You will not be surprised to learn that the NSA is spending nearly $80 million trying to build "a cryptologically useful quantum computer." The Washington Post just published details of the program, codenamed "Penetrating Hard Targets," based on documents supplied by Edward Snowden. 
 
 Yes, it's terrifying. But it's hardly surprising. A quantum computer is one of the holy grail of technological innovation right now, and scientists have been struggling to build one. Whereas regular computers work with digital systems to process information, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, as opposed to bits (ones and zeroes). Qubits can represent a one, a zero or anything in between, which gives the computer exponentially more power. That's obviously great when it comes to solving very difficult problems like cracking sophisticated encryption. 
 
 The problem is even the world's best scientists haven't figured out how to do this. It makes you wonder how or why the NSA thought that they could build their own quantum computer in secret, without the help of the packs of geniuses already trying to build one. Nevertheless, The Washington Post reports that some of the world's best physicists feel like the NSA has the best chance of succeeding. Because hey, if these guys can plant sypware on 50,000 networks around the world, steal the telephone data of countless people, tap into the databases of the biggest internet companies and even prevent encryption from improving, why shouldn't they be able to build this crazy futuristic computer? [WaPo] 

 In room-size metal boxes ­secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. 
 
 According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md. 
 
 [Read an annotated description of the Penetrating Hard Targets project] 
 
 The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields such as medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets. 
 
 Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency’s research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community. 
 
 “It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it,” said Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 
 The NSA appears to regard itself as running neck and neck with quantum computing labs sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with steady progress but little prospect of an immediate breakthrough. 
 
 “The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document states. 
 
 Seth Lloyd, an MIT professor of quantum mechanical engineering, said the NSA’s focus is not misplaced. “The E.U. and Switzerland have made significant advances over the last decade and have caught up to the U.S. in quantum computing technology,” he said. 
 
 The NSA declined to comment for this article. 
 
 The documents, however, indicate that the agency carries out some of its research in large, shielded rooms known as Faraday cages, which are designed to prevent electromagnetic energy from coming in or out. Those, according to one brief description, are required “to keep delicate quantum computing experiments running.” 
 
 [Read a document describing classification levels related to quantum computing efforts] 
 
 The basic principle underlying quantum computing is known as “quantum superposition,” the idea that an object simultaneously exists in all states. A classical computer uses binary bits, which are either zeroes or ones. A quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, which are simultaneously zero and one. 
 
 This seeming impossibility is part of the mystery that lies at the heart of quantum theory, which even theoretical physicists say no one completely understands. 
 
 “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics,” said the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who is widely regarded as the pioneer in quantum computing. 
 
 Here’s how it works, in theory: While a classical computer, however fast, must do one calculation at a time, a quantum computer can sometimes avoid having to make calculations that are unnecessary to solving a problem. That allows it to home in on the correct answer much more quickly and efficiently. 
 
 Quantum computing is difficult to attain because of the fragile nature of such computers. In theory, the building blocks of such a computer might include individual atoms, photons or electrons. To maintain the quantum nature of the computer, these particles would need to be carefully isolated from their external environments. 
 
 “Quantum computers are extremely delicate, so if you don’t protect them from their environment, then the computation will be useless,” said Daniel Lidar, a professor of electrical engineering and the director of the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California. 
 
 A working quantum computer would open the door to easily breaking the strongest encryption tools in use today, including a standard known as RSA, named for the initials of its creators. RSA scrambles communications, making them unreadable to anyone but the intended recipient, without requiring the use of a shared password. It is commonly used in Web browsers to secure financial transactions and in encrypted ­e-mails. RSA is used because of the difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers. Breaking the encryption involves finding those two numbers. This cannot be done in a reasonable amount of time on a classical computer. 
 
 In 2009, computer scientists using classical methods were able to discover the primes within a 768-bit number, but it took almost two years and hundreds of computers to factor it. The scientists estimated that it would take 1,000 times longer to break a 1,024-bit encryption key, which is commonly used for online transactions. 
 
