What are the implications of the Equifax data breach charges?

In 2017, Equifax suffered a data breach that exposed the personal data of over 145 million Americans.  And now, the Department of Justice charged four Chinese men with causing the breach this past week.  Even if these charges turn out to be false, there is still reason to be very concerned about this. 

Over the past few years, organizations such as Facebook and Quest Diagnostics have suffered data breaches that have put the personal information of millions of people in peril.  Hacks and data breaches have become frequent in the past few years, and while outrage ensues after each time, little is being done to prevent them from happening again.  Even though these instances happen more often now, it is still unlikely for anyone you know personally to find your information.  But the fact that our information is (likely) still out there and open for the authorities to see is still concerning. 

What is even more stunning with this was that foreign governments are now doing the targeting of these hacks.  If a foreign adversary can manage to discover the credit scores of individual people, then basically anyone can do the same thing.  Any individual or group can discover our personal information with less surveillance and monitoring than a potential Chinese hacker, as the consequences for the lack of proper defenses against data breaches can be even more far-reaching than we could anticipate. 

In addition, the motives of the people behind these hacks could make these attacks even more frightening than the act itself.  Could China potentially tank the stock market?  Something like the Equifax breach suggests they may try, as both this breach and an economic recession would really cause serious harm to Americans.  In addition, with China facing criticism for their brutal crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong, there is a lot of reason to think the people behind this are even more sinister than we anticipated.  If China is willing to do anything to suppress its own citizens, it's reasonable to think they'd do far worse to any NATO ally.  As the Chinese continue to grow their influence on the world, they might be willing to take more action in gaining leverage on other nations, as suggested by the Equifax data breach. 

The four Chinese researchers, all of whom are alleged to be tied to the country's military, and their charges from this past week.  

https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-department-charges-chinese-nationals-010904022.html