technology. So, and here's another truth. Like a CEO is, has mastered a lot of difficult, complicated things to understand his or her business. The CIO or chief technology officer, the CEO might be relying on that person.

Mm-hmm.

Well, guess what? That person has been CIO for whatever, let's say a decade. It has been a long time since that person rolled up his or her sleeves and was like, in the bowels of the computer. They probably, they don't even know how to network a computer anymore. So now they feel ill at ease with media. I don't totally understand it. So now we go down and down and down and down the line until we're with, you know, Kevin in his hoodie in the basement and we're asking him what to do, right? It's just nonsense. Like anything, like the adoption of the internet, like the adoption of anything.

Kevin is the shaman.

Shh, don't tell them. Kevin is the shaman, right? Kevin loves to be the shaman. So step one is you can understand this stuff. You really can. And so CEOs need to stop buying into, or business leaders, let's say, take it away from CEOs.

I think any leader, whether you're the leader of your family or the leader of your division or department or, even leader in your friends group. I think any leader can bring stability to the conversation, right?

Yep.

Yep. And they do that. Go ahead.

We need to get out of the mindset that there's something about computers and technology that is un-understandable and un-learnable because frankly, we all learned from YouTube that you could fix your own dishwasher. So, like you need to get into that mindset, right? And then a leader in terms of quantum computing needs to just understand it, understand what's coming, understand what is gonna impact their business, right? And there's, I think there's generally speaking two big things that leaders, might consider in the new quantum age. One is the opportunity space. People are doing this now with AI. What are the opportunities for my business when quantum computers become commercially available? Frankly, that one's a little bit more distant unless you're in government or let's say an academic institution or specifically material science and pharmaceuticals. Those are the areas that—

Yeah.

That the commercially available quantum computer is gonna have an impact in right now. And if you are in those spaces, it would be a good idea to understand what the impacts or how quantum computing is gonna transform that industry and what the leaders are in that space and what the software's gonna look like and start to get ahead of like, how do I start to participate in that? But that is still distant, relatively speaking. The timelines, Wayne, they're always changing. They're never getting longer, they're always getting shorter. But let's say even 6 months ago, the, the idea of a commercially available quantum computer to a pharmaceutical company might have been 10 years out. Now I think the consensus view might be it's 5 years out. So that's within a business plan, right? So that's number 1. What is, what does this mean in the opportunity space? And then item number 2 is what does it mean in the threat space? And in the threat space, that's where we get to data and encryption being broken. And starting to talk to the— and really starting, I mean, like, now is good, right? Starting to talk to your technology people in a way that is warm and accepting, because we're all afraid and none of us know everything. So if your CIO has not— I mean, if your technology people have not heard of quantum computing or they haven't gotten up to speed, time to do it. We need to keep in mind, again, that we're all living in the same world. And most people that I talk to are like, quantum what?

Hmm.

So it doesn't help to act as if, well, what do you mean you don't know? You should know. I read this book. I write, you know, like we're all getting up to speed on it. And even your technology people are getting up to speed on it, but you need to investigate it, learn about it, and then think about how it impacts your particular endeavor. And I can get into some specifics on that, but that's step number one is awareness, lack of denial, awareness, and embracing the fact that you don't need some special, you know, Merlin-like wizard to come down and fix it all for you.

I have this saying that I put into my first book, and you've touched on it, And that is awareness leads to choice, and choice leads to greater awareness. And through that comes power, and through that comes action. And through action— we were talking about this earlier in a previous conversation— through action comes confidence that you learn by doing. And right now we're in the beginning stages, so you really can't make mistakes. You can make progress and learn from that and choose to adapt at the next level and the next level. So awareness leads to choice, and that's an ever-expanding, then awareness, choice, kind of upward outward spiral. So—

I, I couldn't agree more. And I, I think that we, in the area of data security, we face some really profound choices and opportunities. Because, you know, I'm saying quantum computers are gonna break all current classical asymmetric cryptography, right? Well, a reasonable person could say, well, holy smokes, like, data security doesn't exist now. So if cryptography is working now, What the hell is going on? My data is all out there, right? So, so you're gonna, so, so then, and then the extension of that is, okay, why do I care? The current sucky data security is gonna go away.

Right.

So, right? So, so it, it, it's not, it broadens out the topic of what is going on with data security. Because honestly, if we fix the quantum problem, which is profound, Right? Banking passwords, everything is right. So if we fix that, fix, let's, let that, remember that I believe button that said Microsoft billions of endpoints, we like click it and everything's fixed. Here's what's gonna happen. We are going to be back to the current state, sucky data security we have now, it's just gonna be post-quantum. Because right now—

That's evolution. Right? That's— it's like we've grown past a certain point. Now we have a new level of normal, and the threats that we have at this point are just going to exist but at a higher point. Okay.

