Ask HN: What happens if a fast integer factorization method is discovered?

I am not a mathematician, but this seems like something that might have crossed the minds of math savvy people. Yes, this seems extremely unlikely, but as a thought experiment, what would come next?

Given the impact and implications this would have:

- How would anyone even go about publishing anything like this without literally breaking the world?

- Would this actually break the world?

- What if they were malicious? Could something like this sneak under the radar and escape to the dark web to be exploited by criminals?

- What if they were not malicious, but had non-scientific (cough) monetary, goals in mind, would there even be a way to somehow milk this?

- What if they were a scientist, purest of heart, how would they go about this?

- Wouldn't this have to be done anonymously for personal security reasons?

Watching the humanity over the past few years has been.. illuminating. I am not sure we are even remotely close to being set up to handle something like this.

What do you think?