this episode of the wi files is brought to you by ground news it's human nature to keep secrets throughout history we've made complex codes to hide our secrets most codes are eventually cracked but not all of them the voage manuscript is a book filled with drawings and symbols nobody can read the be ciphers point to Hidden Treasure if someone could decode them there are entire ancient languages we can't understand because they're encrypted encryption can be simple or very complicated either way it's just running a message through a series of mathematical rules for decades even centuries some codes use mathematical rules that remain unbreakable but they're about to be challenged by something new machines that don't care about math and don't follow any [Music] rules if he doesn't pick up this time I replacing his vodka with gutter water or smearing off yeah human hey if you calling about the drones I'm already on it I'm calling because you haven't shown up to work for a week work I'm busy saving a planet these drones aren't just watching they're planning first they'll take the skies and then they'll take us let me guess you're the only one who can stop them someone has to stand up and say we will not go quietly into that good night just come into the studio I would but I got the living room barricaded the Beavers are unfortified the window and dirty's on spit Duty uh you can never be too careful spit Duty oh yeah she spits at anything that moves she can hit a passing satellite don't ask how is that why the cable's been out forget the cable these drones are organizing if we don't act now they'll be controlling us by Sundown H you know what we need a flamethrower one good blast and or you can use ground news to figure out what's really going on oh here we go a News App instead of a flamethrower well yes because ground news is actually helpful ground news is a website and app founded by a former NASA engineer to tackle a bigger issue how we stay informed it's the ultimate tool for Skeptics and Truth Seekers cutting through sensationalism by showing how different Outlets cover the same story take the situation with the drones ground news found over 200 sources covering it most are highly credible but you can easily sort the reliable information from clickbait what Outlet says residents are rattled another spins it into spy balloon Saga while the top Source focuses on the faa's lack of answers yeah so no alien mother ships nope and their blind spot feed shows stories one side of the political Spectrum isn't covering you'd be surprised how much gets left out it's perfect for bursting your media bubble and seeing the bigger picture if you want to stay informed you can even follow your favorite topics it lets you track the stories you care about so you never miss the very details and for Limited a time you can try their Vantage plan for 50% off just go to ground. news/ files or scan the QR code on the screen 50% off when I go to ground. news/ files that's right ground news helps you compare coverage think critically and maybe chill out about the drones fine but if one of those drones start trapping Harvesters I'm riding dirty to the mountains you can stay behind and try to upload a virus to the main frame uh whatever it is you humans do so I'll see you in the studio then what was that H you're cutting out uh must be drone interference they're blocking our [Music] signal Kate Bryce's morning started like any other her smart home system walk her at 6: a.
m. with her usual playlist the coffee maker fired up her iPhone read her schedule while she brushed her teeth normal routine she opened her banking app something was wrong her balance was Zero she blinked and checked again her balance was back just a temporary error she thought she took a sip of coffee and nearly dropped her mug the smart speaker was playing someone else's conversation a couple fighting about credit card debt she unplugged it then her Smart TV started cycling through her photos private photos intimate photos she pulled the plug and then her phone rang then she heard the sirens [Music] the oldest code we know of isn't written in complex mathematics it's carved in stone in an Egyptian tomb from 4,000 years ago the scribes simply replaced regular hieroglyphs with ones they made up they weren't trying to keep secrets they were showing off these were prayers carved into tomb walls the scribes wanted to prove they knew something others didn't oh those were ancient emojis not exactly ah let's test that theory H can humans crack this the simple Act of substituting one symbol for another Unleashed something the human desire to keep secrets and for thousands of years that's how codes worked you replace letters with other letters or symbols linear a is a secret writing system created by the manans in ancient cre 3600 years ago we can read its descendant Linear B but linear a is still secret every attempt to crack it has failed the Spartans made practical use of codes this is cryptography please don't too late I already ordered the tunic and the cape now I just need the ABS can I get back to this look ahead I need to catch up on my sit-ups anyway the Spartans created the Skitty here's how it works picture a wooden rod about as thick as your wrist Rod stop it now wrap a strip of leather or parchment around it like a spiral write your message across the strip following the spiral when you unwrap it the letters scramble the message is nonsense but wrap it around another Rod exactly the same size and the mess message reappears this is called a transposition cipher you're not changing the letters you're just moving them around Julius Caesar encoded all his military correspondence by shifting each letter in the alphabet by three spaces a becomes D B becomes e and so on when you hit Z you loop back to a this is called a shift Cipher or Caesar Cipher the key is knowing how many spaces to shift Caesar used three but you can use any number his enemies never cracked it in the 1820s Thomas beel used a book Cipher to hide the location of millions of dollars of bury treasure and here's how it works first pick a book