Operation Aurora was motivated, at least in part, by US government spying on individual Chinese citizens. The US does seem to care about surveillance and spyin

Operation Aurora was motivated, at least in part, by US government spying on individual Chinese citizens. The US does seem to care about surveillance and spying on its population. In foreign policy and intelligence circles, surveillance of populations is referred to as "strategic listening". It allows nations to measure the effects of their propaganda on internal political movements of target countries. In the DoD, these same databases are also used in pilot programmes (MINERVA, etc) to study how propaganda can be used to stabilize and destabilize populations. It's likely the Chinese have similar research. Furthermore, many of the individuals surveilled evolve roles of significance. During the US operation to create mass protest in Cuba (Zunzuneo) by setting up fake online social media companies, they gathered huge amounts of information on the individual citizens they were trying to radicalize. The reason for this was because these individuals, if successful in overthrowing or altering the political structure in Cuba, become interesting targets in their own right - and now intelligence and profiling work on these new power brokers is partially complete. We can see that China had hacked the US security clearance databases. This not only contains lists of people with access to critical systems and information - but also has compiled risks of leverage those individuals may face from adversaries (debt, extramarital engagement, etc).