Factoring Humanity

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten you were coming. Come in, come in.” He moved aside to let Cash enter. Kyle took a chair in front of Cheetah’s console, and motioned for Cash to take another seat.

“I know you’re a busy man,” said Cash, “so I won’t waste your time on preliminaries. We would like you to come work for us.”

“Us?”

“The North American Banking Association.”

“Yes, yes, you said that on the phone. Say — a banker named Cash. Bet you get a lot of jokes about that.”

Cash’s tone was even. “You’re the first.”

Kyle was slightly flustered. “But I’m not a banker,” he said. “Why on earth would you possibly be interested in me?”

“We’d like you to work for our security division.”

Kyle spread his hands. “I’m still at a loss.”

“Do you recognize me?” asked Cash.

“I don’t, I’m sorry. Have we met before?”

“Sort of. I attended your seminar on quantum computing at the IA-squared conference last year.” The 2016 meeting of the International Artificial Intelligence Association had been held in San Antonio.

Kyle shook his head. “Sorry, no, I don’t remember. Did you ask any questions?”

“No — I never do. I get paid simply to listen. Listen and report back.”

“Why should the Banking Association care about my work?” Cash reached into his pocket. For a horrible instant, Kyle had the crazy thought that he was going for a gun. But all Cash did was remove his wallet and pull out a SmartCash card.

“Tell me how much money this card has on it,” said Cash.

Kyle took the card from him and squeezed it hard between thumb and forefinger; the pressure powered up the little display on the surface of the card. “Five hundred and seven dollars and sixteen cents,” he said, reading the numbers.

Cash nodded. “I transferred the amount just before coming here. There’s a reason I chose that figure. That’s the average amount each adult North American has programmed into a smartcard on his or her person. The entire cashless society is based on the security of these cards.”

Kyle nodded; he was beginning to see what Cash was getting at.

“Remember the Year-2000 problem?” Cash held up a hand. “I think we in the banks should take the full blame for that, by the way. We’re the ones who produced billions of paper checks with ‘19’ preprinted in front of where the year goes; we pioneered the concept of the two-digit year and trained everyone to use it in their day-to-day life. Anyway, as you know, it cost billions to avert disaster from hitting the world at one second past 23:59:59 on December 31, 1999.” He paused, waiting for Kyle to acknowledge this. Kyle simply nodded.

“Well, the problem we’re facing now is infinitely worse than the Year-2000 problem. There are trillions of dollars worldwide that exist nowhere except as stored data on smartcards. Our entire financial system is based on the integrity of those cards.” He took a deep breath. “You know, when those cards were first being developed, the Cold War was still going on. We — the banking industry, that is — worried about what would happen if an atomic bomb were dropped on the United States or Canada, or on Europe, where they went to smartcards even before we did. We were terrified that the electromagnetic pulse would wipe the card memories — and suddenly all that cash would simply disappear. So we engineered the cards to survive even that. But now a threat is facing them that’s even greater than a nuclear bomb and, Professor Graves, the threat is from you.”

Kyle had been playing with Cash’s smartcard, tapping each of its edges in turn against the desktop. He stopped doing that and placed it in front of him. “You must use RSA-style encryption.”

“We do, yes. We have since day one — and now it’s the de facto standard worldwide. Your quantum computer, if you really can build it, will render every one of the eleven billion smartcards in use on the planet susceptible to tampering. One user could take all of another user’s money during a simple card-to-card transfer, or you could simply program your own card with any amount you wanted, up to the maximum the card allows, making money appear out of thin air.”

Kyle was silent for a long moment. “You don’t want me to work for you. You want to bury my research.”

“Professor Graves, we’re prepared to make you a very generous offer. Whatever U of T is paying you, we will double the figure — and give it to you in American dollars. You’ll have a state-of-the-art lab, in whatever city in North America you’d like to live in. We’ll provide you with whatever staff you require, and you can do research to your heart’s content.”

“I can just never publish any of it, is that it?”

“We would require you to sign an NDA, yes. But most research these days is proprietary, isn’t it? You don’t see computer companies or drug manufacturers giving away their secrets. And we will start looking for a secure alternative to the encoding systems we’ve been employing, so that eventually you will be able to publish your work.”

“I don’t know. I mean, the research I’m doing might even put me in line for a Nobel Prize.”