Expert takes Oct 10, 2026

Today · post October 9

Green puts 15% on losing public-key trust; it's subjective

Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green puts two subjective probabilities on the table: a 1% chance we live in a world where public-key encryption can't be built, and a 15% chance we lose practical confidence in today's public-key encryption. He writes: "I think there is a 1% chance we live in Minicrypt, and a 15% chance we functionally lose confidence in our existing public-key encryption algorithms." The relay gives no time frame. Minicrypt is a hypothetical world in cryptography in which public-key encryption can't be built (Simon Willison, verbatim relay, 2026-10-09; Matthew Green). The remark came up in discussion after OpenAI released a large set of AI-generated math results on October 6. Named commentary in our October 9 issue carried the same worry from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, that progress in AI math could shake today's cryptography; today's item puts numbers on it. The two numbers measure different things, one a theoretical world and the other practical confidence, and they can't be added. These are his personal, subjective estimates; there is no evidence that any public-key cipher in use has been broken; we didn't read the post directly and are relying on a verbatim relay.