Chinese hackers are growing increasingly bold in probing critical U.S. defense networks. But former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke tells FP that if the United States waits for a dramatic, 9/11-style attack on its critical infrastructure to act, it will be missing the real threat.

Richard A. Clarke: I think the Chinese government has been behind many, many attacks—penetrations. “Attacks” sounds like they’re destroying something. They’re penetrations; they’re unauthorized penetrations. And what they are trying to do is espionage.

FP: What’s the worst-case scenario from a cyberpenetration of the U.S. government’s computer network? Are we talking about things like remotely attacking nuclear power plants and things on that scale?

What’s happening every day is that all of our information is being stolen.

we pay billions of dollars for research and development

and all that information gets stolen for one one-thousandth of the cost that it took to develop it.