Its interesting to imagine that somebody [1] is already now capturing encrypted internet traffic and storing it all long-term, to then hypothetically in 40-50 years or something decrypt it and draw value from that information. I suppose to blackmail future politicians, learn military secrets, whatever.
> Its interesting to imagine that somebody [1] is already now capturing encrypted internet traffic and storing it all long-term, to then hypothetically in 40-50 years or something decrypt it and draw value from that information. I suppose to blackmail future politicians, learn military secrets, whatever.
You don't have to imagine, there's literally a NSA datacenter in Utah for doing just that.
As someone not in the field it's hard to distinguish the "quantum startup raised x billions, claims quantum computing x years away" from "fusion startup raised x billions, claims fusion power x years away" headlines every few months for the past 10+ years.
Thanks for the link. I skimmed through the report that the article is based on. It tracks rising activity in quantum computing R&D in several areas. But at least in the executive summary, I didn't see anything about commercial applications one way or the other. It doesn't seem to make any predictions?
So, it's odd that the article summarized it that way.
> Overall, quantum processing units (QPUs) are making impressive progress in performance, but they remain far from meeting the requirements for running large-scale commercial applications such as chemical simulations or cryptanalysis.
That's what I don't get - these folks must be more bullish than me on practical quantum computing. If you assume 20-30 years; there's no important military secrets left (what was China building in the late 90s?!) and how many politicians are in politics for that long?
[1] NSA