Snowden provided information about a $ 79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets”, ongoing at the NSA for many specified goals, including this one. Almost ironically however, it seems that Snowden demystified rumors sustaining that the NSA’s effort are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. According appearances, NSA is interested to the scientific programs sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government. “The EU and Switzerland made significant advances over the last decade and have caught up to the US in quantum computing technology” said recently Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT.
The basic principle of the quantum technology is that an object simultaneously exists in all states. So, the “quantum bits” used in theory by a quantum computer are simultaneously zero and one.
The estimated time to release a such machine is in 10 to 100 years and nobody can predict when the science will accomplish it.
