> Doesn't the NSA doesn't operate at such scales? Or is it just that the US doesn't expect adversaries to be as capable? NSA does. And the USG is well-aware th

> Doesn't the NSA doesn't operate at such scales? Or is it just that the US doesn't expect adversaries to be as capable? NSA does. And the USG is well-aware that China and Russia and even Iran could do this too. So regarding why things were left way at OPM, your guess is as good as mine... I mean "just don't let China hack in" is pretty unachievable (they even got Google a few years back, after all), but at least structure your networks to make it so that hacking one database doesn't give away the keys to everything, move highly-sensitive material off-network completely, etc. But these things require changes, which requires money (and brainpower), and buy-in from dozens of other government agencies, and probably more things besides. None of this is to excuse OPM--I would expect my government leaders to suck resources from elsewhere if need be, accept temporary degradation to other systems that interfaced to this personnel database, or in short to _do whatever they had to do to pro-actively address the threat they knew was out there_. And they didn't. > That's standard procedure for the NSA. No surprise there. Should be "That's standard procedure for state espionage agencies". I mean, if you're approaching this from the perspective that China is doing this only because NSA is out there you're already misinformed. Half of the reason NSA has been doing this is because Russia and China and friends will be doing things like this anyways. In China's case especially they drastically re-oriented their entire military and geo-strategic outlook following the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. This incident occurred between 1995-1996, and culminated in the U.S. sending 2 full carrier strike groups near Taiwan, one of the groups actually sailed through the Strait of Taiwan, sending a pointed message about who had military supremacy in the South China Sea. The rise in Chinese military power many of spoken of effectively started here... but they didn't limit their buildup to "hard" forms of national power. Indeed, given the reliance on so much of the global electronics supply chain on Chinese factories there's a lot of opportunity for appearances of SHTF...