In his press conference, did it sound to you that Obama called on the entire American hacker community to do their worst on NK? Sounded like that to me, and it sounds like fun. Good Seth Rogen burn, too.
He doesn’t really need to. I doubt groups like Anonymous are too happy about a hack that was by a nation state and for the express purpose of stopping a movie (now, had the NKs gone after Sony because they are a billion dollar corporation, that would be different :p). In addition, the US actually has it’s own cyber warfare group that’s probably as capable and nasty as anyone out there. We usually try and be more circumspect (I suspect that the US cyber warfare group is involved in stuff that is just as nasty, but with the goal of NOT being caught or even having anyone know they have been hacked).
The difference is that the NK society and system are pretty regimented, so you aren’t going to have a lot of human cyber failures, and access is MUCH more limited so the damage we could do in return isn’t going to be in proportion…and certainly not as clear, at least from the perspective of news coming from NK of a hack. They should keep in mind the example of what happened in Iran, however.
[picking nits on a nitpick]
Columbia Pictures is wholly owned by Sony since 1989.
[/picking nits on a nitpick]
What are you talking about? What I said had nothing to do with AMC. Sony wanted to rid themselves of this movie because it has already hurt them, and because doubling down on principle would have cost them more money.
It would be like if you owned a small business that employed a temp to do secretarial work, and her crazed BF repeatedly came to the office to cause a fuss. Would you stand on principle that this temp shouldn’t be fired for her ex’s behavior, or would you just call for a new temp? Sony decided to just call a new temp.
Most people don’t care at all about the politics here and certainly would not pay $15 to see a movie they wouldn’t entertain seeing otherwise just to prove a point to an irrelevant dictator thousands of miles away. Besides, when the theaters pull the movie, then Sony basically had to make a decision to either commit to potentially losing more money or filing an insurance claim.
Have we looked at this from Sony Corporation’s perspective? Not just Sony Pictures, but the parent that is based in Japan, a country that’s #2 on the NK hit list and much more likely to be in range of NK’s future nucular missiles. Encouragement to drop this hot potato may have come from someone way over Michael Lynton’s head.
Hit them with what? How do you damage their information infrastucture – put glue in their abacuses?
Given the multiple unflattering meanings of the word “nork,” let’s refrain from using it in Grreat Debates.
[ /Moderating ]
Even if they don’t offend anyone, they’ve made themselves patsies for anybody who wants to blackmail them for profit ($20 million in small unmarked bills or else).
Ok, my bad.
Well , we are talking about sony here.
Declan
In all this fuss about the movie, I haven’t seen a single mention of the latest Tom Clancy novel, Full Force and Effect. North Korea serves as the main bad guy throughout and the NK leader, a renamed Jong-Un, ends up getting killed at the end (in a coup, not in a Katy Perry video). And almost twenty five years ago Larry Bond (Clancy’s old co-author) wrote a book called Red Phoenix, in which NK attacks the south, loses and again has the Dear Leader put up against a wall. I guess it only offends them if you try to film it.
Just to clear up some nomenclature:
Kim Il-sung: Great Leader
Kim Jong-il: Dear Leader
Kim Jong-un: Great Successor
Also, I believe though I’m not entirely sure, that Kim Il Sung is still officially the Head of State, and Kim Jong-Il is still officially Chairman of the North Korean Communist a Party, while Kim Jong-Un is officially the Commander and Chief of the North Korean Military and “First Secretary” of the Korean Communist Party.
It’s their version of the Holy Trinity.
At least its nothing like George, George and Jeb.
Joint investigation: How dare North Korea propose a perfectly reasonable course of action - what is the matter with those people seeking to associate with a country known for torture and mass killings of civilians on bogus pretexts in the Middle East.
A perfect way to try and project attention away from them. We have absolutely no reason to trust NK about anything.
Like I say, I have no idea what Kim Jong-un thinks he’s doing in this detente with a bunch of warmongering, murdering, kidnapping, torturing exceptionalists.
I guess the idea is to expose their so-called ‘evidence’ for what it is.
Er… are you remotely familiar with the Kim family?
Why would he have any antipathy towards “kidnapping” much less the other crimes you mentioned?
Does that make Kim Yo-jong the Great Pretender?
Is he the one that looks like Dom Deluise?
With a very bad haircut, yes.