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NSA Building Encryption Cracking Quantum Computer

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Why not? The NSA has just about every other base covered already.

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.
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Aren't these top-secret projects supposed to have cool codenames? What's with the porno-ish name?
 
It's a pitty we can't funnel these efforts into something beneficial to the human race.

I guess we are what we are.
 
Eh, building a quantum computer that does something useful benefits humanity. Sort of. It would be better if it wasn't being built to hack our shit.

Computing really got its start in WW2, when we really desperately needed to kill a lot of people.
 
They already have a D-Wave prediction engine. I wonder if D-Wave is building this new machine also? So far, the worlds only true quantum computer contains one Q-bit and delivered world changing information. Such as 3x5=15 51% of the time.:p So good luck with that. Some more taxpayer money down the hole.
 
Dayaks said:
It's a pitty we can't funnel these efforts into something beneficial to the human race.

I guess we are what we are.
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Aluisious said:
Eh, building a quantum computer that does something useful benefits humanity. Sort of. It would be better if it wasn't being built to hack our shit.

Computing really got its start in WW2, when we really desperately needed to kill a lot of people.
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Both good points. We should, however, find better excuses to further research than to kill and to spy.
 
So how long until there's a law passed allowing the NSA to botnet every computer in the country to run this stuff in a forced version of distributed computing?
 
Pretty much every Military in the world encrypts their communications and data.
The NSA's job is both decrypting those targets and being better then the other guys at encrypting and protecting our own.

This article is like saying that the Navy just developed a new Carrier launched Aircraft that is faster and more lethal then anything any other country will likely have for the next 20 years. The article that says the US Navy is using this new fighter to catch superbike speeders is a different article entirely.

The NSA is supposed to do this stuff, they are supposed to have these capabilities, it's their job, their reason for existence. No they are not supposed to use this stuff against us in violation of our rights and that's where the disconnect is. Pretty much our only source of information is the media and the media is own and has an agenda. Almost every group going has some agenda, some angel they are working.

The Anti-obama crowd is using this to lay it in his lap so their own guys might win the next election instead of Obama's successor.

The Privacy Rights groups are at least open about their agenda and I am glad they are around, but they also always err on the side of caution over need and will be overly restrictive in their defense of privacy. No problem, someone needs to be pulling that end of the rope.

There are other groups who will try and twist the info to their own agenda as well and then there is us little people, stuck at the bottom just trying to figure out what's real and what isn't knowing all along that pretty much all of these groups are out to fuck us one way or the other.

I'm hungry, it's lunch time.
 
Run what stuff? You can't do quantum computing on a PC.
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Really? You can't do it with 200 Million Computers using a distributed computing model so that the quantum computing component is performed within the distributed model?

It's just a question and I do not know the answer for sure.
 
lcpiper said:
Pretty much every Military in the world encrypts their communications and data.
The NSA's job is both decrypting those targets and being better then the other guys at encrypting and protecting our own.

This article is like saying that the Navy just developed a new Carrier launched Aircraft that is faster and more lethal then anything any other country will likely have for the next 20 years. The article that says the US Navy is using this new fighter to catch superbike speeders is a different article entirely.

The NSA is supposed to do this stuff, they are supposed to have these capabilities, it's their job, their reason for existence. No they are not supposed to use this stuff against us in violation of our rights and that's where the disconnect is. Pretty much our only source of information is the media and the media is own and has an agenda. Almost every group going has some agenda, some angel they are working.

The Anti-obama crowd is using this to lay it in his lap so their own guys might win the next election instead of Obama's successor.

The Privacy Rights groups are at least open about their agenda and I am glad they are around, but they also always err on the side of caution over need and will be overly restrictive in their defense of privacy. No problem, someone needs to be pulling that end of the rope.

There are other groups who will try and twist the info to their own agenda as well and then there is us little people, stuck at the bottom just trying to figure out what's real and what isn't knowing all along that pretty much all of these groups are out to fuck us one way or the other.

I'm hungry, it's lunch time.
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Some good points but the American people in general are definitely not erring on the side of caution. They are letting entertainment and the media at large neuter their voice and resolve.
 
Good news is that this tech will likely trickle down in years to come.
 
