The White House is drastically shortening the deadline for government agencies and organizations to adopt new quantum-resistant encryption systems that will withstand attacks that use quantum computers, as the federal government seeks to protect decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and most individuals on Earth.

The executive order, titled Securing the Nation against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks, requires computing systems for “high-value assets” and “high-impact systems” to transition to post-quantum cryptographic key establishment schemes by December 31, 2030, and to quantum-safe digital signature schemes by December 31, 2031.

Heading off a significant threat

The new deadline, which for many organizations is about five years sooner than the previous one, comes on the heels of recent research showing that the resources and cost for building a cryptographically relevant quantum computer are far less than previous consensus estimates. In response, Google, Cloudflare, and other companies recently tightened their timelines for moving off vulnerable systems to 2029.

“The advent of large-scale quantum computers, particularly in the hands of adversaries, will pose a significant threat to widely used cryptographic security systems,” Monday’s executive order stated. “Ongoing cyber activity against our Nation also presents the risk of adversaries collecting United States information now, and decrypting it later once large-scale quantum computers are operational.”

Under a timeline the National Security Agency published in 2022, “National Security Systems”—a class including only defense and intelligence systems under the authority of the agency—were under orders to be quantum-ready between 2030 and 2033. Most other organizations had until 2035 to complete the transition. Now, many of them will be required to transition much sooner.

“So, for any system that falls into this new bucket of high-value assets and high-impact systems, their transition timelines just got shortened by 4-5 years (from 2035 to 2030/2031),” Brian LaMacchia, a cryptography engineer who oversaw Microsoft's post-quantum transition from 2015 to 2022 and now works at Farcaster Consulting Group, told Ars. “That is a significant shortening of the transition timeline for these systems, and it follows similar timeline revisions from Google and Cloudflare that we saw announced back in late March/early April.”

The order also:

• Establishes a government-wide transition coordination process to be led by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the National Cyber Director. Each federal agency will designate a point person responsible for reporting quantum transition progress to them.
• Directs the Secretary of State to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, the National Cyber Director, and the Director of National Intelligence to “identify and engage foreign governments and industry groups in key countries to encourage their transition to PQC algorithms standardized by NIST.”
• Directs NIST and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to issue guidance on the release of a CBOM (cryptographic bill of materials), which lists all components, libraries, and modules in an encryption system.
• Establishes new procurement rules that appear to be aimed at requiring “covered contractors” to meet the same quantum-readiness deadlines and implement vulnerability disclosure policies.

“Critical infrastructure owners and operators can now expect support in developing their PQC migration plans,” Jordan Kenyon, senior quantum scientist at Booz Allen, told Ars. “Covered contractors could face future requirements from proposed rules to incorporate PQC compliant algorithms required by FIPS by the end of 2030 and incorporate reports of cryptographic vulnerabilities in their disclosures.” FIPS is short for Federal Information Processing Standards, a set of standards shepherded by NIST for use in computer systems of non-military US government agencies and contractors.

No one knows when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will arrive. Experts have made wide-ranging guesses for more than three decades. A key barrier is creating a system with the required number of qubits—the quantum equivalent of a bit in classical computing—that operates correctly even in the presence of errors that occur when they interact with their environment.

In March, researchers said they discovered a way to break ECC-256, used to secure the bitcoin and ethereum blockchains, using only 30,000 physical qubits in 10 days.

That same month, a Google research team said it developed two quantum circuits that could solve the elliptic-curve discrete logarithm problem using roughly 500,000 physical qubits, half of what the same team estimated last June was needed to break 2048-bit RSA, which has a much larger key size.

In 2012, most estimates were that breaking a 2048-bit RSA key would require a billion physical qubits. By 2019, the estimate was lowered to 20 million physical qubits. The steady march of progress, as demonstrated by these latest research papers, is prodding organizations with the most to lose to err on the side of Q Day—the day a cryptographically relevant quantum computer arrives—coming sooner rather than later.

Two of the most widely used public key cryptography algorithms—RSA and elliptic curve cryptography—are based on factoring composites, which are the product of two or more primes, and the discrete logarithm, respectively. These mathematical problems are simple to solve in one direction and nearly impossible in the other. A quantum computer with sufficient resources can run Shor’s algorithm to solve these problems in polynomial time, specifically cubic time, far faster than the exponential time provided by today’s classical computers. The post-quantum algorithms replacing RSA and elliptic curve cryptography are based on problems that quantum computers have no advantage over classical computers in solving.

