China’s digital intrusions are even worse than its on-the-ground espionage (which is already bad) or its aerial surveillance. And year after year, we’ve gone on doing nothing meaningful about the situation.

At some point, we may come to regret that.

We had plenty of warnings before 9/11 that a terrorist attack could happen. We’ve had plenty of warning about what China could do in the event of a heightened conflict. Here’s another one.

China-backed hackers have had access to some major U.S. critical infrastructure for “at least five years,” according to an intelligence advisory released Wednesday…

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation released an advisory Wednesday to warn critical infrastructure operators about China’s ongoing hacking interests.

According to the advisory, China-backed hacking group Volt Typhoon has been exploiting vulnerabilities in routers, firewalls and VPNs to target water, transportation, energy and communications systems across the country.

The group has relied heavily on stolen administrator credentials to maintain access to the systems — and in some cases it has maintained access for “at least five years,” per the advisory…

Last May, Microsoft and the U.S. government warned that Volt Typhoon had been positioning itself to launch attacks on infrastructure across the country, including water utilities and ports.

So far the Biden administration’s plan has been to ask China to stop. And if not we might impose meaningless sanctions on some figures who aren’t within reach of them anyway.