Packets Never Lie: The Future of Cybersecurity, AI & Quantum Computing

This time.

How many of you know what this is? This is a Simpson 260 multimeter. I saw some hands go up. Yeah, come on now! [smile] Three hundred bucks on eBay if you’re lucky. I run SecurityInstitute.com, and next month, I’m launching MorpheusCyber.com, our new podcast. I also run TechFuturesIndex.com, tracking AI, Cyber, Crypto, Robotics, and Quantum as they converge. I’ve been a technologist since 1980. Back then, I was with Lockheed Missiles and Space, multiplexing data communication systems for the first air-launched cruise missile. We linked Boeing and others together under top-secret clearance. I can finally say that out loud because it’s declassified now. That experience taught me something powerful: When you’re learning something new anchor it to what you already know. That’s why I brought the multimeter. I’m going to anchor quantum to multimeters… and to Ethernet. For AT&T, I trained engineers who’d spent their careers working point-to-point circuits layer one, layer two with only two devices, remember Data Terminal Equipment DTC to DCE Data Communications Equipment? At IBM in Research Triangle Park, where they built the Token Ring chips and they needed someone who could translate engineering complexity into human language. I was that guy. [smile] Low-IQ translator, high-impact explainer. The liaison between geniuses and everyday humans. And the key to learning? [pause] Borrow from what you already understand. Ethernet remember that one? Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection. It means: listen while you talk. If you hear silence, grab the wire. If someone else transmits at the same time, boom collision. Listening while we talk is not something we do a lot of in America today! [laughs] When Ethernet and Token Ring were competing in the market, I wrote for Network Computing Magazine. And I coined: Token Ring is for idealists. Ethernet is for realists. That same principle applies to learning new tech today. Anchor the unfamiliar to the familiar and you’ll move faster, learn deeper, and retain longer. Now why bring a multimeter? Because measurement changes the system you’re measuring. When you connect a voltmeter to a circuit, it adds a load. That’s called the loading effect. It changes the circuit just by observing it. That’s why clamp current meters are popular they observe current without entering the circuit. Hold that thought because that’s how we get to quantum mechanics. To have a quantum computer, you need a perfectly quiet, cold environment. Like in space. Everything cooled to near absolute zero, because the more heat you add, the more electrons go wild and the more noise you get. Noise causes errors. Errors cause chaos. In quantum computing, when everything’s synchronized and stable we call that coherence. When noise creeps in and the system falls out of sync that’s decoherence. Now, think of AI training. When ChatGPT AI trains across 25,000 GPUs, all those GPUs hold the exact same model in perfect sync. That’s AI coherence. But in quantum, coherence means no errors at all. And when decoherence hits it’s like desyncing your instruments in an orchestra. Chaos. To fight decoherence, we need redundancy. Just like RAID storage uses parity bits to survive a disk failure, quantum computers use ancilla qubits extra ones to watch for errors without collapsing the state. That’s quantum error correction. Let’s take this deeper. When you probe a circuit with a multimeter, it changes the voltage slightly. That’s the observer effect your act of measuring changes the thing you’re measuring. Now translate that to the double-slit experiment the heart of quantum mechanics. Shoot photons through two tiny slits. If no one’s watching, you get an interference pattern waves. Add a detector, and the pattern collapses particles. Just observing changes the outcome. It’s like flipping a silver dollar in the air heads and tails simultaneously kind of 50 shades of gray until the moment you look at it. Once you measure it, the wave of probabilities collapses into a single result: one or zero. Observation collapses possibility into certainty. That’s the bridge from quantum to classical. So: Multimeter Quantum Detector. Both introduce load. Both change the truth they’re trying to observe. Here’s the challenge: To make quantum computers useful, we need thousands of error-free qubits operating in perfect coherence. But every time a qubit decoheres the result