Preparing for Store Now, Decrypt Later: What Government and Industry Are Doing Now: Part III

In Part II, we looked at why Store Now, Decrypt Later is already an intellectual property protection issue. Part III asks the practical question: what are government and industry actually doing to prepare?

In my 2024 novel, Bird in the Cage: The Quantum Spy’s Gambit, I fictionalized this issue through a conversation between investigators and a quantum researcher discussing the race to prepare for a post-quantum world:

“Jia Li,” Max started, “the quantum science community and our governments are thinking so far ahead that not only are we working on getting a quantum computer up and running, but we recognize that once it is up and running, that our adversaries around the world will eventually have access to its power too, and it will then be used against us to decrypt the encryptions protecting our data today?”

“Yes,” Jia Li said again. “That is exactly so. The United States National Quantum Initiative has awarded each of our universities the opportunity to compete to discover these resistant algorithms.”

The dialogue was fictional. The concern was not.

Today, according to public guidance from organizations such as NIST, CISA, and the NSA, government and industry are already preparing for the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) — including the development of quantum-resistant encryption standards, cryptographic inventories, vendor readiness assessments, and migration planning.

The quantum threat is no longer treated as a distant research issue. It is now part of active cybersecurity planning.

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