any book then you replace each word in your message with a number that number tells you which word to use from your chosen book count down to the fifth word on page one and that's your first word maybe the 19th word on page two is your second word and so on be use the Declaration of Independence Nicholas Cage has entered the check when someone finally figured that out in 18 1985 they cracked one of his three messages the treasure is somewhere in Bedford County Virginia but the other two messages still locked because we don't know which books he used every year thousands of people try to crack the deal ciphers to find the treasure and every year they fail the Zodiac Killer was also ahead of his time he encoded a message using a homophonic substitution Cipher using 48 different symbols instead of replacing each letter with just one symbol you replace it with several different ones the letter e might become three or seven or some symbol nobody knows this makes the code much harder to break because you can't use frequency analysis in normal English e is the most common letter but if you split it between multiple symbols that pattern disappears for 51 years the Zodiac's message stumped the world's best cryptographers then in 2020 three amateur code Breakers finally solved it what it say Well it said a bunch of stuff but it started with I like killing people because it's so much fun yeah for a serial killer he wasn't much of a poet he wasn't and the Zodiac Killer was never found but quantum computers are about to change everything all these ancient methods substitutions patterns and tricks share one weakness math this is a weakness Quantum computerist can exploit soon these machines might reveal every secret message ever written including yours [Music] the quantum computer hisss as liquid helium circulated through the processor Carl Bishop checked the temperature - 460° F absolute zero Quantum bits needed to be that cold to maintain coherence Stanford's Quantum lab was empty at 3:00 a. m.
he'd been running simul for 12 hours straight his eyes burned but CC's Grant requirements were clear demonstrate Quantum error correction or lose funding quantum computers were terrible at error correction Quantum states are too fragile too much noise if the temperature changes by half a degree they decohere if radio waves leak in they decohere a truck hits a pothole a mile away the vibration in the earth makes them decohere but Carl noticed something strange in the error correction data the errors weren't random then he realized they weren't errors at all the quantum computer was cracking encryption Keys millions of them keys that protect everything from banking passwords to nuclear launch codes Carl decided to test this he entered an RSA 4096 security key and ran down the hall for another coffee he wasn't in a hurry even though world's most powerful supercomputers would need billions or trillions of years to break RSA 496 but when he returned 5 minutes later he couldn't believe it the key was cracked Carl now realized his computer was the most powerful and dangerous weapon on Earth he started to panic he tried to delete the data but was already uploaded to cc's private servers by Sunrise three intelligence agencies had flagged the data transfer by 9:00 a. m. the First Bank security system was breached by noon every bank went dark the quantum apocalypse had [Music] begun you're entire digital life depends on two prime numbers that's it two numbers and they protect everything your password your messages your bank accounts all of it modern encryption is based on the simple trick take two huge prime numbers and multip app them together that creates your public key a number anyone can use to send you secret messages but only someone who knows those original prime numbers can read those messages working backward trying to find those original numbers would take a computer billions of years or so we thought in December 2024 Google unveiled project Willow their quantum computer solved the problem in 5 minutes that would take our fastest supercomputers longer than the age of the universe quantum computers do this using superposition hang on hang on hang on you want to pump the brakes and the nerd chat and fil me in well think about flipping a coin it lands on either heads or tails normal computer bits work the same way everything is either one or zero it's binary but quantum computer bits or cubits can be one and zero at the same time oh so cubits a nonbinary what aren't they no they are but I need you to stop talking so instead of flipping that coin it's a coin spinning on its Edge while it spins it's not heads or tails it's both at once that's super position now imagine trying to crack a safe with a million combinations a normal computer can only try one combination at a time but a quantum computer it tries all combinations simultaneously the NSA has been warning about this moment for years they call it y2q the year quantum computers become powerful enough to break our current encryption they thought it would happen between 2030 and 2040 but Willow changed everything for 30 years quantum computers suffered one major problem errors reading Quantum data is like trying to read a book during an earthquake it's too unstable to work properly but Google fixed that with project Willow how did it fix it by grouping cubits together there are groups of cubits handling processing and groups of cubits that do nothing but track and fix errors the more cubits you add the fewer errors you have it may sound counterintuitive but it's like building a sand castle that gets stronger the bigger it gets now with ai's help quantum computers are on track to break current encryption by the year 2029 way ahead of schedule yeah this is bad in 2024 the Department of Defense accelerated its Quantum modernization program their latest directive warns the critical systems must be Quantum resistant by 2025 but one detail stands out they're not just protecting future messages they're racing to protect everything we've ever encrypted and they're running out of time when Liz emer's phone buzzed at 4:00 a.
