If the U.S. government were a private company, it would currently be facing a reckoning, or even corporate annihilation. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that China has compromised more than 200 million voter registration entries across 18 states. 

Newly released Intelligence Community records released by President Donald Trump on Thursday and compiled by the Government Transparency Task Force show that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) compromised election data, exposing the personal information of millions of American voters.

“They show that over a period of years, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,” said Trump. During his speech, he also said that the internal emails by intelligence analysts showed that they had deliberately withheld information regarding Chinese activities related to the election from the presidential daily briefings. 

“They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else, and to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress. In fact, all they kept saying is, ‘This is the most secure election in history,’” he said. 

But if the government were a company and they hid the disclosure of one of the largest data breaches in history, they would have been subject to lawsuits, or even bankruptcy. 

Here are some of the largest data breaches in U.S. history and the consequences that companies have faced:

Yahoo

Yahoo holds the record for the largest breach at 3 billion accounts. While first discovered in 2016, it was revealed that there had been multiple breaches between 2013 and 2014, exposing names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, hacked passwords, and security questions. 

The breach brought class action lawsuits, while regulatory bodies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) condemned Yahoo for delaying disclosure of the breach and fined the company $35 million. Yahoo had only disclosed the breach in 2016 when they knew about it for nearly two years, since 2014. 

The company reached a $117.5 million class-action settlement for affected users, while the ordeal led to Verizon demanding a $350 million discount when they bought Yahoo. The company’s top lawyer, Ronald Bell, also resigned while its former chief executive, Marissa Mayer, gave up her 2016 cash bonus.

Equifax

This disclosure of Yahoo’s massive breach came on the same day that CEO Richard Smith of the credit agency Equifax was grilled by Congress for a breach which compromised social security numbers, credit card details, and in some cases driver’s license numbers of 145.5 million people – amounting to about half the U.S. population. 

Attackers had exploited a known vulnerability in its web application software. The identities of the hackers were unknown until, in 2020, the DOJ unveiled that they were four members of China's military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with intentions of stealing Equifax's corporate secrets and identities of users.

The breach led to a settlement of up to $700 million to charges brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), with the company also legally mandated to spend $1 billion over five years to overhaul its internal cybersecurity systems. Smith was forced to retire shortly after the breach was made public.     

National Public Data (NPD)

In 2024, National Public Data, a Florida-based background check business, confirmed a data breach of around 2.9 billion records, containing data from people from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, including full names, addresses and social security numbers, all published on the dark web. 

It prompted the launch of nearly two dozen class action lawsuits, alongside 20 states seeking civil penalties from the company, mostly targeting Jerico Pictures Inc., which owns and operates National Public Data. Jericho Pictures filed for bankruptcy in October 2024, leaving millions of affected consumers unable to receive compensation.

23andMe

Just Wednesday, the Texas Attorney General announced a $150 million settlement, alongside a $46.7 million class-action settlement, with a coalition of 42 states for 23andMe’s data breach in 2023 leaking highly sensitive genetic and DNA ancestry data of 6.9 million people worldwide. 

“The company initially denied that a breach had occurred and, after confirming it, blamed consumers for how their accounts were configured and how passwords were used,” Paxton’s press release read. The demands for a settlement came despite their filing for bankruptcy in 2025, after finding that they had not enforced reasonable data security measures. 

Medicaid 

In June, private dental administrator MCNA Dental agreed to a multimillion-dollar class-action settlement for exposing the records of nine million Medicaid recipients in 2023, a majority of them enrolled in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program dental benefits. 

All in all, the bottom line is this: while private companies face class-action lawsuits, fines and government-led litigation, the government concealed the compromise of a significant portion of Americans’ voter information for years. 

“Think of that: tens of millions of voters' data in 18 states have been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden,” the president said in his address, later adding, “This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of democracy.”