So there are some real threats.
Same argument holds with China, or anybody who gets the data.
Plus, the ability of attackers is not bounded by your creativity or credulity, or mine. The question isn't whether you or I can come up with something interesting to do with the data, the question is whether anybody who gets their hands on it can.
For the most part, the data really is mundane and irrelevant, sure. I know some government employees I went to college with, none of whom are in any position to do anything all that interesting at China's behest. But it's that .1% percent of data on the movers and shakers, and the people who will be tomorrow's movers and shakers, that is very valuable.
(And I've got a bridge to sell you if you think the full range of the hacking has been revealed yet.)
Edit: Oh, hey, look what I found in my newsfeeds literally one minute later: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-deb... "Federal background checks, after all, are meant to suss out information that might be used by foreign enemies to blackmail a government staffer into turning over classified information. And that stolen information could be used for exactly that extortion purpose, says Chris Eng, a former NSA staffer and now VP of research at the security firm Veracode." They literally got their hands on the forms constructed to contain exactly the information we didn't want foreign governments could get.
>the US military is roughly 1.5 million people. that is in total. .00375% of the US population
I know it is easy to think that america has a huge military, and that the CIA is some massive organization that functions as an all knowing entity, and that they do nothing. But you need to expand your information sources. Watching the news and 0dark30 does not adequately prepare one to understand how international relations work.
I know there is a tendency to think that the US overspends on defense (~22% of the total estimated budget) [http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail].
To make a parallel, if there is some tech company that has a small, highly skilled staff, would it be silly for them to spend ~22% of their gross total budget on having the best gear and training?
The CIA is foreign, the FBI is domestic. They are both investigative agencies. If the hackers are operating out of the US for a foreign interest, they are in the domain of the FBI. If they are attacking from China, thats the CIA's business.
> I know it is easy to think that america has a huge military, and that the CIA is some massive organization that functions as an all knowing entity, and that they do nothing.
It isn't "think". The US spends 4 times as much as the next largest military, China, while having the same land area and a quarter the population. We have treaties and agreements that make us the military defense force of a quarter of the world, and we do about a third of the spending. While being 4% of the global population.
And of course the CIA is doing stuff. That is my point. You don't need the 800 billion dollar tumor to have a foreign investigations agency do their job protecting us from information threats.
> To make a parallel, if there is some tech company that has a small, highly skilled staff, would it be silly for them to spend ~22% of their gross total budget on having the best gear and training?
The staff you describe are only trained to stand in front of your competitors offices and block them from entering. They aren't adding value to the company, they are just eating its resources to threaten the competition. The 800 billion sunk into the DoD is producing a trickle of R&D results and innovation, but is not improving our GDP or producing goods or services of value to citizens.
The bigger question is why when you have a small, highly skilled staff (NASA) you regularly cut its budget when it has at various points in history produced incredible R&D returns for its cost.