collapses, the math fails, and the computation is ruined. That’s why quantum environments are so delicate shielded, vacuum-sealed, super-cooled, isolated from even the faintest vibration. Quantum computing is breathtaking but it’s also fragile. That’s why we’re still in the early innings. Now let’s connect the dots. AI and Quantum aren’t competitors they’re dance partners. Quantum computes what classical systems can’t. AI helps interpret and accelerate what quantum discovers. Together, they’ll solve problems like drug design, life sciences, cybersecurity, and space travel in minutes instead of centuries. But right now, we still face the hardware wall. And that’s where I come in because I’m PacketMan007, and packets are where reality meets theory. [pause] Let’s talk about the future of cybersecurity. We’re heading toward a world where every packet is captured, analyzed, and acted upon in real time. Today’s CPU-based tools only see fragments. Logs get erased. Endpoints get tampered with. But packets? [beat] Packets never lie. They’re immutable evidence the DNA of digital truth. NVIDIA’s new DPUs Data Processing Units can capture 400 gigabits per second per card, offloading all that traffic from CPUs. When paired with GPUs running AI models like Morpheus, you get real-time packet inspection and content anomaly detection in microseconds. And the new firewall? A DPU with access control lists. Imagine a world where BlueField DPUs capture every packet north, south, east, and west feeding it straight to AI models that can stop ransomware or malware before it executes. That’s coming. Not someday soon. I’ve trained 50,000 people in 27 countries, and I’m telling you we’re about to hit the inflection point. Here’s where things get serious. Quantum computers, once scaled, can break RSA encryption using Shor’s algorithm. TLS 1.3, SSL, public key crypto all of it can fall once quantum reaches enough coherent qubits. Whether that’s 30 years from now or three we don’t know. But we do know it’s coming. That’s why I talk about post-quantum encryption algorithms that resist quantum attacks but run on classical hardware. And one of my heroes leading that charge is Radia Perlman, the “Mother of the Internet.” Radia invented the Spanning Tree Protocol the algorithm that keeps Ethernet loops from collapsing the Internet. She wrote this little poem when she designed it: “I think that I shall never see a graph more lovely than a tree. A tree whose crucial property is loop-free connectivity.” [chuckle] Isn’t that brilliant? Elegant and human just like her. Radia told me recently: “Bill, we can implement post-quantum encryption right now in under two years across the entire industry.” We don’t need quantum computers to use post-quantum encryption. We can start today. Because here’s the danger: Attackers are capturing encrypted data now and the moment they get quantum decryption, your secrets are gone. The time to prepare isn’t “someday.” It’s now. So what can you do to improve cyber resilience now? First, capture one network segment. Analyze it 100%. You’ll see truth in those packets and you’ll understand why I keep saying “Packets never lie.” Second, start tracking quantum-safe encryption standards. NIST is finalizing them, and leaders like Radia are shaping them. Third, explore Morpheus, NVIDIA’s open-source AI cybersecurity framework. It’s available today just needs a modest GPU. That’s where the future lives. Now let’s look ahead to Vibe Coding. I recently built the TechFuturesIndex.com in two and a half hours using natural AI language tools. English not code was my compiler. That’s Vibe Coding: programming by conversation. It’s the next leap in productivity. If you’re already a coder, you’ll be a better Vibe Coder. But if you ignore it you’ll be left at the station while others build the future. So I say: English is the new programming language. Twenty bucks a month on tools like Cursor and anyone can do it. Start by coding your on Tetris game in a few minutes using the trial for free! We’re witnessing the convergence of AI, Cyber, Crypto, Robotics, and Quantum. They’re merging and we are alive to see it. Take a look at TechFuturesIndex.com at the blue dashed line. Quantum is the last laggard until last week but it’s now like a hockey-stick upward. The moment it crosses that threshold, everything changes. So here’s my challenge to you: Don’t just watch. Participate. Thank you, InfraGard Houston. I’m Bill Alderson and remember… Packets never lie.

FastX on behalf of the.