Re:Is this really a big deal? (Score 1)

Outside of science fiction novels, where did it do that? If you're thinking of WWII, the Allies had a gigantically larger industrial base than the Axis could ever summon, and basically won by throwing enough men and materiel at the problem. At most, crypto might have shortened that war, but even that's not crystal clear.

Part of the importance of keeping Enigma secret after WWII (up until the late seventies) was that the British circulated Type-X coding machines widely into colonial countries (and the US may have done similar things, I don't know). That enabled GCHQ to run decrypts against a very large number of governments, presumably including those in the post-colonial wars, Suez, etc, although this is (unsurprisingly) not publically well documented. That's a fair number of wars right there.

Even during the earlier stages of WWII, key areas such as North Africa were won with very significant help from decrypts, not to mention the Atlantic. Without that, and assuming that Purple had never been broken either, WWII would have probably ended in 1943. All the "men and materiel" is irrelevant if you're an ocean away from the enemy and can't engage them.