The U.S. National Security Agency is trying to develop a "quantum computer" that could break even the most sophisticated encryption codes that cloak sensitive information, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The report is based on the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the controversial former NSA contractor who revealed evidence that the U.S. spy agency is collecting data from private Internet users and heads of states. The document shows that the spy agency is trying to build a super computer more powerful than classical computers people and organizations have grown accustomed to.
NSA's attempt to build such a computer is part of the agency's $79.7 million research program titled "Penetrating Hard Targets and much of its work are under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md., the report said.
However, it's still unclear whether the NSA has made breakthroughs in quantum computing vis-à-vis its counterparts in private laboratories. For years, the scientific community has been working hard to develop such a computer because of the possible and positive implications it has in the fields of medicine and NSA's code-breaking mission.
According to The Washington Post report, physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSA's efforts are more advanced than developments made in the best civilian labs. But based on Snowden's leaked documents, NSA is nowhere near in terms of success as everyone might hope to be.
"It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it," Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Washington Post.
The document also appears to suggest that the NSA regards itself to be running neck and neck with private laboratories funded by the European Union and Switzerland. However, no immediate breakthroughs have been reported.
According to one NSA document, "the geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland."
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