rabinabo

I will not make any comment on the leaks, other than to say what was leaked was specifically chosen by the leakers. For what purpose, I cannot say, but it was definitely not to improve NSA's public relations.

More relevant to me are what the leaks have failed to reveal. The NSA has a very broad mission, and there is a lot of great work being done there that is not represented in the leaks. I worked in Information Assurance for most of my NSA career, and at the end of the day I don't feel bad in any way about my work at the agency. I can't really say anything more than that.

I think you probably have enough knowledge already to get started. The nice thing about quantum computing is that the physics has been abstracted in such a way that you only need to understand a few basic fundamental quantum properties that are being applied. In computer science, it's like saying that you don't need to understand the physics of semiconductors to write code. I read some of the classic Chuang-Nielsen text back in grad school.

Frankly, I don't know all that much specifically about the quantum annealing approach, but it is definitely far removed from the models that most quantum computing algorithms are based on, that I'm more familiar with. This paper, for example, shows that you could use quantum annealing to factor. One of the key pieces of Shor's algorithm is that it can be efficiently implemented using the quantum fourier transform, and my guess is that the annealing approach is not nearly as efficient, by the time you translate between models.

Thanks, David! It's an incredible challenge to design a post-quantum scheme imo. It's such a delicate balance between complexity, key sizes, and immunity from attack by both classical and (not yet existent) quantum computers!

It was really funny the day I started at my company, when I was given a few papers to read, and lo and behold, one of the main ones was authored by my college roommate!

That's not really my field, and even then, it's difficult to guess. I think the rate of progress is accelerating, with Google looking to move from 6 qubits to 49 in the next year. At that point, it can start to answer questions that classical computers aren't capable of answering (i.e. quantum supremacy). I believe that is also close to where you can start solving some interesting problems in quantum simulation. If it can be used to improve the efficiency of the Haber process to make fertilizer even a little, for example, it would have global-scale impact, as it takes up 1-2% of yearly global energy usage.

This is absolutely true. The publication of classified information does not change the classification, so looking at these documents on my home computer would technically be a security violation. Believe me, NSA employees are aware of the leaks. Many would also love to respond to these allegations, but they are heavily restricted from doing so. Any comment about the agency that I'd want to make would have to be approved by the agency before publication, part of my lifetime obligation after leaving the agency.