Scott Aaronson
Scott Aaronson is a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the leading public intellectuals in quantum-computing. He is known for research on quantum computational complexity and for his blog Shtetl-Optimized, which provides rigorous assessments of quantum computing claims.
In cottier-2026-quantum-computing-breakthroughs, he provided expert commentary on three major 2024–2026 breakthroughs:
- Google Willow’s fault-tolerant threshold crossing
- Quantinuum’s quantum advantage Fermi-Hubbard simulation
- The “bombshell” Caltech/Oratomic qubit reduction paper, and its combined implications for bitcoin security
Key quote: “When you put together the Google thing with the Caltech thing, Bitcoin could be vulnerable to a quantum computer with only about 25,000 or 30,000 qubits. A year ago, the best estimate would have been in the millions.”