FIR #489: An Explosion of Thought Leadership Slop

For Immediate Release · Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz

November 17, 20251h 41m

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Show Notes

In the long-form episode for November 2025, Shel and Neville riff on a post by Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute, who identifies “idea inflation” as a growing problem on multiple levels. Idea inflation occurs when leaders prompt an AI model to generate 20 ideas for thought leadership posts, then send them to the communications team to convert them into ready-to-publish content. Also in this episode:

A growing number of companies are moving branding under the communications umbrella, detouring around Marketing and the CMO. It’s all about safeguarding reputation.
Quantum computing has been a topic of conversation in tech circles for years. Now, its arrival as a commercially viable product is imminent. Communicators need to prepare.
AI’s ability to generate software code from a plain-language prompt has put the power to create apps in the hands of almost anyone. There are communication implications.
Share some photos of yourself with an AI model, or companies that provide this as a service, and you can get an amazing likeness of yourself. But is it okay to use it as your LinkedIn profile?
Research finds that leaders not only handle change management badly, but it’s also having an impact on employees who have to endure the process. Communicators can help.
In his Tech Report, Dan York reports on WhatsApp launching third-party chat integration in Europe; X is finally rolling out Chat, its DM replacement, with encryption and video calling; Mozilla has announced an AI “window” for the Firefox browser; WordPress 6.9 offers new features, collaboration tools, and AI enhancements; Amazon has rebranded Project Kuper as Amazon Leo; and Open AI says it has “fixed” ChatGPT’s em dash problem. (We dispute that it’s a problem.)

Links from this episode:

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, December 29.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected].

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Shel Holtz: Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 489 of For Immediate Release. This is our long-form monthly episode for November 2025. I’m Shel Holtz in Concord, California.

Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson in Somerset in England.

Shel Holtz: We have a jam-packed show for you today. Virtually every story we’re going to cover has an artificial intelligence angle. That shouldn’t be a surprise — AI seems to dominate communication conversations everywhere these days.

We do hope that you will engage with this show by leaving a comment. There are so many ways that you can leave a comment. You can leave one right there on the show notes at firpodcastnetwork.com. You can even leave an audio comment from there. Just click the “record voicemail” button that you’ll see on the side of the page, and you can leave up to a 90-second audio.

You can also send us an audio clip — just record it, attach it to an email, send it to [email protected]. You can comment on the posts we publish on LinkedIn and Facebook and elsewhere, announcing the availability of a new episode.

There are just so many ways that you can leave a comment and we hope you will — and also rate and review the show. That’s what brings new listeners aboard.

As I mentioned, we have a jam-packed show today, but Neville, I wanted to mention before we even get into our rundown of previous episodes: did you see the study that showed that podcasting is very male-dominated as a medium?

Neville Hobson: I did see something in one of my news feeds, but I haven’t read it.

Shel Holtz: I heard about it on a podcast — I don’t remember which one — but I found it really interesting because the conversation was all about equity. And I’m certainly not in favor of male-dominated anything, but podcasting is not an industry where there is a CEO who can mandate an initiative to bring women into a more equitable position in podcasting.

This is a medium — let’s face it, even though The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and other major media organizations have jumped into the podcasting waters — where it’s essentially a hobbyist occupation. You and I started this because we wanted to, and the tools are available to anybody who wants them.

I remember when we started this, one of the analogies we used was trying to walk into a radio station and say, “Hey, I want to have an hour-long show every day on public relations.” You’d be laughed out of the radio station because there’s not an audience big enough to support that kind of content. But here, if you can find an audience, you can have a podcast.

So I don’t know how you go about making this more equitable, but I found that to be an interesting perspective.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I agree. There are some podcasts I’ve listened to that are hosted by women — which, frankly, are few beyond the realms of kind of “feminine-oriented” content. But there are a couple in our area of interest in communication that are. So they’re out there, but the majority, very much, are men.

