Quantum computers could cause a global security crisis that makes the once-feared millennium bug, or Y2K, look quaint. This infamous computer risk was averted through the persistent behind-the-scenes work of engineers across the world, but whether the new threat will be tackled similarly is an urgent yet unresolved question. Most digital communications and transactions are protected by cryptography based on mathematical problems that are unsolvable by conventional computers but are solvable by a sufficiently capable quantum computer. Researchers have understood this since the late 1990s, but the day when this capable-enough quantum computer comes online - or Q-Day - was thought to be very far in the future. Working quantum computers are now a reality, and recent leaps in how to use them are bringing Q-Day ever closer.

Republican strategist Matt Keelen and Democratic strategist Fred Hicks debate how passing the'big, beautiful bill' will impact the macroeconomy and the upcoming midterm election cycle. Should we be alarmed by the acceleration of "artificial intelligence" ("AI") and the "large language models" (LLMs) AI's developers employ? Thanks to AI I can provide a short explanation of the LLM term: "Imagine AI as a large umbrella, with generative AI being a smaller umbrella underneath. LLMs are like a specific type of tool within the generative AI umbrella, designed for working with text." The intricacies of AI and the tools it uses are the stuff of start-ups, engineers, computer scientists and the consumers feeding them data knowingly or unknowingly.

There are interesting parallels between one of this week's milestones in the history of technology and the current excitement and anxiety about artificial intelligence (AI). Bottom line: Beware of fake AI news and be less afraid. On February 10, 1996, IBM's Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, defeating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2. In May 1997, an upgraded version of Deep Blue won the six-game rematch 3½–2½ to become the first computer to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls. Deep Blue was an example of so-called "artificial intelligence" achieved through "brute force," the super-human calculating speed that has been the hallmark of digital computers since they were invented in the 1940s.