BAH was hiring in quantum information as early as the late 1990s, if I recall correctly. Certainly they were doing so by the early 2000s. It's not surprising

BAH was hiring in quantum information as early as the late 1990s, if I recall correctly. Certainly they were doing so by the early 2000s. It's not surprising that BAH is interested: the NSA and DARPA have been funding research on quantum computing since the mid-1990s. (I worked in the field from 1992 through 2008.) Edit: See, for example, this 2004 article on "Quantum networks: from quantum cryptography to quantum architecture", with several BAH authors, including the lead author: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1039117&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=220110996&CFTOKEN=74909473 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1039117&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFI... This took a few seconds to find with Google, I wouldn't be surprised to find earlier examples.