Shel Holtz: Yeah. I mean, just in internal communications, there’s Katie Macaulay, and there are a lot of women doing communication-focused podcasts. Maybe if you’re going to look for somebody to make this a more equitable media space, it has to start with the mainstream media organizations that are producing podcasts — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal of the world.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, over here you’ve got The Times and a few others who have women doing this. They are there in the mainstream media orientation, but the kind of homebrew content that we started out with, I don’t see too many.

Shel Holtz: No.

Well, Neville, why don’t we move into our rundown of previous episodes?

Neville Hobson: Okay, let’s get into it.

So we’ve got a handful of shows. We’re actually recording this monthly episode about a week and a half earlier than we normally would. I think the reason for that, Shel, is something to do with U.S. holidays, your travel, and stuff like that.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, I’m going to be in San Diego next weekend, visiting my daughter and granddaughter because they’re not able to come up here for Thanksgiving. And then the next weekend is Thanksgiving weekend. So that’s why this is early this month.

Neville Hobson: Right. Okay, that explains it.

We are, we are. So, not too many episodes since the last one, but they’re good ones, though, I have to say.

Before we talk about those, let’s mention episode 485, which was prior to the last monthly. We had a comment.

Shel Holtz: We had two that we didn’t have when we ran down this episode in our last monthly episode. The first is from Katie Howell, who says, “Already reward return visits over one-off reach and the clever brands are catching up. If your brief still says ‘go viral,’ you’re chasing a metric that won’t help you keep your job. Repeat engagement with the right people is the proper goal. Less glamorous, miles more useful.”

And Andy Green says, “Good clarification over strategies, but you also need to recognize viral — also known as meme-friendly — is at the heart of effective communications. Also greater recognition of the impact of zeitgeist. Check out Steven Pinker’s latest book, When Everyone Notes.”

Neville Hobson: They were on LinkedIn, I think, weren’t they? That’s where most of them come in.

So, to the ones we did: we have the monthly of October that we did on the 27th of October, when it was published. The lead story we focused on in the headline was “Measuring sentiment won’t help you maintain trust.” Other topics — there were five others — including an interesting one: Lloyds Bank, the CEO and executive team learning AI to reimagine the future of banking with generative AI.

We talked about case studies in a piece that described, “Conduct, culture, and context collide: three crisis case studies,” reviewed in Provoke Media.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, they did 13 or 14 case studies. It was a very interesting article, so we highlighted a couple. And there was more content there too.

Neville Hobson: Episode 487, we published on the 5th of November. This was a really interesting discussion. You and I analyzed and discussed Martin Waxman’s LinkedIn post about slower publishing, deeper thinking, better outcomes — a pivot he’s made with his business and his newsletter.

He left a number of comments, but on the show notes post he left a long comment that was great. We don’t normally get comments on the show notes, so thank you, Martin.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, there were several comments from Martin. I’m going to run through these. He said, “Thank you for having me as a virtual guest once-removed on the episode, Neville. I just listened today and enjoyed your and Shel’s take on my post. You gave me a fresh perspective and I was honored and thrilled to be a conversation topic. And thanks to both of you for holding up the comms podcasting torch all these years and having a lot of fascinating and insightful ideas to share.”

You replied. You said, “Thanks so much, Martin. It was our pleasure. Your post struck a chord with many of us who feel the pace accelerating. It was a great springboard for our discussion, and I’m glad our take offered something new in return. Slowing down to think more deeply about how we use AI feels like the most human move we can make right now.”

But Martin also posted on his own LinkedIn account — and this isn’t short, so bear with us, everybody, as I read through this because I think it’s worth sharing:

“As the first and longest-running communications podcast — and one I’ve been listening to for a long time — this meant a lot. As I listened and heard Shel and Neville’s take on my observations, I gained a new perspective, one I didn’t see when I was writing and revising my post.

“Something I didn’t mention out loud is that it’s been getting more and more difficult to come up with fresh ideas on where AI fits in marketing and communications and the various implications around that, the kind that inspire a person to write. Like social media, it feels like we’ve tipped past the point of saturation.

“As Shel said, we’re now getting drenched by the all-too-familiar commentary and quasi-expert advice swirling around our feeds. That certainly doesn’t diminish the utility of AI or using it where it helps. And I appreciate Shel’s view on how AI helps speed up doing the good-enough tasks that are inherent in all work, to concentrate on the things you want to spend more time on.