Yes, but we— so, so we have a choice. We have a choice right now as we— as, as, you know, we're sort of focusing and laser beaming in on Oh wait, we have a big data security threat. And there's two, there's quantum, which is coming in a few days now, harvest now, decrypt later. And then Anthropic's release of the Mythos LLM, the AI that can, so we have an operating system, Windows operating system, Linux, whatever, you know, the thing upon which all your computers are based. Well, Mithos is finding little tiny holes in those operating systems that in one case, I think there was a report last week, they found something that, a vulnerability that existed since the 1970s. So AI is finding vulnerabilities in our current systems and then we have quantum. So we have an opportunity to take a look at the fundamental architecture of computing. This is the space that the tech startup that I'm involved with in Cicero is, is looking at because we have 2 problems in data security. Problem number 1 is the, the coming problem, which is, you know, quantum computing and cryptography breakage. But the real original sin In cybersecurity is the, is the centralized client-server hub-and-spoke architecture that you and I have been operating on for years. And that now, so just in case, you know, just to review, little review, hub-and-spoke, client-server. I have a server in the middle, right? And then I have, you know, imagine a sun diagram, things radiating out from that. And the art of cybersecurity is to protect that thing. Absolutely. Right? I got, I got the, the this line and you're gonna see it in a PowerPoint and the CTO is saying, well, I got the red line and my red green line and then, you know, McKinsey came in to tell me to get the purple line and Accenture came in and told me to get the orange line. So I got all the lines. And then you still have a hack. Well, it's because you're trying to protect that thing absolutely. But you also need to make it porous so data flows in and out. And that is a logical absurdity. And then you have the idiot at the endpoint, Wayne, that's you and me, going, you know, someone says, don't click on that phishing email. Click. You really gotta stop. Click. No, I mean it's serious. Click. Go back into training. Go back into training. Go back into training. This is what's been going on for a decade. It isn't working. And here's what's happening now. You're gonna get a phone call from someone who sounds like your mother because AI. And she's gonna say, oh honey, honey, could you just, I just sent you that email. Could you please click on it? And click. It is unsustainable. So what is the solution? Central server, hub and spoke. Get rid of the central server. And, and go point to point, end to end. Imagine like a spider web. With nothing in the middle. Well, what does that remind you of? Reminds you of blockchain. Decentralization is nothing new. It's been around since Napster. Coming for Napster. BitTorrent is decentralized. You could say the internet itself is decentralized.

Yeah.

But so you must combine a, in order to achieve data security, we must combine our advancements towards post-quantum encryption with a movement towards decentralization. And if folks have heard of Web 3.0, that is one of the fundamental tenets of Web 3.0 is what's called data sovereignty, user sovereignty, rather than these big monolithic organizations who have all our data and give it to people and, you know, surveillance of all kinds of things. You know, your data is everywhere. You don't own your data.

Right.

Web 3.0 is a movement towards decentralization and sovereignty over your own technology space.

Wow. So we'll be responsible for our own security. It's at that level.

To some degree, yes. I mean, would you rather it be you or the 230,000 employees at Microsoft?

Right. Yeah. No, that's amazing. We could go on and on. And there's so many more things that I want to ask you about. Maybe we'll set up a part 2, or maybe it'll just be an afternoon conversation. I, I really appreciate this, and I hope our audience finds this enlightening as well. Let's talk about two things. One is your book, the other Six Arrows. Six—

S-I—

It's S-I-X-3-R-O. And the 3 is a backwards E, but it's, it's 6-0. So S-I-X-E-R-O dot com.

Com.

Okay. I wanted to make sure it was dot com and not org. S-I-X-3-R-O, 6-0 dot com. People can find you on LinkedIn if they— wanna reach out, Anna Murray, M-U-R-R-A-Y. And then do you have your book handy? I see it in the background. Can you, oh, it's hard to tell on a screen how close things are.

Oh yeah.

Right, so Quantum Computing 101, it is really a fabulous book. It's an intro that is easy to read. It's digestible. It gives you answers to questions you didn't know you had. And, um, it, it sort of gives you this step-up level of understanding, um, that's both, um, comforting and, and uncomfortable at the same time. I mean, both, right? I mean, that's— but that's growth, right? You have to— you talked about getting, getting past, uh, denial. It's sort of like, yeah, this thing is coming, let me learn about it. And your book, Anna, is so good in just allowing people to explore concepts that, you know, most people haven't really explored. So I, I am going on and on about it because I love it. And, and it's great. So is there something that I didn't ask you? I know there's plenty, probably. Is there something that you would like to wind up with as a statement or a comment or an invitation, you know, as we conclude our podcast together?

So yeah, Wayne, and thanks for asking. I think, you know, one of the things that I get very passionate about is data security. And we were just talking about some solutions to it. And I think that, you know, people have accepted the fact that their data is out there, right? They're just like, what am I gonna do? My data's out there. Why do I care? There's a picture of me and my dog, right? But it's more than that, right? So you have, if you've been, data privacy is a human right. If you've been denied life insurance, if you've been denied a job, if someone you love has been denied a college admission, if all of the data is out there, it is possible, even likely that some private data about you, a political opinion, a medical condition is being used against you. In fact, it would be naive to think that it wasn't. And we've just sort of accepted that all of our data is out there and we can't do anything about it. And, you know, we have a provision in our own Constitution, Article 4, against search and seizure. Privacy is refuge. Privacy is a right to your own, the things that you want to keep personal. And we have just said that ship has sailed. And in the advent of quantum computing and in the world of Web 3.0, we have a chance to reclaim our own data privacy. And we need to support companies and nonprofits and politicians who get that. Because it is not okay that just every big organization knows everything about us and is surveilling us and using our data to manipulate us. We have to stop that. So if I have a passion and something I wanna say around a topic, there you go. That's it.

That's amazing. That's coming through strong as a passion. That's really great. And it's really, it's 100% worth paying attention to. So really appreciate it. Amazing. Thank you, Anna Marie. Thank you for being with me today.

Thanks, Wayne. It's been a delight.

It has been a delight. I can't wait for more, really, truly. All right, well, Anna Marie's been my guest. This is One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. Today we had to cut through and hopefully give you a lot to think about. So again, One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Your host, guide, and coach on this journey. Please like and share this episode and go out and get Annemarie's book as well, Quantum Computing 101. All right, we'll see you here next time. Thank you for being here. And, you know, keep it coming. Keep making your magic. Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword. Cutting Through to What Matters Most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. For more information, please go to one-sharp-sword.com.