science

Correct, but still amazing because it means quantum internet is achievable over existing infrastructure. Not needing to lay down all new lines around the world for quantum transmissions will mean it gets adopted much faster. Even if specialized equipment is needed on either end of the cable, the hope/assumption would be that specialized equipment on either end will become cheaper as tech advances and scales upward - still a long ways off but cut down significantly.

What's the upshot of this, even if the article's hyperbole is accurate? I'm assuming it's not as spooky or sci-fi as the terminology sounds to a monkey like me.

That’s a common problem with these titles. If you want to make them short and snappy, you’ll either end up with something vague or straight up incorrect.

IIUC, quantum entanglement at a distance provides for faster than light/instant communication of state changes. High frequency trading, and dark orderbooks, is the only known economic application (space communications a far off application). I'm not sure why article avoided talking about this purpose.

You need to prep by sending the entangled particles (photons in this case). The spooky action is when you act on 1, you also act on the other. The useful bit is the uniqueness of the link. It cannot be intercepted without it being obvious and detectable.

Think of it like voodoo dolls. It works at a distance, but you need to make the voodoo doll using a bit of the target, then send/take it elsewhere to stab.

The "spooky action" is really just the determination of a particle's spin on one side meaning you already know the other particle will have an opposite spin. This probably violates locality because you gain knowledge about something that's non-local from a quantum perspective, even though entangled particles have to start local (there are opposing interpretations, like the de Broglie-Bohm). While in fiction this might suggest that changing the state of one particle simultaneously changes the other, in real life this just means extra information you mathematically shouldn't have, and doesn't really lead to FTL information transmission. What it does mean is that if you want secure communications you can use entangled particles to generate a secret key, determining the spin of them on either side, and you can be sure that they haven't been tampered with and that the other side of the communication will be equal and opposite. It's essentially a one-time pad.

It could actually be a good thing, since it opens up the possibility of unsnoopable channels of communication, using encryption that would be disrupted by any attempt to intercept it.

Monkeys learned to send signals faster. Now monkeys can bomb other monkeys they don't like faster.

You sound quite miserable, maybe you should stop thinking like this