“I could also relate to Neville’s comments about saying no to projects that don’t excite you so you can focus on the ones that do. And yes, the three of us are all fortunate to have reached that stage in our careers when we have a little more freedom to pick and choose. I also realize that many people aren’t in that situation.

“As someone who has spent my entire career writing, it’s exciting and a bit frightening to wonder what I’m going to write about next. Yet there’s energy in uncertainty. So thank you to Shel and Neville for having me back as a guest, albeit one who didn’t have to press record.”

Neville Hobson: Really, really super comments that Martin left. Thank you, Martin.

And then our final one before this episode, 488, we published on the 10th of November. I enjoyed this discussion a lot — about Coca-Cola’s generative AI Christmas video that they have done before, but this one got rid of all the people; it was full of bunny rabbits and sloths and all sorts of stuff and those red trucks.

There were plenty of opinions out there, ranging from “What a creative and technical masterpiece this is” to “Utter AI slop.” So we were quite impressed with it and stood back to look at what they were doing rather than being judgmental in any shape or form. But there were plenty of comments, and we had at least one we should mention, right?

Shel Holtz: Yes, from Barbara Nixon, who said, “Thanks for sharing this. I’ll use it as a basis of discussion in my PR writing class next week.”

Neville Hobson: That’s cool. So that’s the content leading up to this one. And of course, now we’re in the November episode that kicks off the next cycle of reporting for the next edition, when I can talk about what we did since this edition.

Shel Holtz: That’s right. And I also want to let everyone know that there is a Circle of Fellows coming up. I would be reporting on this if we were recording at the normal time of the month toward the end of the month, but it hasn’t happened yet.

It is coming up on November 25th, Tuesday instead of Thursday, because Thursday that week is Thanksgiving. So it’s happening at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, November 25th. This is episode 122, and the topic is “Preparing Communication Professionals for the Future.”

It’s a larger-than-usual panel — there are five Fellows instead of four. It’s going to be a good discussion. I think the future — obviously AI factors in here, I think quantum computing does too, as we’re going to talk about shortly in this episode — but also changes in business trends. The zeitgeist is changing, and politics is going to have more of an influence on business. All of these are things that I’m sure we will be discussing.

We look forward to having you join us for that. Of course, if you can’t be there to watch it in real time, it is available both as a video replay on YouTube and as an audio podcast that you can subscribe to right here on the FIR Podcast Network.

And we will now jump into our content for the month — but not until we run this ad for you.

Neville Hobson: So, one of the most interesting shifts happening inside large organizations right now is the move to combine communication and brand under a single leader. We’re seeing this across companies as varied as IBM, GM, Anthropic, and Dropbox, and the trend is accelerating.

According to research cited by Axios, CCO-plus roles — where communication leaders take on brand or marketing responsibilities — have risen nearly 90% in recent years.

What’s driving this? The short answer is volatility, says Axios. AI is changing how people discover what a company stands for, and reputational storms seem to ignite faster and with far greater consequences. A marketing decision that once would have sparked a debate in a meeting room can now become a political flashpoint within hours. That forces the question of who should really own the brand narrative.

Communication leaders are increasingly being seen as the natural fit. They understand stakeholders. They have a risk mindset. And they are often the ones who know how to navigate the cultural and political sensitivities that shape reputation today.

In other words, this is not just about messaging. It’s about trust, judgment, and the ability to connect what a company says with how it behaves. There is still a need for specialist marketing functions, but for many companies, brand stewardship is shifting toward the people who are closest to reputation.

And in a world where AI can bend or reinterpret a narrative in seconds, bringing communication and brand together under one trusted voice feels less like a structural tweak and more like a survival strategy.

So the bigger question for us is what this means for the future of the communication profession. Are we seeing the emergence of a new kind of leadership role — or simply a correction to reflect the reality that brand and reputation have always belonged together?

