NSA building code-cracking quantum computer

According to a report from the Washington Post, the spying agency plans to spend around $80m (£49m) on the project to speed up its code-cracking efforts. The research programme is based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and is called Penetrating Hard Targets. According to the NSA, the resulting quantum computer would be able to take advantage of quantum-mechanical phenomena such as supersition and entanglement to perform several calculations at once instead of a single stream. However, it could take years to develop. Several other non-governmental researchers are also trying to develop quantum computers, and some remain sceptical that the NSA's efforts are more advanced than theirs. 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.