up:: Start Here
Can I just watch how this works?
Yes. This page is the whole story as 13 short animations, in the order that makes them build on each other. No sound, no jargon, and nothing assumed. Each one is a few seconds long and each hands the next its vocabulary, so reading top to bottom takes a few minutes and covers the same ground as the written pages.
The short version:
- The first 3 animations cover what encryption already does every day, including the part that looks impossible: two strangers agreeing on a secret while everyone watches.
- The next 3 cover what a quantum computer actually does, which is not trying every answer at once, and that correction matters more than any other on this page.
- The rest cover what breaks, what only bends, and what is being recorded now to be read later.
- Every animation here has a written page behind it, linked underneath, with the sources.
What is encryption doing all day?
A message anyone can read, a key that scrambles it into noise, and the same key bringing it back. Encryption is a reversible operation controlled by a key, rather than a way of hiding something. Everything below depends on that one idea.
Written version: What is encryption, and why does everything depend on it?
How do two strangers agree on a secret in public?
Two people who have never met, in a public square, with everyone watching, end up holding the same secret color. They each keep one color private, mix it into a shared one, swap the mixtures openly, and stir their private color in again. Both land on the identical result. The watcher holds both mixtures and cannot unmix paint.
This is the part of encryption that breaks under a quantum computer. Written version: What is encryption, and why does everything depend on it?
Why is undoing the math so much harder than doing it?
61 × 53 resolves to 3233 instantly. Going backwards from 3233 to its two factors means searching, and adding digits turns slow into impossible. That gap between the easy direction and the hard one is the entire security of the system.
Written version: What is encryption, and why does everything depend on it?
What does a quantum computer actually do?
Not what almost every article says. A quantum computer does not try every answer at the same time. It works in waves, the wrong answers cancel each other out, and the right one is left standing. This animation exists to replace the wrong picture, which is the single most-repeated error in the subject.
Written version: What’s a quantum computer?
How does that undo the hard direction?
The stalled search from the third animation comes back. Waves wash across the number, a repeating pattern lights up in its digits, and the pattern gives up the factors. The same motion then splits a public key into a private one.
Written version: What’s a quantum computer?
Does that break all encryption?
No, and this is the correction worth carrying. The other kind of encryption hides no pattern to find, so the best quantum attack against it just searches faster. It halves the strength: 256 becomes 128, which is still out of reach. Headlines that say “quantum breaks encryption” are describing one half of the field.
Written version: What gets reported wrong?
Why would anyone record traffic they cannot read?
Because the machine that reads it does not have to exist yet. Traffic recorded today sits in storage until something can open it, which is why data with a long confidentiality life is already exposed rather than exposed later.
Written version: Is someone stealing my data right now?
What happens to the part that proves who someone is?
The second job encryption does, proving identity, fails differently from the first. A forged padlock is not a stolen secret; it is a stranger able to prove they are your bank.
Written version: What is technically happening to national systems?
Which clock actually matters?
Two clocks run at once: how long your data has to stay secret, and how long the migration takes. When those two added together run past the arrival of the machine, the work needed to start earlier than it did.
Written version: What is technically happening to our systems?
What is the replacement?
New algorithms, already finalized and already shipping, built on math that waves do not unwind. The replacement is not theoretical and it is not waiting on anything.
Written version: Did my phone already fix this?
Why is a qubit count a bad way to judge a machine?
Because the number in the headline and the number that matters are not the same number. Counting qubits to judge a quantum computer is like counting pages to judge a book.
Written version: What gets reported wrong?
What does the arithmetic look like?
The whole risk calculation, done in the open, with the numbers a board actually asks for.
Written version: How do I explain this to my board?
Can I see the whole thing at once?
This one gathers all of it into a single pass: what is protected, what breaks, what holds, what is already recorded, and what replaces it.
Written version: Start here
Questions people ask
Do I need sound? No. Every animation is silent and captioned on screen.
Do I need to watch them in order? The first 6 build on each other, so top to bottom is worth it the first time. After that they stand alone.
Can I reuse these? The charts are free to republish with attribution, and they are gathered at Charts you can reuse. For the animations, get in touch first.
Where are the sources? Every figure that appears in an animation is sourced on the written page underneath it, and the complete list is at Every figure and where it comes from.
Where to go next
- Back to the Plain English section.
- If you only read one thing is the written equivalent of this page.
- The charts are the printable version, free to republish.
Go deeper into the technical detail
The technical layer has its own illustrated walkthrough of ML-KEM’s internals at FIPS 203 Illustrated.
These open the Post-Quantum Field Guide, a separate site written for security professionals.
Last verified 2026-08-18 · Maintained by Addie LaMarr, LaMarr Labs.