Shel Holtz: That’s a very interesting trend, and I don’t disagree with it in general. If you look at the big picture, it does make sense. Public relations is all about reputation; it’s all about maintaining relationships with the various stakeholder audiences.

So, as a communicator, you tend to have a big picture. You understand what the reputation is among investors, among the local communities in which your organization operates, among the media, for example, among your customers.

Marketing is all about driving leads for sales in most industries, and they don’t necessarily have that big picture. So it makes sense. And to bring marketing into the communication fold means that you get the benefits of the things that marketing is exceptional at — and branding is one of those things.

Most communicators aren’t involved in developing the trademarks for the organization and the logos and the like — that tends to be marketing, and for good reason. But to have that within the purview of communications enables that chief communication officer-plus to ensure that what’s coming out of that operation aligns with and is consistent with the things that we know drive the reputation of the organization.

You can find some gotchas maybe in the outputs that they’re developing that they wouldn’t have thought of.

That said, I know in my industry, which is commercial construction, the marketing department is not doing traditional marketing. There’s not a lot of effort to drive leads. The relationships with prospective clients are driven through other means. It’s getting to know people through industry contacts and the like. It’s building those personal relationships with developers and owners and the like.

I’ve just celebrated my eighth anniversary where I work, so I’ve seen this in play for long enough to understand that it’s right and it works very, very well.

In my company, the marketing department is also the steward of the brand, and I am fine with that because I’m mostly doing internal communications. I’m also responsible for PR, as far as it goes — media relations and the like — but I don’t have that relationship with the client base. Not at all. It’s rare that I meet a client. Usually I’ll shake hands at a groundbreaking or something like that if I’m out covering it, but by and large, this is something that the marketing department does.

So I’m inclined to say I agree with this, but it depends. And I think there are probably exceptions, and my industry is probably one of them. I’m part of a group called the Construction Communicators Roundtable — 18 or 20 commercial construction companies represented there — and I get the impression that it is the same with all of them. So this may be an industry-by-industry thing.

I don’t disagree with it, but I do think it depends.

Neville Hobson: “I think it depends” is definitely the start point to the discussion on this, I would say. My thought when I read the article — and the reason I included it in the topics for this episode — was precisely that: it does depend.

I’m not sure it is strictly industry-by-industry, meaning that this industry is entirely this way and this one isn’t. It’s probably a mixture. But there are some compelling reasons, I think, why it makes sense to do this even with the argument you’ve made for not doing it, let’s say.

For instance, one interpretation I have from Axios’s research is that the argument is: brand is no longer just a marketing asset. It’s a reputational construct shaped by every stakeholder interaction. That squarely leans toward understanding the impact on reputation — particularly in that communicators are the ones for that, not the marketing person.

It also speaks to the need for a trusted, politically aware leader. This combined role, according to Axios, is shaped by the reality that brand crises are increasingly political. Organizations want leaders who bring judgment, sensitivity, and crisis literacy. And that, in my view, leans much more into the communication person than the marketing/brand person.

And the one I think that is most interesting is the broader reinvention of the communication function. Sorry, marketing folks — this is about communication. The trend echoes the ongoing elevation of communicators as strategic partners rather than support functions, reinforcing the argument that communication is increasingly a governance role, not just an executional one.

Now, that argument would apply to marketing too, but not in quite the same way. Taking into account all of that — particularly the connection with reputation, the political awareness, and I like this term “crisis literacy,” fair enough, it’s a good way of describing it — this is more likely to fit in the bucket where the communicator sits than the marketing one.

And by the way, I’ve seen a number of people’s job titles — communication and brand. And I saw someone recently on LinkedIn who is a Chief Communication Officer and Director of Brand and Reputation, playing exactly to what Axios’s point is.

So yes, “it depends,” but I think there’s a compelling reason why, if you’ve got to pick one person, it should be the communicator.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, and again, I don’t disagree. And still I am untroubled by the fact that marketing owns the brand where I work. And I should clarify: they’re not engaged in traditional marketing. This is not a marketing department like at, say, Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola. They’re engaged primarily in business development.

