Quantum computing is undergoing active research and productization (there's a company in Vancouver, BC - D-Wave - working on making a quantum computer product). Historically, quantum computers are considered to be have crypto-breaking applications.
> If it is feasible to build a quantum-theoretic machine to break RSA, it is vitally important that the NSA attempt to do so; such work is at the very core of their mission.
This is a key thing to remember - expect groups tasked with breaking crypto to be working on breaking crypto. In other news - Pope is Roman Catholic, water is wet. :-)
D-Wave is what makes the $80MM number look so small: nothing D-Wave has done has come close to threatening cryptography of any sort, and D-Wave has taken almost $80MM themselves.
D-wave's system is fundamentally not amenable to cryptography. As they describe it it's a quantum annealing system; good for finding optimal parameters to some loss function, but not for instance Shor's algorithm.
It would generally seem they've silenced all but a few of their most vehement critics with the latest round of publications (which seem to suggest they are doing better than some of the best CSAT solvers on uninteresting problems). There is some suggestion the next round of hardware will have enough q-bits to do something "really interesting", but I'm still quite skeptical that the device, even if a truly functioning quantum adiabatic machine, shows any sort of true entanglement in a way that would satisfy the non-adiabatic QM aficinados.
> If it is feasible to build a quantum-theoretic machine to break RSA, it is vitally important that the NSA attempt to do so; such work is at the very core of their mission.
This is a key thing to remember - expect groups tasked with breaking crypto to be working on breaking crypto. In other news - Pope is Roman Catholic, water is wet. :-)