Harvest Now, Decrypt Later
Context
Cameron Burgess et al. :
"Because regardless of what AI and security professionals may say about how “easy” it is to protect oneself, the quantum horizon makes all of it worse. “Harvest now, decrypt later” (HNDL) — collecting encrypted data today, and storing it until quantum computers can break the encryption — is already happening. The U.S. Federal Reserve published a paper in September 2025 analysing HNDL risks specifically for distributed ledger networks, concluding that data privacy of previously recorded transactions remains permanently vulnerable because an adversary can copy the ledger and wait.22 Blockchains put every transaction on one global ledger — one target. Centralised AI infrastructure puts an organisation’s operational intelligence behind encryption that has a shelf life. Corporate data doesn’t expire, and may become more valuable to an adversary five years from now than it is today."