The digital economy has led to a U.S. trade surplus in services on the order of around 1 percent of gross domestic product. Yet recent advances in artificial intelligence have exposed new vulnerabilities that place every cyber system at risk of disruption.

Cryptography has been crucial to protecting cyber systems. Using hashing or encryption, passwords can be protected, which has historically kept cyber systems safe from intruders. More recently, quantum computing has been viewed as a threat to shatter cyber system security, given its ability to unlock such systems in a reasonable amount of computing time. This has pushed the discovery of quantum-ready cryptography — cryptography that even quantum computers cannot break.

This traditional model for protecting cyber systems is akin to installing an impenetrable lock on a house door to keep criminals from entering. AI systems that now exist effectively allow such people to enter the house through other means, without touching the house door that had become the focal point of........

© The Korea Times