ALL INPredictions
Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Friedberg
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Friedberg @ 00:25:10Right
techai
According to the view endorsed by Friedberg, there is under a 5% probability that a quantum computer capable of breaking RSA-2048 via ~4011 logical qubits will exist before 2040, and such a machine is most likely to emerge sometime between 2040 and 2060, at which point RSA-2048–based cryptosystems (including those used for cryptocurrencies) will be practically breakable.
there is an estimate that the number of logical qubits needed to crack RSA 2048, which is the big kind of encryption standard, um, which could kind of break the whole cryptocurrency model. Um, it would require about 4011 logical qubits.... And by some estimates, and some people have tried to estimate when this would happen. And the estimate currently by some researchers is that there's a less than 5% chance this happens before the year 2040. So we're talking somewhere between the year 2040 and the 2060, when we get a quantum computer that has enough logical qubits to be able to crack a problem like RSA 2048 and basically make all crypto fail.View on YouTube
Explanation

As of November 29, 2025, there is no quantum computer with ~4000 logical qubits capable of breaking RSA‑2048.

Current leading systems (e.g., IBM, Google, Quantinuum, IonQ) report on the order of hundreds to low thousands of physical qubits, with only small numbers of error‑corrected logical qubits demonstrated in practice:

  • IBM’s published roadmaps and recent devices discuss thousands of physical qubits, but logical qubits at scale remain a research goal, not an achieved capability.
  • Experimental demonstrations of logical qubits and small code distances exist (e.g., surface codes and other error‑correcting codes), but they are far from the thousands of logical qubits needed for factoring RSA‑2048 using Shor’s algorithm.
  • No credible report from major labs, peer‑reviewed papers, or industry announcements claims the ability to factor RSA‑2048 or equivalently strong keys with an actual machine.

Because:

  1. The prediction’s time window for the event is 2040–2060, and we are still in 2025.
  2. The sub‑claim that there is <5% chance of such a machine before 2040 is equivalent (from today’s vantage point) to saying “it’s very unlikely we’ll have this before 2040,” and nothing observed so far contradicts that; progress is significant but still orders of magnitude away in logical‑qubit scale and error correction.
  3. The specific event that would falsify him (a quantum computer with ~4011 logical qubits that can break RSA‑2048) has not occurred yet.

The appropriate evaluation today is that the prediction has not been falsified and is consistent with current reality. Since the key part of the prediction is about not having such a machine before 2040, and we’re still well before 2040 with no such machine, the prediction is best judged as right (so far) rather than wrong or ambiguous.

(No single specific source states “no RSA‑2048‑breaking quantum computer exists,” but this is inferred from the absence of any such claim in the quantum computing literature and industry communications, and from the widely reported current scales of physical and logical qubits.)