III.  Technology Battlefields
C.  Quantum and DNA Computing 

Moore's Law (really a conjecture) is to the effect that the cost of computing is halved every 18 months.  A related conjecture is that the brute-force cost of cracking encryption will decline, but not as fast as the cost of using uncrackable encryption.  This conjecture is obviously important to the future of PKI as the technology of choice for security on open systems.  Will it hold true for astounding new ideas for enhancing the power of computing technology?  Both DNA and Quantum computing are now the subject of serious theoretical and experimental development, and should be watched closely by PKI attorneys and technologists.

Slides (4/15/99) by Mark Kubiec , Ph.D., Staff Scientist in the Chemistry Department of University of California at Berkeley, "Can Molecules Think? Frontiers in Chemistry, Computer Science and Biology," (talk at Hayward State) explaining DNA and quantum computing techniques. 

   Article "The Square Root of NOT,"  (July-August 1995) by Brian Hayes in American Scientist, which applies the physics of quantum computing to the mathematics of trapdoor algorithms such as the difficulty of factoring the product of two huge primes.