 A large-scale quantum computer, however, could theoretically break a 1,024-bit encryption much faster. Some leading Internet companies are moving to 2,048-bit keys, but even those are thought to be vulnerable to rapid decryption with a quantum computer. 
 
 Quantum computers have many applications for today’s scientific community, including the creation of artificial intelligence. But the NSA fears the implications for national security. 
 
 “The application of quantum technologies to encryption algorithms threatens to dramatically impact the US government’s ability to both protect its communications and eavesdrop on the communications of foreign governments,” according to an internal document provided by Snowden. 
 
 Experts are not sure how soon a quantum computer would be feasible. A decade ago, some experts said that developing a large quantum computer was likely 10 to 100 years in the future. Five years ago, Lloyd said the goal was at least 10 years away. 
 
 Last year, Jeff Forshaw, a professor at the University of Manchester, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper, “It is probably too soon to speculate on when the first full-scale quantum computer will be built but recent progress indicates that there is every reason to be optimistic.” 
 
 “I don’t think we’re likely to have the type of quantum computer the NSA wants within at least five years, in the absence of a significant breakthrough maybe much longer,” Lloyd told The Washington Post in a recent interview. 
 
 Some companies, however, claim to already be producing small quantum computers. A Canadian firm, D-Wave Systems , says it has been making quantum computers since 2009. In 2012, it sold a $10 million version to Google, NASA and the Universities Space Research Association, according to news reports. 
 
 That quantum computer, however, would never be useful for breaking public key encryption like RSA. 
 
 “Even if everything they’re claiming is correct, that computer, by its design, cannot run Shor’s algorithm,” said Matthew Green, a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, referring to the algorithm that could be used to break encryption like RSA. 
 
 Experts think that one of the largest hurdles to breaking encryption with a quantum computer is building a computer with enough qubits, which is difficult given the very fragile state of quantum computers. By the end of September, the NSA expected to be able to have some building blocks, which it described in a document as “dynamical decoupling and complete quantum ­control on two semiconductor qubits.” 
 
 “That’s a great step, but it’s a pretty small step on the road to building a large-scale quantum computer,” Lloyd said. 
 
 A quantum computer capable of breaking cryptography would need hundreds or thousands more qubits than that. 
 
 The budget for the National Intelligence Program, commonly referred to as the “black budget,” details the “Penetrating Hard Targets” project and noted that this step “will enable initial scaling towards large systems in related and follow-on efforts.” 
 
 Another project, called “Owning the Net,” is using quantum research to support the creation of quantum-based attacks on encryptions like RSA, documents show. 
 
 “The irony of quantum computing is that if you can imagine someone building a quantum computer that can break encryption a few decades into the future, then you need to be worried right now,” Lidar said.
– The Washington Post is out with a doozy of a story for its latest Edward Snowden scoop. It says the NSA is trying to build a quantum computer that "could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world." The $80 million research program has a code name, of course: Penetrating Hard Targets. But how close the NSA actually is to building the thing is very much unclear; it would be a "revolutionary" leap forward in technology, and the story quotes experts speculating that such a breakthrough could be decades away. The Post's explainer: "The basic principle underlying quantum computing is known as 'quantum superposition,' the idea that an object simultaneously exists in all states. A classical computer uses binary bits, which are either zeroes or ones. A quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, which are simultaneously zero and one." A quantum computer, then, is a "holy grail" of tech innovation, a machine that would have "exponentially more power" to crack encryptions than ordinary computers, writes Adam Clarke Estes at Gizmodo. The thought of the NSA working on one for code-breaking purposes is "terrifying," he adds. "But it's hardly surprising." Such a machine would theoretically threaten "all security on the web," adds Gregory Ferenstein at TechCrunch. But for the time being, this is "pretty theoretical." Click to read the full story in the Post. Or to read about how the New York Times and the Guardian want the US to pardon Snowden or give him amnesty.