Even if the algorithm holds up we are still years out from a actual quantum computer that can run at scale. But that's kind of the point. NIST finalized ML-KEM in 2024 because you don't need to wait until the house is on fire to buy insurance. Harvest now decrypt later attacks are already happening today so thee migration window is closing regardless of whether quantum ever delivers.

As a complete layman, quantum computing seems like it could be like AI. AI for the longest time was a scam. Like, it was clearly improving, but only in marginal increments. The bar was so low though... even the state of the art was garbage - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot), for example. Eventually it was starting to seem like narrow applications of CNNs/machine learning would be the future of AI, but that general purpose AI would be garbage forever. It took the attention/transformer breakthrough (and someone to realize how to use it) before we hit the explosive improvement in general purpose AI that we see today. Quantum computing could still be in the "Tay" phase right now.