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Zeitgeist — a spike by Chris Gathercole
  1. Creators/
  2. Simon Willison — Creator of Datasette; co-creator of Django/

Quoting Matthew Green

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-10-14)

  • Matthew Green, quoted by Simon Willison, warns of a significant risk to public-key encryption, driven by the rapid pace of AI advancements.
  • He estimates a 1% chance we live in “Minicrypt” (a hypothetical world where public-key encryption is impossible) and a 15% chance of functionally losing confidence in existing public-key algorithms.
  • The core problem is the vast difference in speed between AI producing surprises and humans replacing cryptographic standards, even with AI assistance.
  • The practical takeaway is that recovery from such a cryptographic surprise is only possible through advance preparation.