From the Vault: China's Cyber Spying

The Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns are facing cyber hacking, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The likely culprit? China, which U.S. intelligence officials also blame for the 2015 cyber theft of millions of federal workers' personal information in an attack on the Office of Personnel Management and for hacking several U.S. companies to steal trade secrets.

Threats of state-sponsored cyber spying from China are nothing new. In 1999, Congress released a report alleging China was responsible for years of espionage and stealing U.S. nuclear secrets. As Haynes Johnson explained on Washington Week, the threat didn't come from traditional spies, but was a threat "in cyberspace." "It's about computers," he said.

But in 1999, just as now, how to respond to China's attacks was a topic of debate because of the complicated trade relationship between the two nations.