The Chinese government has long operated an incredibly aggressive and scaled effort to steal U.S. information of value. Sometimes that’s the personal information of government workers, sometimes it’s the communications of U.S. leaders, sometimes it’s intellectual property, and sometimes that information is unknown even to the Chinese when they first pursue it. After all, by planting hardware inside computers, the Chinese give themselves the means to target some future interest that has the misfortune of using its bugged hardware. Still, the simple point here is that China has absolutely no regard for things that American citizens or American companies want to keep secret. That disdain for privacy is motivated not by immorality, but simply by China’s much broader effort to displace the U.S.-led international order with one of its own making.

Of course, it is nonsensical for Americans to continue dancing to the Chinese tune by purchasing its hardware or software. And fortunately, because Chinese hardware tends to be of low value and cost, there are alternative suppliers that U.S. companies could rely upon without major long-term cost increases. Moving to those suppliers makes long-term cost sense for a simple reason: it prevents information from being stolen and used against its users at some future point.

But we must wake up. The Chinese threat is vested in a long-term strategic effort and no amount of complaining is going to make it go away. We must thus build up our defenses and respond with greater attention to the threat we face.