There are a few podcasts that I have listened to for over ten years. Security Now! is one of the few. The reason? I learn more about complex topics — usually enough to determine if I want to dive deeper. The biggest one was Bitcoin back in 2011. I was interested but got distracted, sadly, and didn't really jump back into it until 2017. That's another story. Steve Gibson does a great job of explaining complex topics to technical audiences. In this episode, he talks about a paper written by Peter Gutmann titled "Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog".
...no quantum factorisation has ever factorised a value that wasn't either a carefully-constructed sleight-of-hand number or for which most of the work wasn't done beforehand with a computer in order to transform the problem into a different one 5 of 16 that could then be readily solved by a physics experiment.
The TL;DR? What we have been seeing from quantum computing news over the past few years are parlor tricks. The tests are setups — sleight of hand at best, or fraud at worst. It's kind of mind-blowing if you haven't yet realized that tech reporting is absolutely terrible and has been for decades — even from the technical side of things. Some of these topics are just so deep, and we humans want to believe so badly that we often lack the critical skepticism required to spot charlatans.
Now, I'm not saying all the researchers are scammers. I suspect they're not the ones doing most of the talking — rather, it's the tech bros whose job is to get money from investors.
Bottom line? The people who have been saying there is no quantum threat are correct. These tests that supercomputers have been doing can be done by a Raspberry Pi or a 16-bit computer. If you want to check me on this, go read the paper or listen to the podcast. The paper is well-documented and entertaining to read. If you have any concern about quantum and your Bitcoin security, I recommend you read it. I've had close to zero concern for some time, but it's entertaining to see scammers exposed by a cryptographer who's just fed up with the lies.
We see some of the same things in the AI world. I've been working with AI in my job for the last few months, and this has confirmed some thoughts I've had — and squashed others. Learning more about how things work at a low level is often the only way to cut through the hype and scammers' propaganda. Often the truth is in the middle, but sometimes it's all smoke and mirrors. Quantum seems like the latter. When you understand incentives and how they can influence "researchers," you can see how people we're told are only in it for science can have blind spots. When your funding depends on showing results, you see things like what we're seeing with quantum. I could mention other areas of science, but I digress.
Why Are We Being Scammed?
These quantum experiments cost a ton of money. The researchers need to show results to get more funding and continue their work. Companies are incentivized to lie as well — for the same reason. Their stock prices go up. The press is incentivized by clicks and has little time for deep research or skepticism. My life experience has taught me that being a contrarian and a buzzkill isn't the best way to win friends and influence people... and yet... here we are.
But Smart People Have Been Promoting This Idea
Intelligence is often oversimplified. For many years, I've known that people much smarter than me can be tricked. It doesn't mean they're dumb — they can be very intelligent but gullible at the same time. Intelligence can also be canceled out by arrogance.
We see this with Bitcoin all the time. Many successful and intelligent people refuse to understand Bitcoin because of their egos. Just because a smart person thinks a thing does not mean it's true. Most of the time, it's safe to assume it is — and that's all it takes for many people to be tricked.
And that's the other thing: laziness. We humans are pretty good at pattern recognition, and when smart people are tricked, that's often how it happens. Some of us are just wired to see different patterns — like scammer patterns. So watch out that you don't get arrogant. Stay humble, even when you think you're dead to rights on something. We all can be fooled.
Some Good Bits to Read
These snippets stood out to me, but the podcast and paper are worth your time.
Abstract
This paper presents implementations that match and, where possible, exceed current quantum factorisation records using a VIC-20 8-bit home computer from 1981, an abacus, and a dog. We hope that this work will inspire future efforts to match any further quantum factorisation records, should they arise.
Introduction
In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor proposed his quantum factorisation algorithm , now known as Shor's Algorithm. In 2001, a group at IBM used it to factorise the number 15. Eleven years later this was extended to factorise the number 21. Another seven years later a factorisation of 35 was attempted but failed. Since then no new records have been set, although a number of announcements of such feats have cropped up from time to time alongside the more publicly-visible announcements of quantum supremacy every few months. These announcements are accompanied by ongoing debates over whether a factorisation actually took place and if so what it was that was factorised , with the issue covered in more detail in section 3. Of particular note was the claim in 2024 by researchers to have factorised an RSA-2048 number (“the D-Wave paper”). In this paper we focus on the factorisations of 15, 21, and 35, as well as the claimed RSA-2048 factorisation
Terminology
New technologies, when introduced, are typically given names that overstate their capabilities, usually by equating them with existing familiar systems or technological artefacts. For example the first computers in the 1940s and 1950s, often little more than glorified electric adding machines, were nevertheless described as “electronic brains”. More recently, large language models (LLMs) have been touted as “artificial intelligence”, and complex physics actual computers like the VIC-20 with which they have nothing in common, we refer to them here as “physics experiments”. Similarly, we refer to an abacus as “an abacus” rather than a digital computer, despite the fact that it relies on digital manipulation to effect its computations. Finally, we refer to a dog as “a dog” because even the most strenuous mental gymnastics can't really make it sound like it's a computer.
