That quantum computer, however, would never be useful for breaking public key encryption like RSA.That statement is a clear indication that the reporter didn't understand a single word of what he'd been told.
No kidding, it cuts into RSA/ECC the best. With something like AES it will probably cut the bit strength in half. So AES256 will be like AES128. That means that AES256 will still be unbreakable in theory, while AES128 would suddenly be wide open as 56 effective bits wouldn’t take long to break.
ECC public encryption would probably be ok at 521bit level too, which is about the same as AES256. However there’s solid rumors that the ECC cipher specs were NSA tailored to be breakable by them anyway. It’s a real mess out there.