For the first time, the growing risk of computer-launched foreign assaults on U.S. infrastructure, including the power grid, transportation hubs and financial networks, was ranked higher in the U.S. intelligence community’s annual review of worldwide threats than worries about terrorism, transnational organized crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The startling reappraisal came a day after President Obama’s national security advisor, Thomas Donilon, complained of “cyber-intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale” and said China-based digital attacks on U.S. businesses and institutions had become “a key point of concern” for the White House.

“The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country,” he said in a speech at the Asia Society in New York. He urged Beijing to “take serious steps to investigate and put a stop to these activities.”