Post-Quantum Migration Is Not a Library Upgrade, It Is a Distributed Systems Problem
The easiest way to underestimate post-quantum migration is to draw it as a one-line change:
RSA / ECDH / ECDSA -> ML-KEM / ML-DSA / SLH-DSA
That picture is cryptographically tidy and operationally wrong.
Take one ordinary API request. It may terminate TLS at a managed load balancer, pass through an API gateway, traverse an Envoy-based service mesh, authenticate with an OIDC workload identity, retrieve secrets from a vault, and persist data behind a cloud KMS. The path may also depend on certificate authorities, trust bundles, language runtimes, container images, and signed deployment artifacts.
Every hop can have a different algorithm, provider, owner, release cycle, and rollback mechanism.
So changing one TLS library while leaving gateway certificates, JWT signing, mesh mTLS, KMS key wrapping, or vendor-managed identity flows untouched does not materially reduce the system's exposure. It may only create a new and harder problem: a mixed cryptographic estate that...
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