It's kind of jaw-dropping when you read this bit and see the examples he provides.
Many other sleight-of-hand tricks exist for creating apparent quantum factorisations. One example is what we are calling the Callas Normal Form for Sleight-of-Hand Quantum Factorisation or “Callas Normal Form” for short after cryptographer Jon Callas who first described it. In the Callas Normal Form, the factors are integers p = 2n-1 and q = 2m +1, where n ≤ m, and p and q are ideally prime, but don't have to be. The binary representation of the product N = pq then starts with n one bits followed by m – n zero bits and ends in n one bits. Needless to say, this is easily detected, even on a 6502, and easily factorised (no realworld RSA toolkit would ever generate such prime factors). For example, a recent preprint uses this form to claim in its title success in factorising 4096-bit integers with Shor's algorithm “under certain conditions”, where the “conditions” for the 12 examples used turn out to be equivalent to the Callas Normal Form.
So far as we have been able to determine, no quantum factorisation has ever factorised a value that wasn't either a carefully-constructed sleight-of-hand number or for which most of the work wasn't done beforehand with a computer in order to transform the problem into a different one 5 of 16 that could then be readily solved by a physics experiment. We attempt to address this deficiency by providing criteria for evaluating quantum factorisation attempts in section 7.
The pervasive use of sleight-of-hand numbers and techniques and stunt factorisations throughout the field of quantum factorisation makes it difficult to select targets for our factorisation replication attempts. Since it's possible, with a bit of thought, to construct arbitrarily impressive-looking values for factorisation, an example being the 20,000-bit artificial value that was factorised with a 2-qubit physics experiment, we have to select targets that are at least within shouting distance of an actual application of something like Shor's algorithm for quantum factorisation. The three instances of this that we have been able to identify in the literature, even though they also use sleight-of-hand by using the compiled form of Shor's algorithm mentioned earlier, are the 2001 factorisation of 15, the 2012 factorisation of 21, and the (attempted) 2019 factorisation of 35, constituting not actual quantum factorisations but at least the least sleight-of-handy attempts at quantum factorisation.
Performing Quantum Factorisation Operations with a Dog
As has been previously pointed out, the 2001 and 2012 quantum factorisation records may be easily matched with a dog trained to bark three times. We verified this by taking a recently-calibrated reference dog, Scribble, depicted in Figure 6, and having him bark three times, thus simultaneously factorising both 15 and 21. This process wasn't as simple as it first appeared because Scribble is very well behaved and almost never barks. Having him perform the quantum factorisation required having his owner play with him with a ball in order to encourage him to bark. It was a special performance just for this publication, because he understands the importance of evidence-based science.
The process was then repeated to have him bark five times, factorising the number 35 and thereby exceeding the capabilities of the quantum factorisation physics experiments mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately this process fails for the RSA-2048 values since the size of the factors exceeds even the most enthusiastic dog's barking ability
Needless to say, I'm now a fan of Peter Gutmann's writing.
Conclusion
In this paper we showed how to replicate current quantum factorisation records using first a VIC-20 8-bit home computer from 1981, then an abacus, and finally a dog. In terms of comparative demonstrated factorisation power, we rank a VIC-20 above an abacus, an abacus above a dog, and a dog above a quantum factorisation physics experiment. Finally, we provided standard evaluation criteria for future claimed quantum factorisations.
I've made some notes below if you don't want to listen to the entire podcast — or maybe you just want to read the paper. Bitcoiners should be all over this!
- Security Now Podcast
- Timestamps in the podcast: Start 14:47 & End: 56:00
- Security Now Show notes
- Paper being discussed
One last point. I'm not saying quantum computers will never be a threat to cryptography. Who knows? Maybe they'll have a breakthrough in the far future. But the lack of progress — and this paper — make me even more skeptical that we should be concerned about it any time in the future, let alone the near future.