From a US perspective, foreign hackers are a threat--but I think mostly to companies and to individual cases of identity theft. I'd argue that a government spy

From a US perspective, foreign hackers are a threat--but I think mostly to companies and to individual cases of identity theft. I'd argue that a government spying on its own citizens is a much greater threat. If a Chinese hacker steals your identity, maybe you're out some (possibly significant) amount of money, and a lot of hassle. Your physical well-being is typically not threatened. If, however, the government reads through your email, listens in to your Skype calls, and then decides that you've committed some crime (and by virtue of living day-to-day in our hyper-criminalized society, almost all of us are guilty of some crime these days), you can be harrassed physically, legally, and financially for what might be the rest of your life by our crushing-revenge-driven legal system--you might even be imprisoned. Chinese hackers can't imprison you, or sue you until you choose to exit early. So from a regular person's perspective, we should be way more worried about what's going on at home.