All-In · Oct 21, 2026 · 40m · 31m saved
With Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM · Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks
Photo via paloaltonetworks.com
A quantum computer that can break today's encryption most likely arrives around 2030, by the count of Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM, who joined Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, on the All-In podcast. Most companies treat that date as a deadline still years off. Arvind and Nikesh treat it as already here, because data stolen today can simply be stored until the machines catch up.
"The good news is post-quantum cryptography is understood. It's well known. The code is written, but people have been too lazy to get to it. But I think the wake-up moment is now." — Arvind Krishna
Arvind runs the company whose mainframe has lasted 65 years. Nikesh runs a security company whose 20,000-plus employees are experimenting with frontier AI models, and whose own red team has turned AI bug-hunting tools loose on real code.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 40 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Arvind puts the midpoint for quantum breaking today's encryption at 2030, and data stolen now is already exposed
The fix exists and is written, yet Nikesh says companies are "already late" deploying it
Palo Alto experiments on frontier models, then runs proven work on small, fine-tuned models, except during a live breach
Arvind guesses 75 to 90% of enterprise tokens will go to open-weight models that cost about a tenth as much
AI bug hunters favor attackers, who need only one real flaw while defenders must patch them all
Arvind calls AI and data-center rules "driven by populism" and sees no chance all 50 states ban data centers
Companies running 500 to 5,000 software vendors will consolidate onto a handful of platforms
1. Encryption's 2030 Deadline
Arvind opened on quantum computing and on how to tell real progress from noise. His best signal is DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which has cut a field of a couple hundred entrants down to roughly 13.
Arvind puts the likely date for quantum to break today's encryption at around 2030
"If you pick the middle point, let's call it 2030, it will break this cryptography. That's not a supposition, that's just a reality." — Arvind Krishna
He named two milestones to watch on the way. The first is credible error correction verified by a third party: he expects claims next year, and real progress from one or two players by 2027. The second is scaling gate computations from about 10,000 today toward 10 million by 2029, if the industry adds a zero every year.