Unless they have access to new engineering tech that the public doesn't know about it will be a fruitless venture of wasted money. Even the most Quantum based computational machine that mimics the Quantum behavior isn't really a full on Quantum Computer (Google and NASA own one jointly and its being debated if its actually real or not in terms of it using linear processing). We can only manipulate 2 qbits at a time right now and to achieve a real breakthrough we would need around 10 qbits which at the moment requires a better understanding of how to coax the proper state without direct measurements which would eliminate the super position state and render it useless for computational purposes.

It isn't really a matter of money , its a matter limitations of our understanding right at this time. However its only a matter of time. The NSA has a bottomless bucket of money that many schools/research groups simply do not plus they have the strength of the Government and the ability to classify its results allowing them a stranglehold over any kind of benefits for us anytime soon.
 
Yes, because just like DARPA, the NSA has no reason to propagate it's creations for the betterment of the world.
 
Good thing the price of ammo is starting to come down. Time to stock up again. Oh yeah and FBHO :p
 
Mmm, if I were to take another user's reply from another thread here on [H], this is mostly about besting your enemy. If going by that user's explanation, it's the only reason this country spends so much money on defense.

Your enemy put up strong firewall and encryption? Hit back with a strong decryption software and hardware to get through.

The thing though: If we're going after terrorists, they aren't hiding behind million dollar encrypted servers with redundant hardware and protection against DDoS attacks.

Aren't most if not all terrorist communications done through traditional phones, disposable cell phones, internet forums, IRCs, and usenet (likely?), letters, recordable media sent through the mail, and whatnot?

Probably the only "major" powers we should keep an eye on is China. Maybe North Korea. Russia... eh... maybe.

The average US citizen they may suspect at being a terrorist isn't hiding behind a military firewall at home while surfing Facebook or [H]ardForum, or conducting top secret plans to overthrow the US. And, many if not all consumer firewall schemes and wireless security can be easily broken into given you have a sizable amount of computer power behind you.
 
The thing though: If we're going after terrorists, they aren't hiding behind million dollar encrypted servers with redundant hardware and protection against DDoS attacks.
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But the Banks they use and Corporations and Governments that fund terrorist organizations frequently do. Just because all you see in the news is funny dressed dudes with AKs doesn't mean that's all there is to the problem.

If "war is diplomacy by other means", then Terrorism has grown to become a methodology for conducting war by other means.
 
lcpiper said:
But the Banks they use and Corporations and Governments that fund terrorist organizations frequently do. Just because all you see in the news is funny dressed dudes with AKs doesn't mean that's all there is to the problem.

If "war is diplomacy by other means", then Terrorism has grown to become a methodology for conducting war by other means.
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Forgot about the banks that hide their money in. You have a good point.
 
You know if they cut the US military (just military) budget by 85% we will still be the most budgeted military force in the world...
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You right, we should do it like China, manpower instead of money. Let's reinstate the draft right away, fix all our fat body problems while we are at it. (Actually China doesn't use conscription).

military service
385,821,101 males, age 16–49 (2010 est),
363,789,674 females, age 16–49 (2010 est)

Fit for military service
318,265,016 males, age 16–49 (2010 est),
300,323,611 females, age 16–49 (2010 est)

Reaching military age annually
10,406,544 males (2010 est),
9,131,990 females (2010 est)

Active personnel
2,285,000 active (ranked 1st)
Reserve personnel
800,000 reserve
1,500,000 paramilitary

Budget
$119 billion USD(2013) (ranked 2nd)
Percent of GDP 1.46% (2012 est.)
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The DoD budget for the same year. 527.5 Billion. Looks like a little more then 20% of the US Budget. Of course the DoD's budget also covers all that Retirement Pay, and of course those Military Salaries are much larger so those soldiers can buy regular homes, cars, TV's and laptops from Best Buy like everyone else. Everyone forgets how much of that extravagant pay is fed right back into our economy. Just saying, it's not nearly the picture you paint from whatever place you got that useless figure.
 
lcpiper said:
Why would you think this? Do you in some way imagine that Europe will never go to war again. please sir, allow me to dispel this illusion for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

War and Peace, Love and Hate, the world has always been binary.
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I haven't forgotten conflicts in Europe.

