Quoting Matthew Green
Quoting Matthew Green
Cryptographer Matthew Green argues there is a 1% chance we live in a 'Minicrypt' world where public-key cryptography is fundamentally impossible, and a 15% chance we will actually lose confidence in existing public-key algorithms. He notes AI creates surprises far faster than humans (even AI-assisted) can replace standards, and only advance preparation enables recovery from such surprises.
9th October 2026
Everyone is very concerned about being respectable, so I’m going to be the goofball who raises worst-case possibilities. I think there is a 1% chance we live in Minicrypt, and a 15% chance we functionally lose confidence in our existing public-key encryption algorithms. [...]
The problem here is that the speed of AI producing surprises, and the speed of human beings replacing standards (even with the very best AI assistance) are just orders of magnitude different. You only recover from a surprise like this if you do the preparation in advance.
— Matthew Green, on Twitter. I looked it up and Minicrypt is Russell Impagliazzo’s hypothetical world in which public-key encryption is impossible.
Source: Simon Willison · simonwillison.net