m. she almost ignored it after 15 years in cyber security Late Night Calls usually meant someone at the hospital forgot their password but caller ID showed Mount sinai's emergency line the first report was in patient records appeared on digital Billboards in Time Square they included blood test result results psychiatric evaluations and terminal diagnoses that patients had not yet told their families about senators congressmen CEOs their private medical data was all over the Internet she was still coordinating the hospital's response when the news reported that every dating app was breached then they came back online suddenly on every device in the city smartphones TVs Billboards was a link to a site where anyone could look up any information that was part of the dating app breach direct messages real names and emails browser histories private photos and videos all revealed Liz figured the only people celebrating were divorce attorneys then an email came into Hospital Security pay $1 billion do or every pacemaker control system on Earth will go down pay another billion or insulin pumps will go down starting with diabetic children the city started to crack police dispatch systems were offline traffic lights went dark ATMs were dumping cash into the street Bank balances were set to zero autonomous vehicles became killing machines delivery drones crashed into buildings like comicazi Pilots a fleet of cyber trucks tore through a shopping mall before exploding all at once news channels tried to cover the chaos but the broadcasts were hijacked CNN anchors watched helplessly as their personal emails were displayed on screen the White House Press secretary's private texts appeared during a briefing about the crisis then the NSA made an emergency broadcast that somehow made it through they said there was a nationwide system compromise for the safety of every American martial law was now imposed just as the message was covering the mandatory curfews every phone in the country went dark major technology companies are racing to build Quantum resistant encryption Google IBM and Microsoft have teams working around the clock but there's a big problem quantum computers don't just threaten future messages they threaten everything we've ever encrypted every encrypted file every secure transmission every protected database becomes vulnerable even ones from decades ago intelligence agencies have been collecting encrypted data since the Cold War your old emails your financial records your private messages all sitting in databases waiting to be unlocked then there's Bitcoin its entire security system depends on the same math quantum computers are about to break Shadow groups have already collected hundreds of thousands of encrypted Bitcoin wallets they're just waiting for quantum computers powerful enough to crack them all that money could vanish in seconds at current prices that's billions of dollars total till zero Baby Banks know this is coming JP Morgan started building Quantum resistant vaults in 2023 not for gold or cash for computers these facilities will never connect to the internet they'll use paper records and human couriers the military is training for Quantum dark operations missions conducted without digital communication teams practice using pre-arranged signals dead drops and one-time codebooks the same methods that kept secrets during World War II the nsa's latest reports show project Willow proves something they already knew the quantum apocalypse isn't coming it's already here the NSA isn't trying to stop it it's preparing for what comes after because the race is no longer about building quantum computers the race is to survive [Music] them the line at Chase Manhattan stretched around the block cash only no cards no transfers just paper money and metal coins Donald Janik watch from his office window across the street in his 30 years as a security consultant he'd seen a lot of changes but nothing like this the quantum apocalypse was erasing Decades of technological progress his company now specialized in physical security armed guards paper record keeping mechanical locks the kind of security you couldn't hack when the hospital records started appearing online they shut down their networks and went analog now armed guards protected rooms full of paper files doctors wrote descriptions by hand old Mechanical Devices became valuable typewriter repair shops reopened filing cabinet manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand bicycle Messengers replaced email everyone with skills from the pre-digital age suddenly found themselves in demand retired secretaries who could take shorthand mechanics who could fix cars without computers accountants who knew how to keep books by hand the younger generation struggled to adapt they never lived in an analog world the Smart Ones saw it coming they' pulled their money out early and bought physical assets gold silver land things you could touch things that existed in the real world not just his numbers in a database the rest had to adapt or lose everything back at Stanford Carl Bishop struggled with depression he blamed himself ctec the company supporting his work no longer took his calls still Carl wouldn't stopped digging he had to find out what went wrong then Carl found something buried in the data time stamp that didn't make sense some encrypted messages were broken months ago then he realized the quantum apocalypse didn't start with his mistake it started months earlier the First Bank breach wasn't at noon the first day it was 3 months before but balances weren't touched hospital records websites smartphone apps most have been compromised for months but again the data wasn't touched Carl realized the chaos wasn't an accident it was cover for something else something much bigger something much [Music] worse scientists are racing to develop new encryption methods