Security Rests on Hard Math Problems. Quantum and AI Are Both Coming for Them
Oct 19, 2026
For years the plan was simple: migrate off RSA and elliptic curves before a quantum computer arrives, and onto the post-quantum standards that will survive it. That plan now has a problem at both ends. AI is finding weaknesses in cryptography faster than people can, and the schemes you are migrating to are not exempt. In July, a post-quantum signature candidate that had passed two years of expert review was broken by an AI model in sixty hours and withdrawn the next day. Nothing deployed has fallen yet. But the question for a security leader is no longer which algorithm to move to. It is how fast you can move again when the next result lands. What cryptography actually rests on Almost everything you trust online depends on cryptography: the padlock in the browser, the signature on a software update, the authentication behind a payment. And cryptography depends on a handful of math problems that are easy in one direction and believed to be practically impossible in the other. Mul...