Contrary to what many people assume, substituting quantum vulnerable algorithms for PQC ones is anything but a drop-and-replace exercise. Public key sizes for ML-KEM—one of the replacements for RSA—are roughly three times bigger. The difficulty and scale of the work ahead is the reason the federal government is taking the move so seriously.

Separately, the White House published a second executive order directing the federal government, in partnership with private industry, to support quantum computing. Among other things, it established a “national effort” to develop the world’s first quantum computer powerful enough to “initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery.”

Read full article

Comments

There are some sights in this world that no photograph can truly capture.

Think of the rolling ribbons of the aurora in the northern and southern skies, the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon, or the sense of immersion when diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Astronauts will tell you that not even large-format cameras can truly capture the blackness of outer space or the majesty that is our planet as seen from orbit or beyond.

It's not every day that a new one of those sights debuts. But such will be the case on Friday, November 13, when the California Science Center in Los Angeles finally reveals the launch-pad-like display of the space shuttle Endeavor inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

"It has been more than 30 years since we first dreamed of putting a shuttle in the launch position in our air and space center, and it is better than we ever thought it was going to be," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the science center, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "I haven't had anybody walk in there yet who is disappointed, and more than that, who isn't excited and in awe."

"It is an incredible exhibit and incredible sight," he said.

Setting the stage

It has taken four years to construct the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, including accomplishing what many thought impossible: stacking a space shuttle orbiter with its external tank and twin solid rocket boosters without using a NASA facility intended for that purpose.

"I was very uncertain if it would ever happen when we first looked at the proposal, because I think—and the science center admits this—they really had no idea what was involved in trying to make a vertical display of a space shuttle stack," said Dennis Jenkins, a former space shuttle engineer who led the preparation and delivery of the orbiters for their museums before becoming the project director for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

"We weren't sure that it could be done anywhere other than at a [NASA] specialized facility. Doing it out in the middle of a construction site always seemed a little bit fantastic," Jenkins told collectSPACE. "Of course, it proved to be extremely difficult yet extremely easy all at the same time. Once we figured out how to do it, it worked well."

The 184-foot-tall stack, comprising the orbiter <em>Endeavour</em>, external tank, and twin solid rocket boosters, is believed to be the tallest indoor museum exhibit in the world. Credit: California Science Center

Now that the countdown has begun, T-minus 142 days to opening, the pressure is on to be ready to launch. In addition to the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery, the Air and Space Center includes the Korean Air Aviation Gallery and Kent Kresa Space Gallery, which will showcase more than 25 aircraft and both historic and modern spacecraft, respectively.

"We're still installing a lot of exhibits," said Rudolph of the remaining work. "We've got artifacts that are still going in the aviation and space galleries. Quite a few are in, but a lot more are still to go. And we have begun installing the exhibits, but have a lot to install as well."

Over the past year, a segment of a walkthrough space shuttle solid rocket booster has been lifted into the building by crane, a Hawker Siddeley Harrier T.4 aircraft was installed, a Rocket Lab Electron booster was stood up, and in May, the 70-foot forward section of a Korean Air Boeing 747-400 aircraft fuselage was rolled in.

"After that, we'll have a period where we want to do some testing. To study some operational issues before we get open to the public so that it runs smoothly when we do open," he said.

With one of its payload bay doors open, visitors will be able to see the type of equipment used on a mission to the International Space Station. Credit: California Science Center/Mike Kelley

As for Endeavour, it's almost ready for the spotlight. The orbiter is configured so that from one angle, its payload bay doors appear closed, while from another, you can peer through an open door to see the payloads arranged as they would have been for a mission to the International Space Station.

"For the most part, we still have to adjust the lighting in the payload bay," said Jenkins. "Once that gets configured, then we have to latch the closed payload bay door and put a sheet of acrylic over the open crew hatch so that it stays clean inside Endeavour."

A sight to behold

Endeavour has a pre-show before it is revealed on display. (Spoiler warning: Skip the next paragraph if you do not want to know details of the experience.)

Inside a theater, a video produced by the California Science Center provides a brief history of the space shuttle and how Endeavour came to stand within this building. The footage ends with the final launch of Endeavour as the room fills up with fog. As the air clears, a wall that was once there has dropped away, and you are suddenly just feet away from the 184-foot-tall (56-meter) stack.