So they’re putting together the proposals, they’re responding to the RFPs, they’re preparing the members of the team to go out and be interviewed by the owner or the developer who’s selecting the general contractor. So it is B2B. And, I mean, if they’re not concerned about the organization’s reputation, nobody is.

So this is why I say it depends.

The other point I will make is that even though we are not part of the same reporting structure, we’re pretty well joined at the hip. The VP of Marketing and I talk all the time. He’ll call me into his office to run stuff by me, I’ll run stuff by him. We meet regularly. We have a marketing director right now we are working with incredibly closely to develop a year-long recruiting campaign. We’ve won a ton of work and we need to staff up to support that work.

We’re going to take advantage of her expertise in branding and in marketing to recruits, and we’re going to take advantage of our expertise and the things that we do well. And that collaboration is probably going to produce a much better result than if it had just been one of us or the other of us.

So at the end of the day, I don’t think it matters who has the highest title, as long as everybody’s working together, they’re aligned, and they’re working toward the same goals. So again, I don’t disagree with the sentiment and the underlying foundation of the point that was made in this piece, but I think there are organizations where that is being done without having the communicator necessarily at the top of the food chain.

Neville Hobson: That’s the place where I think the communicator should be — which, of course, plays to the decades-old desire expressed by many in our profession that the communicator needs a seat at the top table.

I guess the concluding point I would say is: anyone listening to this discussion who occupies that joint function and would care to share his or her thinking about all of that — we’d love to hear a comment.

Shel Holtz: Yeah, a seat at the table, yeah.

We would always love to hear comments.

If you feel like AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, you’re not wrong. It seems like it was just last week we were talking about blockchain and the metaverse and a slew of other technologies. But while we’ve been fine-tuning prompts and governance, another technology has been quietly moving toward the comms agenda — and that is quantum computing.

The BBC recently framed it as potentially as big, if not bigger, than AI. It’s time to start paying attention to quantum computing and how it matters to communicators.

A quick primer: classical computers process bits, zeros and ones. Quantum computers use quantum bits, known as qubits, which can be zero and one at the same time. That’s called superposition.

If you read the book or watched the Apple TV series Dark Matter — I did, it was really good — you know about superposition, and it has been the foundation of a lot of other science fiction: this idea of being able to be in two places at the same time, quantum superposition.

Two, the zero and one in the same place at the same time can influence each other through something called entanglement — a phenomenon where two or more quantum bits, those qubits, become linked, sharing a single quantum state, so they cannot be described independently even when separated by vast distances.

In some problem classes — chemistry, simulation, optimization, factoring — this enables speed-ups that make the impossible suddenly possible. The machines we have today are still noisy, error-prone. But the security world is acting as if a capable quantum machine will arrive within the planning horizon, which is why standards bodies and platforms are shifting now.

You’ve already seen early signals in consumer tech: post-quantum cryptography, warnings from cybersecurity experts, and quantum-resistant messaging from big platforms. Quantum-resistant messaging uses new encryption algorithms to protect communication from both current and future quantum computers. It’s also called post-quantum cryptography and aims to safeguard data by using mathematical problems that are believed to be difficult for both classical and quantum computers to solve — unlike current algorithms, which can be broken by a powerful enough quantum computer.

In fact, I’m reading a really interesting book right now. It takes place about 150 years in the future, and everything that we today thought was encrypted and nobody would ever see — they’re seeing it all because they have access to quantum computing.

These aren’t just niche issues. They tie directly into how you tell stories, how you prepare for crises, and how you work.

So what does this mean for communicators beyond asking IT if we’re on top of it? I’m going to run through three buckets, and then we’ll tie in how quantum and AI overlap, because that’s where things get especially interesting.

First, storytelling and public understanding. Quantum is famously hard to explain, which makes it vulnerable to hype and confusion. Your job is to translate it without overselling it. “Quantum-safe” doesn’t mean “quantum-proof,” for example, and timelines remain uncertain — we don’t know when you’re going to be able to go to your local Best Buy and get a quantum computer.

