In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Nation,” President Obama set off a minor controversy by referring to the North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures as an act of “cyber vandalism” rather than one of “cyber terrorism.” That argument as well as the one about whether the president was right to criticize Sony for backing down in the face of threats of violence and further hacking are not as important as to what counter-measures the U.S. is taking today to ensure that this crime doesn’t happen again. With reports that the North Korean Internet is currently out of service, it’s not clear whether this is due to a U.S. response or the Communist regime’s own defensive actions. But no matter what we’re calling what happened to Sony, the main point to be gleaned from these events is that this is no longer a matter of a private business deciding how to deal with a crime. From the moment that the U.S. government named North Korea as the perpetrator, this issue is President Obama’s responsibility to address and decisively fix.
Whatever one might think of what seemed, at least at first, as an act of cowardice on the part of the film company, to withdraw the movie at the heart of this story, one primary fact should be acknowledged. It is not President Obama’s job to decide what films get produced in this country or whether they will be shown in theaters, on DVD or the Internet. But it is the government’s job to protect American citizens and businesses from criminal attacks by foreign governments.
We don’t know exactly what the United States is doing to retaliate against North Korea or to forestall future attacks. Nor should we. Let us hope that whatever is going on today, President Obama should be taken at his word when he says that the U.S. will respond at a time and in a manner of its own choosing. But whatever orders have been given, the dustup over the difference “vandalism” and “terror” is one that deserves a little more attention.
Some liberals are pushing back hard against figures like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham for calling for stern measures against North Korea. This has given rise to a meme in which the left has abandoned its erstwhile Hollywood allies and urged caution in any response to North Korea and heaped scorn on conservatives they say never pass up an opportunity to call for “war.”
But as some in the entertainment industry now realize, even if you didn’t like George W. Bush or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the words “national security” can take on a whole new and very important meaning if you perceive that your government isn’t defending you against a hostile foreign power.
Make no mistake about it. Though the argument over Obama’s comments can be perceived as one of semantics rather than substance, if the U.S. government treats what happened to Sony as the moral equivalent of someone drawing graffiti on their walls of their corporate headquarters rather than act of terror against a U.S. target, it is making a critical mistake.
Prior to the Internet age, acts of war or terror by foreign powers and other international actors were easily understood as consisting of physical attacks on persons and property or invasions of territory. But in our day, attacks on the United States don’t only consist of events such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 atrocities. While the hacking of a corporations online presence and emails is not to be compared to those horrific events, it must also be understood that when a sovereign nation is using the tools of the Internet to interfere with an American company on American soil, then it has crossed a clear line and taken an action that truly provides a casus belli for actions by the U.S. government. In other words, no matter what you call it, it is time for the U.S. to behave in such a manner as to make North Korea fear to ever trespass again on American freedoms.
Stopping or punishing North Korea from carrying out acts of terror won’t be easy. Thanks to the diplomatic failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations, North Korea is, at the very least, a threshold nuclear power. It is also already so isolated and its economy so backward that sanctions will have even less impact on its despotic and brutal government than those on its rogue partners like Iran. But it is nevertheless the responsibility of the president and his national security team to find a way to make Pyongyang pay dearly for its chutzpah. We shouldn’t prejudge those efforts before we know what is planned or actually happening. But this isn’t Sony’s fight or event that of Hollywood. Unless the U.S. is able to hit North Korea or at least scare it enough to ensure that this never happens again, no American should feel safe.