From there, guests will be able to view Endeavour from several levels of the building, from the ground up. There will also be an opportunity for some visitors to board a glass elevator and ascend the gantry standing beside the shuttle. The top level has a transparent walkway, so you can see the entire vehicle below you.

The view of space shuttle <em>Endeavour</em> from the ground up. The red gantry tower beside it will offer views from the top down when it opens with the center on Nov. 13, 2026. Credit: California Science Center

"I'm extremely happy that we're almost done and we can show it off, because the public has been listening to us for 15 years—30 years, if you go back to the master plan—about how great this is going to be," said Jenkins. "Everybody that has walked into that room just stops, their mouth opens and their eyes open wide, and as often as not, the words "oh shit" come out of their mouths, and you know it's truly one-of-a-kind."

"If you're a space geek, it's unbelievable because the view is like nothing we ever got, even at Kennedy, unless you happen to be on the mobile launch platform as we rolled out," he said. "You never got these kind of views because we always had platforms and other stuff around the vehicle. The views in this place are incredible. They are just amazing."

The California Science Center's new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will open on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. Credit: California Science Center/Mike Kelley

One person particularly looking forward to November 13 is Lynda Oschin, who chose to honor her husband's legacy by directing her family foundation to make the leading donation to the new air and space center.

"It's very exciting. I can't wait to see the expressions and all of the happy tears in the eyes as we saw way back in 2012, when people first walked in and saw Endeavour in horizontal position. I just can't wait to see all the excitement," said Oschin.

"I did this in the memory and in honor of my husband because the space shuttle incorporates everything that Sam loved and was involved in," she said. "Sam's picture is in the shuttle now, and it is always going to be in there. It's in a frame on the flight deck. That really is extra special for me and makes me feel good to know that his picture is in there."

See more photos and video at collectSPACE as the California Science Center continues its first look at space shuttle Endeavour's towering display.

Read full article

Comments

One of Taika Waititi's greatest strengths as a director is his unique voice; he's able to bring a light touch to tragedy (Jojo Rabbit) and a gentle sadness to offbeat comedy (Our Flag Means Death). That makes him an excellent choice to direct Klara and the Sun, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Sony Pictures just released the first trailer, and it's giving strong Hunt for the Wilderpeople vibes—a good thing, from my perspective, since that's my favorite Waititi film.

Per the official premise:

Based on the bestselling novel from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro and written and directed by Academy Award winner Taika Waititi, Klara and the Sun introduces audiences to Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home. When Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), each immediately senses a kindred spirit in the other. Josie has a fraught relationship with her mother (Amy Adams), and they’ve suffered great loss, but Klara’s innocent wonder and unwavering loyalty begin to heal the family and bring light to Josie’s complicated world.

The cast also includes Natasha Lyonne as an artificial friend (AF) store manager; Rachel House as the housekeeper Melania; Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy) as Josie's best friend, Rick; and Sophia Bryant-Taukiri as Josie's older sister, Sal. Steve Buscemi and Harry Greenwood also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Like Ishiguru's novel, Klara and the Sun is set in an unidentified future, with Klara narrating. As a solar-powered AF, Klara has a special relationship with the sun, the source of her nourishment, but she also bonds with Josie when the girl and her mother are shopping for AFs. So Josie chooses Klara, despite the latter being an older model. Josie's mom is skeptical but agrees on a trial basis, encouraged by the 20 percent discount. “Just remember everything you learned and hopefully they’ll come to love you like a member of the family or family dog," Lyonne's store manager tells Klara. Klara soon senses that something is wrong and turns to her old friend, the sun, for guidance. (Book readers will know what's up.)

Ishiguru's leisurely meditation on humanity's relationship to technology might seem out of Waititi's usual wheelhouse, but the director recently told Vanity Fair that he quickly realized he needed a new tonal approach to the material and adapted quickly to make his most dramatic film. “Sometimes I think you get caught up in, like, ‘Oh, people want the same tone as this other thing from eight years ago,’ and it’s nice to not have to cater to that so much or cater to your own expectations of what you think you want to do,” Waititi said.

Klara and the Sun hits theaters on October 23, 2026.

Read full article

Comments

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that allows companies to hold patents on plant varieties. As a result, a small number of corporations can—and do—suppress competition in the seed industry, stifle innovation, and turn taxpayer subsidies intended for farmers into corporate profits.

