If you continue reading, he's making an argument that comes together at the end: "After this scientific milestone is achieved, I predict that the whole discuss

If you continue reading, he's making an argument that comes together at the end: "After this scientific milestone is achieved, I predict that the whole discussion of commercial applications of quantum computing will shift to a new plane, much like the Manhattan Project shifted to a new plane after Fermi built his pile under the Chicago stadium in 1942. In other words: at this point, the most “applied” thing to do might be to set applications aside temporarily, and just achieve this quantum supremacy milestone—i.e., build the quantum computing Fermi pile—and thereby show the world that quantum computing speedups are a reality." He's saying we need to do some purely scientific experiments to demonstrate the fundamentals of quantum computing before we start trying to use it for codebreaking or AI.