From the article, and the premise that massive computing power is being created and required anyway, it sounds much more like a weakness at AES 128-bit that is only practical for a government agency.
It also sounds that they discovered it before 2008, due to the jump in resource timing, i.e. less than 10 years after AES.
Well, at least there's no doubt that they have unimaginably large computing power... You can also hear many scientists from national labs hinting to that effect in talks that are publicly available.
It also sounds that they discovered it before 2008, due to the jump in resource timing, i.e. less than 10 years after AES.