The US Department of Agriculture has found that two companies control more than 70 percent of US corn and soybean seed sales, and the top four cottonseed companies control nearly 94 percent of that market.

In a May 2026 court filing in a legal dispute between two US seed companies, the Department of Justice said patents on seeds are obstructing competition and research in the agriculture industry.

As researchers who work on plant breeding and seed policy, we have seen how that plays out. When huge companies assert their patents, smaller businesses and public plant breeders, who often lack the legal resources to fight back, are frequently dissuaded from conducting research and development that might actually not be illegal at all.

And a lack of competition allows dominant companies—not always based in the US—to collect large sums of taxpayer money that Congress allocated in hopes it would help farmers, not shareholders’ and executives’ bottom lines.

A shift in ownership

For most of human agricultural history, farmers freely saved, exchanged, and planted seeds season after season, creating a diversity of crops suited to the places and people who grew them.

While some communities restricted the exchange of seeds for cultural or ceremonial reasons, seeds were broadly understood to be a shared resource. Even as recently as the 1970s, most plant breeding was carried out by public researchers at government stations and universities, while private companies focused on producing and selling those varieties at scale.

That diverse and decentralized system also served as an invisible insurance policy against disease and disaster: If one variety failed, there were plenty of others distinct enough to fill its place.

Beginning in the 20th century, though, governments began to grant companies patents on living organisms, beginning with a genetically engineered bacterium that broke down crude oil. Suddenly, chemical and pharmaceutical companies saw opportunities to earn money by engineering specific traits, such as herbicide tolerance, into key crop plants, including corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola, and patenting those varieties.

Then they used those patent rights to prohibit other plant breeders, even university researchers, from conducting research and breeding with their seeds and to forbid farmers from saving their own seeds from one season to the next.

Those steps eliminated seed companies’ two most obvious sources of competition: other developers building on their work and farmers saving seed. The seed companies then had enough market power to set prices so high that they took nearly all of farmers’ potential profits, while leaving them just enough of a margin to remain customers.

According to a report from the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, the price for genetically engineered seeds has more than quintupled since 1990, rising by 463 percent. But over that same period of time, the price farmers have received for their crops has increased only by 56 percent.

Both figures are indexed, so 1990 values=100. Credit: The Conversation (CC BY-ND), MacDonald, Dong and Fuglie (2023), U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Report No. EIB-256.

Subsidies get diverted

When the prices farmers receive for certain crops fall below a certain threshold, or when farmers suffer losses from bad weather or unexpected trade disputes, the Department of Agriculture has a multitude of programs that offer payments to make up the difference.

But that money tends to spend little time in farmers’ pockets.

An August 2025 study shows that when farm subsidies increase, seed companies respond by raising their prices, charging based on what farmers can afford to pay rather than their own cost of producing and marketing the seed. Specifically, for every 1 percent increase in farm subsidies, seed companies raise their prices by 0.5 percent.

And when farmers go to sell their crops to grain processors, those companies benefit from being able to purchase commodity grains, such as corn, soybeans, and canola, at a predictable price, held low because subsidies help farmers produce an abundant supply at margins that would otherwise drive farms out of business.

Testifying at an October 2025 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on competition issues in the seed and fertilizer industries, Iowa farmer Noah Coppess put it plainly: “The reality in farming today is we’re price takers rather than price makers. That’s especially true when consolidation limits our options. … I have concerns with our input and equipment supply chains and their ability to manipulate our costs.”

The result is a system in which public money intended for farmers is redistributed to the seed suppliers and commodity purchasers who profit on either side of them.

Limiting research

Dominant seed companies prevent competitors from developing new breeding programs through a complex web of patents and restrictive licensing contracts that make it nearly impossible to acquire enough genetic material to get started.

The patent system is built on the premise that applicants must completely disclose how their inventions were made in order to get protection. This allows the public to understand the scope of the invention, as well as to improve upon it.

Genetic analyses on the protected seeds would be required to understand how a variety was bred and the genetic traits it contains. However, seed companies have also threatened independent researchers with patent-infringement lawsuits. Those threats prevent independent researchers from studying the crops that make up the country’s supply of food, feed, fuel, and fiber.

The result is that no one outside of the dominant companies, not even the US government, knows which economically crucial crops, most of which are grown from patented seeds, might be vulnerable to emerging pests and pathogens. For years, plant breeders have been calling for genetic assessments of these seeds and the crops they grow; to date, no such studies have been conducted.

