The claims made in a manifesto resulting in the European quantum technologies
flagship initiative in quantum technology and similar enterprises are taken as
starting point to critically review some potential quantum resources, such as
coherent superposition and entanglement, and their potential usefulness for
parallelism and communication. Claims of absolute, irreducible (non-epistemic)
randomness are argued to be metaphysical. Cryptanalytic man-in-the-middle
attacks on quantum cryptography are well known to be feasible, but hardly
mentioned. If all of this is taken into account, a more sober perspective on
quantum capacities emerges, but one that may be ethically more justified than
the "hype and magic" that drives many current initiatives.Comment: 5 pages, polished, some references adde
