Uncle Sam, Cyber Sap

The Chinese hack of federal data — which apparently sucked up everything there is to know about current and former government workers — just confirms that Uncle Sam is woefully unprepared for the Information Age.

The Chinese “worm” was only found— after a year — by an outside vendor who had access to the server as part of a sales effort.

And Friday brought news of another breach, where Beijing accessed a motherlode— the Standard Form 86 database. That form has security clearance applicants disclose past mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, arrests and bankruptcies. They must also list contacts and family — making it easy to target, for example, foreign relatives of US intelligence employees.

This follows on other attacks, like the Russian gangsters who got key IRS files of more than 100,000 Americans. And on the vast dumps of topsecret info by Pfc. Bradley Manning and NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.

And on the HealthCare.gov fiasco — when the Web site central to the president’s signature law failed for months after its launch, and only got ( partly) fixed by outside tech geniuses.

The feds need a top to bottom outside cyber audit and full reorganization, with competent, empowered CIOs at every agency.

Congress needs crash hearings en route to rewriting the laws that have left most privatesector tech firms unwilling to even consider government contracts — leaving companies that can’t succeed elsewhere to specialize in government work

And, of course, the administration needs to make China pay for these attacks — and not just in the cybersphere. Pick a few of its top global agenda items, and do the opposite. Identify every Beijing agency that might conceivably have played a role in these penetrations, and ban its top officials and their families from travel here.

If the feds don’t get serious, the next attack is sure to be worse.