Any conflict in Europe, especially after the most recent terrorist attacks in Russia before the Sochi games, are likely to be between individual countries or ethnic groups (again). Someone somewhere in Europe, probably Eastern Europe, is going to be pissed off again at what someone did to them-- past or present. Russia, to me, would be right behind China in starting something.

China is like a sleeping giant. Russia is the hibernating bear.

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."
Abraham Lincoln
 
The NSA isn't building a quantum computer for this purpose they are doing research about creating a quantum computer for this purpose.

The government funds a tremendous amount of research, much of which never produces anything useful other than to discover what doesn't work.

That doesn't mean the research isn't worth doing. It is our willingness to invest heavily in research even when that research isn't producing immediate results that has kept the USA in a position where our military is technically superior in many ways.

It's not cheap, and it means that there is always lots of fodder for politicians to point at and say such spending is wasteful. However as a whole it is worthwhile and beneficial.
 
Octoberasian, the point I was trying to make was that given the history of man it's a pretty safe bet that we will never ever experience true lasting peace unless it comes in some form of single unified world government. I am also not so sure that one world government to rule them all is such a bright idea either. I mean, we better hope they get it right the first time or we are all fucked.
 
flatrock said:
The NSA isn't building a quantum computer for this purpose they are doing research about creating a quantum computer for this purpose.

The government funds a tremendous amount of research, much of which never produces anything useful other than to discover what doesn't work.

That doesn't mean the research isn't worth doing. It is our willingness to invest heavily in research even when that research isn't producing immediate results that has kept the USA in a position where our military is technically superior in many ways.

It's not cheap, and it means that there is always lots of fodder for politicians to point at and say such spending is wasteful. However as a whole it is worthwhile and beneficial.
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While if this were the case, I see no problem with that...

However, the "domestic" issues the current administration and the NSA that WE KNOW ABOUT are quite worrisome at the least. Please understand that in government speak "research" is very often a front for "deployment". Research sounds so much more neutral....

I'm willing to bet that this is just the intro. Once the hardware / software is in place with some degree of success, it will go blacker than black and funds will come from programs like "cattle research" or "flow of water down a river in summer research". The NSA does not deploy programs with such potential TO THE PUBLIC unless there is already proven architecture, and getting the proper deployment funds will expose them to a degree of public exposure until results justify this program (like so many others) disappearing into a black hole.

We have no true idea of where this money is going, to what equipment, much less under what protocol, and even less with the proper vetting and oversight. Thinking otherwise is taking the words "shortsighted" and "naive" to a level that is almost unquantifiable.

For "the most transparent administration", things seem to be getting murkier and murkier...
 
thekamikazepr said:
About that...
You know if they cut the US military (just military) budget by 85% we will still be the most budgeted military force in the world... :eek:
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And what will be the cost when we can't maintain air superiority on a battlefield? Or we can't weaken and diffuse things that could become major threats using air power? Air power doesn't allow you to conquer, but it goes a long way towards keeping you from being conquered or from your opponents building up a large threat. It doesn't address terrorism, especially terrorism where nukes might be involved, but it goes a very long way towards keeping nations from attacking us or our allies.

Are people naive enough to believe that without such a deterrent we would all just get along?

One of the big reasons the USA's budget is so much larger than other nations, is because those other nations rely on the US military to prevent major conflicts. They relay on us, and despise the fact that they rely on us while being unwilling to invest huge portions of their GNP into providing for their own defense.

And we dance around the issue and act like everyone contributes equally, but we foot the bill because we don't trust anyone else to protect us and we of course like being in a position of power. And other nations push for more power for the UN where every nation gets one vote but dues are determined as a portion of GNP.

It's a situation that no one is really all that happy with, but it has been keeping things relatively peaceful so it is good enough.
 
lcpiper said:
Octoberasian, the point I was trying to make was that given the history of man it's a pretty safe bet that we will never ever experience true lasting peace unless it comes in some form of single unified world government. I am also not so sure that one world government to rule them all is such a bright idea either. I mean, we better hope they get it right the first time or we are all fucked.
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Differences makes life interesting. Everyone being the same make things predicable.
Basically, everything you do would be under singular control. Only the weak would think that's the way to do things.
 
OK, way too far out there Hypertension, I'm sorry guy, but you were a little on track and then whoo hoo you are out there.

