NSA broke or close to breaking AES?

yep, that's exactly the part that really makes me wonder, especailly
"They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption."

So they think that they can crack AES. (this is the current most widely used one)
And yet this doesn't seem to be discussed at all in the crypto communities even if this is published like 1 year ago.

 

hm even here not many people are interested in discussing this, weird.

 

Okay, I'll play...

No, not at all. Again, see here. And here. And here.

People aren't really discussing it because it's not really a big deal.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Once again, something one would be wise to refrain from doing.

...Unless for some odd reason you seem to think that in just 5-10 years from now computers will be "built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space."

Bingo.