A'Quantum Apocalypse' could tear open everything from internet banking to government secrets -- and experts warn it's just years away. This fear was thrown into focus earlier this year when an academic paper by Chinese researchers suggested that a quantum computer (a new technology under development by Google and IBM, among others) could break the encryption which keeps us safe online. Tim Callan, a chief experience officer at cybersecurity company Sectigo, warned DailyMail.com The warning comes soon after researchers at the University of Chicago revealed they were working on an unhackable quantum internet. Currently, computers use a system called public key encryption to protect information -- such as someone sending you a digital message. In this your device -- such as a mobile phone -- has two keys, a public key and a private key.

A new generation of fear entrepreneurs in the IT industry are promoting anxieties and fatalism about the threat quantum computing poses to the future of encrypted data, cyber-security and our way of life dubbed Quantum Apocalypse. You can't make this stuff up. Just when we can breathe a sigh of relief as we appear to have overcome the Covid pandemic, 'the quantum apocalypse' draws us back into new anxiety about life on Earth – just like Al Pacino in'The Godfather' trying to escape his criminal past, but being pulled back in. However, this is not a Hollywood movie. And just like the doomsday predictions of environmentalists, 'the quantum apocalypse' is being presented as a real existential threat to life as we know it.

Experts have been warning of something called the "quantum apocalypse" – the point when quantum computers become a reality and render most methods of internet encryption useless. Boris Johnson promised in November that the UK would "go big" on quantum computing – a new and more powerful way of processing information, based on quantum physics. If you imagine a standard computer to be like a horse and cart, then a quantum computer is "more like a sports car – a huge leap forward", explained the BBC. The UK is aiming to secure 50% of the global quantum computing market by 2040, said The Guardian, by investing in the National Quantum Computing Centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire. But the US and China have already taken huge steps to revolutionise research in the field, with the Americans achieving a "dramatic lead in quantum computing patents", said Scientific American. A leaked Google research paper published in 2019 suggested that a computer designed by the tech giant had achieved "quantum supremacy" – defined by The Independent as the ability to perform "a calculation that was far beyond the reach of today's most powerful supercomputers".

Earlier this week, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM announced that LG Electronics has joined the IBM Quantum Network. According to Big Blue, the Quantum Network is designed to advance the industry applications of quantum computing. Like all such partnerships, the technology flow will go in both directions. By joining the IBM Quantum Network, IBM will offer Seoul, South Korea-based LG Electronics access to IBM's quantum computing systems, as well as to IBM's quantum expertise and Qiskit, IBM's open-source quantum information software development kit. For its part, LG Electronics aims to explore applications of quantum computing in industry to support big data, artificial intelligence, connected cars, digital transformation, IoT and robotics applications -- all of which require processing a large amount of data.