First, if you had a Quantum Computer, what would you use it for? The whole purpose is so that it might be able to do what current computers can't, things like prediction and probability analysis, and of course the possibility it could help with encryption and decryption. All of these things fall right in line with the NSA's mission. Our Military uses phones and radios that use encryption, we capture foreign communications that are encrypted, etc, etc.

What I am getting at is that they don't have to go off the deep end to hide something like this when it is in their essential mission to be doing it in the first place. The only parts they have to hide exactly what they can do, and who they are doing it to, and that is so people don't know what they can and can't do, and that they themselves are being watched. As for oversight and all, it's just a new toy in the same toy box, it's not really a whole new game.

You get where I am coming from?
 
I worked in the defense industry as a contractor for about 15 years. I won't claim to know much about how the NSA works. I never worked for them or with them. I did work on some research projects for the Air Force. I can say with a high level of confidence that research generally just means research.

I believe these are top secret NSA documents, and in general contractors seeking a government contract try to put what they are doing in as favorable light as possible. Everything that gets submitted is in part a marketing document regardless of if that is intentional or not. Contracts are always coming up for being rebid. There is always follow on work or related work that needs to be bid on if you want to continue to be employed.

In my experience reading between the lines in anything produced by a contractor and interpreting that there are more capabilities than are explicitly stated is foolish, especially if you are bidding on the follow on work and have to use what they have done as a starting point.

Do I know that the NSA never uses research to mean deployment in such documents? No I don't, but I think it is extremely unlikely.

I'm not saying you should blindly trust the government, or government contractors, or anyone else for that matter. Nor should you blindly assume that everything has secret meanings and that the government always has nefarious intentions.

The people at the NSA are generally law abiding Americans who are trying to serve their nation. That doesn't mean that mistakes won't be made, or that there will be the occasional person who is not law abiding, or that a culture can't develop where some abuses are thought to be ok. Such things happen and will happen again if we don't maintain pressure on our government to provide appropriate oversight.

I'm glad to be out of the government contracting business with it's perpetual funding uncertainty, but my favorite job so far was doing research for the military. It's a great feeling to come up with some idea that is promising but not immediately practical and being told to run with it and write up your findings both successes and failures as well as suggestions for future research. Maybe my opinion is biased by my own experiences, or maybe I'm just better informed than most.
 
Flatrock I know what you mean. Back in the earlier war years around 2004 I was working in support of a system used by the Military intelligence guys and it was part of my job to look at the suggestions for improvements and other software changes to determine if our software support guys would need extra training to go with the changes. I spotted a suggestion from a unit in Germany that struck me as odd, one of those things that get in your head and you can't put your finger on why it's bothering you but you can't let it go, you know something is wrong. After talking about it out loud with some workmates I finally got it. Under certain circumstances the change could have led to a friendly fire incident and gotten some of our guys killed. I got the change cancelled and although I never heard anything more about it I always felt good about how that turned out. The change had already gotten through the approval process so I figure they were quiet about it because they were embarrassed at having missed what could have been a disaster. Anywayz.
 
lcpiper said:
Really? You can't do it with 200 Million Computers using a distributed computing model so that the quantum computing component is performed within the distributed model?

It's just a question and I do not know the answer for sure.
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The question does not make sense as you state it. A Quantum Algorithm is very different from a traditional computer algorithm so comparing what one does vs what the other does....well, doesn't make much sense.

In terms of theory of computation all computers with sufficient memory and time are all equally powerful. In terms of algorithm analysis, (le big O stuff) they are worlds apart and comparing them makes no sense. 200 million digital computers cannot compare to what a quantum computer with Qbits can do. RSA can be broken in a single step with a quantum computer. Source Quantum Computer Science an introduction by Mermin basically all of chapter 3. 200 million computers would still be useless for a sufficiently large bit RSA encryption.

I personally do NOT trust a government that seems to have no accountability (save for contractors willing to destroy their lives) with the means to examine every bit of information electronically communicated. You speak of the dangers of governments but then act like the US government is somehow or from some reason trust worthy while European nations cannot be trusted. You seem to do a damn fine job of making a case why NO government should have this sort of power once you stop pretending like our government is benevolent or somehow good for its people....
 
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