A shift in direction

But the May 2026 Justice Department court filing saying seed patents are blocking agricultural competition and research indicates the tide may be turning.

In 2023, multinational agrochemical company Corteva sued a genetic engineering startup, Inari, for infringing its patents by, among other things, obtaining samples of Corteva’s patented seeds from a public repository and analyzing their genetic makeup.

Though the Justice Department didn’t weigh in favor of either company, its court filing said companies should not be able to restrict the public from sequencing genetic material that was deposited as part of the process of securing patent protection.

Notably, the department’s court filing came from the Antitrust Division rather than the Civil Division, which usually handles intellectual property issues. That difference suggests that the government sees this extension of patent rights as an illegitimate way for a company to exclude other companies from competing.

The case is still winding its way through the legal process. But if the judge agrees, his decision could be consequential. For starters, competitors could begin to understand the strengths and weaknesses in seed varieties on the market and find ways to build on that innovation, which is precisely the type of activity the patent system was designed to encourage.

More competition in the market could provide an important check on seed prices, reducing the burden on American farmers and, thereby, taxpayers. Finally, researchers could conduct the studies that are needed to begin rebuilding the kind of genetic knowledge that was, for most of human history, held in common—an insurance policy in the best interest of us all.

Julie Dawson is Professor of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kiki Hubbard is a Researcher at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Paulina Jenney is Research Coordinator, Urban and Regional Food System Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read full article

Comments

For our weary eyeballs, strained and tired from long periods locked onto screens, rest and relaxation can do wonders. But a man in Scotland came up with an eye-popping plan to try to pamper his pooped peepers.

Ophthalmologists discovered it when the man, who was in his 20s, appeared at an eye treatment center in Edinburgh. He told them he had noticed increasing floaters and flashing lights in his right eye over the previous six days. According to a BMJ Case Report, the man said he hadn't had any eye or head injuries before the vision problems began, and that his family didn't have a history of eye disorders that might explain them. Besides having mild near-sightedness and needing glasses, he usually didn't have any problems with his eyes, he said.

When the doctors—Niamh O’Connell ‍‍and Ashraf Khan—took a close look, they were surprised to find that both of his eyes were in terrible shape. In his right eye, he had multiple retinal tears, widespread retinal bruising, and a condition called retinal dialysis—a retinal break at a junction in the front of the eye—that is usually seen after a significant eye injury. In his left eye, he had more widespread bruising and six full-thickness rips in his retina.

Given the findings, they had more questions. They pressed him on any "untoward" things that might have happened to his battered orbs. The man then reluctantly admitted he had been trying to soothe his tired eyes with a percussive massage gun. Specifically, he used a gun with a small head attachment shaped like a bullet.

The massage gun with the small head attachment the man used. Credit: BMJ Case Reports, 2026

Describing the man as a "hesitant historian," the doctors said he eventually confessed to using the massage gun directly on and around both eyes on a weekly basis for three months to help with his eye fatigue. They noted that he did not have a history of psychiatric conditions or drug use.

Occular offense

The doctors acknowledged that percussive massage therapy may be helpful for some soft tissues, like muscles, with the vibrations possibly relieving pain, improving blood flow, and promoting relaxation. But it can demonstrably cause serious damage to the eyeballs.

The ill-conceived thwacking therapy likely caused all of the damage to the man's eyes, the doctors concluded. The gun would have rapidly compressed the eyeballs back, causing them to squish out from the sides, which is thought to lead to retinal dialysis. Still, the doctors noted that the retinal dialysis was unusual because it was seen in the lower quadrant of the eye closest to the ear (inferotemporal quadrant). When retinal dialysis occurs from blunt trauma—like taking a fist to the eye, a more common cause of trauma—it usually occurs in the upper quadrant closest to the ear (superior temporal). Overall, the man's case marks a first in scientific literature for how to injure an eyeball.

After identifying the injuries, the doctors used laser treatments to mend the retinal tears and rips and seal the break. At a six-month follow-up appointment, the man's condition was stable without any deterioration. His vision was preserved, despite his injuries having a high risk of progressing to vision loss.

While his decision to put a massage gun to his eyes was highly questionable, he at least demonstrated good judgment in the aftermath, saving his sight, his doctors concluded. "This favorable outcome was likely due to the patient’s prompt presentation soon after noticing symptoms and the immediate initiation of treatment," they wrote.

Read full article

Comments