You’ll want to build narratives now that help your audience support the idea that your organization is looking ahead, not getting caught flat-footed. Use everyday language. Say, “We’re updating encryption today to protect the data of tomorrow.” That works better than “We’re quantum resilient.” You’ll gain credibility when you help people understand what’s changing and why they should care.

Second, this is all about crisis preparedness and trust. If your organization holds long-lived sensitive data — health records, intellectual property, government contracts — then you need a communications plan for cryptographic agility. That means plain-language FAQs explaining why you are updating encryption, updates to stakeholders as you migrate to approved standards, and scenario planning for legacy data exposure.

Quantum computing introduces a new dimension of risk: the idea that what you publish or promise today could be decrypted or exposed years later. In a crisis, you’ll need to be ready to say, “We anticipated this risk, and here’s what we did.” That anticipatory positioning goes a long way toward preserving trust.

Third, it’s about how communicators can use quantum — and quantum plus artificial intelligence — in our work. Eventually, you’ll have new tools. For example, quantum computing may be able to provide far more advanced modeling of message flows, audience networks, and sentiment behavior, letting you identify optimal outreach paths or refine campaigns under dynamic conditions.

You could simulate scenarios in complex environments more quickly, refining your messages in a what-if matrix classical tools can’t easily handle. These scenarios might include things like stakeholder cascade effects, social media virality, and supply chain disruption.

And as quantum key distribution and quantum-resistant encryption mature, you’ll be in a position to tell audiences, “Our channels use the latest quantum-secure messaging,” which becomes a differentiator from your competitors.

Then there’s the overlap with AI. Quantum computing will amplify AI’s capabilities, helping it crunch deeper patterns faster and handle volumes of data plus complexity that classical systems struggle with. For communicators, that means the analytics layer you rely on — for sentiment, for influence mapping, for risk modeling — will evolve.

AI plus quantum means faster insights, more complex scenario modeling, and new ways to anticipate issues before they explode. So when you describe your comms strategy, you might say, “We use advanced modeling powered by AI today, and we’re tracking quantum-enabled tools so we’re positioned for the next wave.”

The fact is, quantum isn’t just a side story to AI — it’ll reshape AI. Research indicates that quantum computing and AI together massively increase computational speed and breadth of analysis. For example, quantum can remove some of the bottlenecks in data size, complexity, and simulation time that limit today’s AI systems.

For you as a communicator, that means three practical things.

First, what you pitch as “AI-enabled” today will evolve into “AI-plus-quantum-enabled,” and part of the story you tell stakeholders is, “We’re future-proofing so we don’t fall behind.”

Second, monitoring of reputational risk must extend to both AI misuse and quantum misuse — encryption break, advanced surveillance, things like that. The combination raises the bar for your “what could go wrong” list.

And third, your metrics and narrative signals will shift. When AI and quantum intersect, you’ll need to help people understand not just faster insights, but insights from a new class of computing. That means simplified metaphors and careful framing. The message no longer just flows faster — the infrastructure itself is changing. If AI rewrote the message, quantum will test the envelope it travels in.

You don’t need to wait until quantum has fully arrived. You need to start telling that story now. You need to show that your organization is looking ahead, educating stakeholders, and building trust today so that when the change arrives, you’re not scrambling.

Neville Hobson: Well, that’s heavy stuff, Shel.

It’s interesting how Zoe Kleinman, the BBC journalist who wrote this piece, started her article. She says, “You can either explain quantum accurately or in a way that people understand, but you can’t do both.” So I think this is very much in the “accurately” bucket, this discussion.

Shel Holtz: Isn’t it, though? I strive for accuracy.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, and she notes as well, it’s a fiendishly difficult concept to get your head around. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve tried to thoroughly understand this — and maybe I should get rid of the word “thoroughly” because I can’t thoroughly understand it. I need to understand the bits that matter.

So to me, on the one hand I’m thinking, “Fine, this has not arrived yet,” but your point about “get prepared” is a valid one. Although I wonder how many people are going to say, “Well, it hasn’t arrived yet, so what are we going to do? How am I going to do this?” That’s where communicators come in, by the way.

But I think she gives a great example that you really can grasp. Talking about how quantum computers could one day effortlessly churn through endless combinations of molecules to come up with new drugs and medications — a process that currently takes years and years using classical computers.

