Something I've been wondering about quite a bit myself. If quantum computing ever actually bears fruit and we have to assume it will at some point and probably some point soon, one of the promises of quantum computing is that it would be able to break encryption as we know it. I assume people are thinking about this and preparing for it. Well, according to MIT technology review, some people are preparing for this eventuality, the bad guys. The first link in the long reads posits the idea that a lot of the hacking we've been seeing right now involves hackers stealing data today so that they can save it and crack it sometime in the near future. Quote, the threat of a nation state adversary getting a large quantum computer and being able to access your information is real, says Dustin moody, a mathematician at the National Institute of standards and technology, the threat is that they copy down your encrypted data and hold onto it until they have a quantum computer. Quote. Faced with this harvest now and decrypt later strategy officials are trying to develop and deploy new encryption algorithms to protect secrets against an emerging class of powerful machines. That includes the Department of Homeland Security, which says it is leading a long and difficult transition to what is known as post quantum cryptography. We don't want to end up in a situation where we wake up one morning and there's been a technological breakthrough. And then we have to do the work of three or four years within a few months all with the additional risks associated with that. Says Tim maurer, who advises the secretary of Homeland Security on cybersecurity and emerging technology end quote. Somewhat related, but something that I wasn't aware of, the currently booming underground market for bots, which are capable of breaking two factor authentication. It works like this, according to motherboard, quote, either on telegram or Discord, a hacker enters their target's phone number and the platform, the hacker wants to break into. In the background, the bot then places the automated call to the target. Connecti told motherboard that the bots use sites similar to Twilio, a communications company for businesses that lets customers send messages and make calls, although, connect you said not all of the bots use Twilio specifically. When the bot places the automated call and asks the victim to enter a code they just received, the hacker will simultaneously trigger a legitimate code to be sent from the targeted platform to the victim's phone. They may do this by entering the victim's username and password on the site so the victim receives a login or authorization code. Although the script and the call may tell the victim that the code is for one purpose, perhaps blocking a cash transfer or protecting their account from unauthorized entry. In reality, the hacker is using the code to enter the account themselves. The bot then takes the victim's input at code, feeds it back to the bot's interface and the hacker can then use the code to log in. Quote. We've spoken recently about people rethinking the fragility of supply chains around the world, the very supply chains that have made our world modern thus far in the 21st century. To that end, this piece from The Wall Street Journal looks at that reassessment that is going on right now. Quote, miss Coleman, who is also a director at Goldman Sachs Group and Dell Technologies, said some of her customers and automotive medical and consumer durable goods industries that rely on manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia, increasingly when a presence in the Americas. They're realizing right now they're losing business because they're kind of stuck with a very long, very efficient, but very inflexible supply chain. Miss Coleman said, there are some people who are saying, look, what I need is short term because this is never going to happen again. She said, then there are other people who are saying, this is going to happen more often than we think. The world is a very different place, and it's not just the pandemic. It's natural disasters. It's the floods down in the south. It's tornadoes. It's hurricanes, end, quote. Majestic steel, USA, which processes and distributes flat rolled steel for a number of industries has used acquisitions to broaden its footprint to the West Coast, adding to locations in Ohio Nevada, Florida and Texas. We want to be closer to our customers whether because of trucking capacity or just the pure challenges and impediments in the supply chain said Dave kippy, majestic's chief operating officer. So here's an analogy that this makes me think of, you know how tech companies use content delivery networks and local data centers to be ever so close to your computer or your device so they can make loading a web page or an app ever so much faster, even if it's just by milliseconds. What if we need the equivalent of distributed data centers and CDNs, but for the supply chain? This next one is the piece that I promised or hinted at yesterday. The U.S. has been the world's sole superpower for 30 years now because, well, to a degree because it is always had better technology than any adversary. Satellites, smart bombs, drones. The list goes on and on, technology that other countries simply didn't have access to. But you will notice that a lot of adversaries have cut up on those things. No worries, though, right? Because the U.S. has Silicon Valley, the locus of technology advancement. Yeah, but on the one hand, despite being conceived in a mail of defense contracts, modern Silicon Valley has increasingly shied away from the military industrial complex as we've discussed, and at the same time, the military industrial complex itself, the actual Pentagon, they're not exactly on the cutting edge. As we've also discussed on more than one occasion, we still hear stories about nuclear missile silos being run using floppy disks, which can be a good thing, but that's a whole nother story. Anyway, from fast company, a very long piece about how amid rising tensions, a cadre of defense insiders and tech players want to remake The Pentagon and Silicon Valley's image, quote today, the technology that will likely decide 21st century warfare will be based on artificial intelligence, autonomy, quantum computing, space, cybersecurity, and BioTech. In other words, sectors in which Silicon Valley has already invested heavily to serve businesses and consumers. These technologies are being developed at a much faster pace and with a much faster delivery than anything the primes or Department of Defense is working on says Steve blank and entrepreneur and Stanford professor, who authored the secret history of Silicon Valley, a series about the military ties that created the region. Quote, the Defense Department is realizing that we've got to have access to leading technology Brown tells me. Remaking The Pentagon in Silicon Valley's image will be far more difficult a public private challenge than say Uber and Lyft steamrolling municipal taxi commissions. You have to think about the military as a large bureaucracy that has existing relationships with primes. And they all live in a symbiosis that makes sense to them, says Eric Schmidt, the former chairman and CEO of Google, who has backed several defense startups and shared the national security commission on artificial intelligence. Those major contractors have entrenched themselves by influencing contracting rules, spending heavily on lobbying and sprinkling stable jobs across congressional districts. Should Silicon Valley unseat legacy defense companies, this transformation will come with its own risks, autonomous weapons remove military personnel from harm, but they also inoculate human operators from the suffering they inflict. Even artificial intelligence proponents express concern that it could advance at a pace leading to a fully automated war taking place between algorithms. Two generations ago, the microchips developed in the valley were used in the nuclear missiles that very nearly ended life as we knew it. In exchange for that military buildup, society received middle class jobs and eventually the commercial Internet. Today, a software focused defense industry may not yield the same civic benefits. General Dynamics, for example, has 84,000 full-time U.S. employees located in all 50 states. And drill has approximately 700 employees mostly in Irvine, California. Silicon Valley startups have targeted and engulfed several large economic sectors over the past decade from education to finance, defense is the final frontier. Quote, we've affected probably one to 2% of DoD procurement at this point Brown says. Dollar wise, I'm not expecting it to be more than 50%, but it sure as heck needs to be more than one..