[bdamm]

We're not talking about desktop machines or even mobile phones. I'm talking about specialized sensors that are sold to big customers who deploy millions of them at a time. A 10-cent increase in the cost to manufacture easily results in millions of dollars lost over the lifetime of the product's sale and operation. We also sell battery operated devices expected to continue operating flawlessly for 20 years, on a small clutch of AA batteries. So no, we don't just "put in a core high power enough" because that boosts the production cost, eats into the power budget, and causes us to lose contracts.

We are absolutely watching the PQC space, but we absolutely will not move at all, beyond experimental toys, until NIST is done their first round and maybe not even then if there aren't any actual QCs around doing real work.

Also, pull out your wallet. I bet you can find several devices with embedded crypto. All of my debit cards, for example.

[snagglegaggle]

Yeah, I know all of this. Smart cards are kind of the exception because they aren't reprogrammable. But security costs money. As you've made it clear your business and customers prefer cost to security.

[bdamm]

They're willing to pay for security, but they don't want to pay a penny more than they must. Security is not, and never will be, an open-ended budget.

[snagglegaggle]

So they prefer cost to security. That's fine, most people do. If being quantum resistant was a priority they would figure out a way to do it and it may be similar to what I described, or not; but it could happen without hardware implementation if it was truly desired.