My view is that the cyber threat is bigger than any one government agency - or even the government itself. But the FBI brings a rare combination of scope and scale, experience, and tools to the mix. We investigate criminal activity like intrusions and cyber attacks, but we also investigate national security threats like foreign influence.
Some people are skeptical about the value of indictments where a foreign nation-state actor is involved. But in the case of APT10, the indictments marked an important step in publicly exposing China's continued practice of stealing intellectual property to give Chinese firms an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
China has national security laws that compel Chinese companies to provide the government with information and access at their government's request. And virtually all Chinese companies of any size are required to have Communist Party 'cells' inside them, to make sure the companies stay in line with the party's principles and policies.
9/11 was a gamechanger in so many terrible ways, not just for the United States and for our own national security apparatus but for the whole world. And those attacks blew apart any notion of separation between foreign and domestic threats, any notion that such attacks only happen to other people in other countries.
The FBI's mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. To carry out that mission, we're entrusted with a lot of authority, so our actions are subject to close oversight - from the courts, from our elected leaders, and from independent entities like the inspector general.