that even quantum computers can't break they call it postquantum cryptography the strategy five mathematical problems so complex that not even quantum computers can solve them efficiently but there's a problem whenever we think we found an unbreakable code someone finds a way way to break it the Germans thought Enigma was mathematically impossible to crack the Japanese believed purple would keep their World War II Communications secret forever the NSA once claimed RSA encryption would take billions of years to defeat they were all wrong some banks are returning to physical security systems offline computers paper records and in-person verification government agencies are Reviving Cold War ER methods onetime paths dead drops and bicycle couriers sometimes things don't happen the way you planned sometimes you can end up low what then you started what Quicksilver somebody out there gets it quantum dark operations like air gap facilities analog communication and paper messages could work but they're temporary solutions throughout history humans have played an endless cat and mouse game with Secrets someone creates an unbreakable code someone else breaks it and a more complex code replaces it and the cycle continues in the quantum age there are no more secrets only information waiting to be revealed that's why the NSA isn't trying to stop it they aren't building new codebreaking technology but you know what they are building bunkers the concrete room in the bunker beneath Fort me was cold and quiet Carl Bishop was in his fifth hour of interrogation by by four government agents the NSA building above them had been abandoned when their classified files leaked but this room which technically didn't exist still had power and a working computer Carl learned the truth over the past few months ctec wasn't a tech company it was a joint NSA Dara program that had been running since 2019 they didn't have just one quantum computer they had a network of them hidden and secure facilities Nationwide for years the network had quietly broken every encryption it touched banking records medical files private messages and government secrets the intelligence agencies had access to everything but there was a problem they couldn't act on any of it without revealing their capability imagine knowing about every terrorist plot every corporate crime every government corruption Scandal but being unable to stop any of it without exposing how you got the information the agencies were drowning in intelligence they couldn't use the solution was El an create a world where privacy no longer existed where every secret was public if nothing were private there'd be no need to explain how they obtain their intelligence no search warrants were necessary everything was already exposed the social chaos was part of the plan Communities going analog wasn't a problem it was the goal Drve the dangerous elements offline where they could be more easily monitored through traditional surveillance let the general public choose between convenience and privacy they would choose convenience they always did but the intelligence agencies had their own solution for secure communication a return to Cold War tradecraft dead drops onetime pads face to-face meetings in soundproof rooms their most sensitive operations moved to facilities that never touched a network or used a computer buildings that didn't officially exist staffed by people with no digital footprint they maintained two separate organizations the public facing agency everyone knew about and the shadow agency that operated completely offline the public agency would rebuild its security and update systems all of it would be theater the real work happened in places like this concrete bunker places with no windows No cameras no phones places where messages were still written by hand and burned after reading the most important secrets were never digitized never encrypted and never stored anywhere except in human memory the NSA didn't break encryption to destroy Society they destroyed Society to hide that they' broken encryption almost a year ago Carl was set up the quantum apocalypse was pinned on him but what could he do about it martial law was still in effect the NSA wanted him to keep working and keep quiet he could either agree to cooperate or go to prison violation of the Espionage Act willful communication of National Defense information unauthorized access of classified documents the list went on and on on he didn't have much of a [Music] choice as Carl left the concrete room he realized that in a world with no secrets the most powerful people weren't those who could break encryption the most powerful people were those who could keep secrets without it and right now the only people who could do that worked for the NSA thank you so much for hanging out today my name is AJ there's Heckle fish my voice is my passport verify me this has been the wi files if you have fun to learn anything do him a favor subscribe comment like share it's just a small little thing but it really helps us out like most topics we cover on the channel today's was recommended by you so if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about go to the Y files. com tips and remember the yfiles is also a podcast twice a week I post deep THS into the stories we cover here on the channel and I post episodes that wouldn't be out on the channel it's called the wi files operation podcast and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts if you need more wi files in your life check out our Discord server there's over 60,000 people on there so 24/7 something's going on they're talking about the same weird stuff we do here it's a great Community it's really supportive it's a lot of fun and it's free to join and if you want to follow what's going on with the wi files at any given time check out our production calendar it's the wi files.
