These hacks provide raw data for China’s Ministry of State Security to build “data sets on U.S. and other citizens that have been amassed for years,” one U.S. official told the Washington Post. I talked to a senior U.S. national security official who concurred, noting that China now can not only build dossiers on U.S. citizens of interest, but can also spoof their identities in cyberspace.

Some of this can be chalked up to standard espionage between foreign rivals. The U.S. also tries to build up dossiers on some foreign officials its spies seek to recruit. The U.S. also hacks foreign databases and monitors the communications of its rivals and friends.

There are differences, though. First, the sheer amount of data on an individual is huge and constantly growing. Then there is the speed at which this data can be compiled.

The other difference is that the U.S. government has not created the kind of database China is now amassing on millions of U.S. citizens. When the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency attempted such a thing in the early 2000s (a prototype to achieve “Total Information Awareness”), Congress intervened and stopped it.