In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor showed that a quantum computer could factor large numbers fast enough to break the encryption used to secure most of the internet. Thirty-two years later, no one has built a machine capable of doing that.
But the framing that has defined quantum computing for most of those decades — that practical machines are perpetually "a decade away" — is dissolving, not because the hard physics got easier, but because the technology is starting to show up in places where it can be measured against real infrastructure rather than distant promises.
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