She says to give you an idea of the scale, in December 2024 Google unveiled a new quantum chip called Willow, which it claimed could take five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete — that’s 10 with 24 zeros after it.

I mean, just thinking about the number, you cannot imagine how long that would be. The sun would probably have died before it gets to it. This would do it in five minutes.

So it then talks about what it paves the way for — personalized medication, all that kind of stuff.

I don’t think we’re at the stage yet where you could equate this to, “Okay, in your average business, all the business processes they do will be materially impacted by this in a very powerful way.” We’re not there yet, because you can’t explain it like that, I don’t think — hence these very big-picture examples.

Everything I read about quantum talks about this: personalized medication, chemical processing, quantum sensors to measure things incredibly precisely. That’s all coming. It’s not here yet.

So it’s interesting. The examples they give are all wonderful, I have to say, but the mind boggles. My mind certainly does, when you look at so much information on this that you wonder: what on earth are you going to pay attention to in order to get a handle on how it’s going to affect my industry, my company, my job, how we live, my family — all these things? No one’s got that yet, and that’s probably what people want to know — but you can’t yet.

Shel Holtz: No, but it’s close enough that we need to start preparing for it and we need to start communicating about it, especially if you’re in an industry that is computing-intensive in its work. And I’m not talking about customer relationship databases and things like that; I mean in your R&D, for example. And certainly the cryptographic implications are severe on the risk side.

So being ready for that now, rather than scrambling to get ready once it’s actually here, is, I think, an imperative.

You do need to be a physicist or physics-adjacent to really understand this. But I’ll be honest: science has never been my thing. Science and math were my worst subjects in school. The humanities were where I rocked. And I struggle understanding the zeros and ones in fundamental computing — the opening of the gates and all that.

But you know what? I don’t need to know how my carburetor works in order to drive my car. The fact is that these tools are coming, and understanding how they work or not, people are going to be able to use them.

And as I say, it’s close enough. It’s probably within the next 10 years that companies are going to be able to buy quantum compute time, if not buy a quantum computer, that we really need to start thinking about it. We really need to start preparing for it, especially from a security standpoint.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I get that. I think, though, that people — communicators, this is our area of interest and focus — would need to know: how are we going to do all this when so much of it is theory?

They’re talking about — I’m just looking at the piece here that goes into detail about how to break current forms of public key encryption. Hot topic: security of information. It says here it’s awaiting a truly operational quantum computer. That’s years away. But as the article notes, quoting a cybersecurity expert, “The threat is so high that it’s assumed everyone needs to introduce quantum-resistant encryption right now.” That’s not the case. So there’s probably a lot of hype.

Although it mentions earlier — and I think you might have mentioned — that there’s even more hype about AI. So this was the king of hype before AI emerged.

The prediction I’m reading is that an operational quantum computer could be around the year 2030. So that’s five years away. Okay, in that case, now is the time to get prepared for this, then.

Shel Holtz: That’s pretty fast. And there are operational quantum computers in labs.

Absolutely — there are operational quantum computers in research labs right now. They’re not commercially viable yet, but as you say, the projections run anywhere from five to 15 years. That’s fast; that’s soon.

When we were talking a lot about the metaverse, we were saying the fully operational metaverse was 10 years away — you need to start thinking about that now. Same thing here.

Neville Hobson: Did you notice the concluding paragraph? This is actually where it kind of fits in with the current status of alarm and concern from a political point of view about what certain countries are up to — China, which it calls out as an example.

It says the GCHQ — that’s the UK’s intelligence cyber agency — says that it’s credible that almost all UK citizens will have had data compromised in state-sponsored cyber attacks carried out by China, with that data stockpiled for a time when it can be decrypted and studied, and that you need a quantum computer for that.

For instance, the economic headline in the UK right now — the cause of the kind of unexpected dip in GDP — is caused specifically by the cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover, the automaker. That cost nearly two billion in losses because of the cyberattack that compromised them and their supply chain.

So this brings it home to you: what are they doing

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