US President Barack Obama gestures as he answers a question during his end-of-year press conference in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, yesterday. Photo: ReutersUS President Barack Obama moved to prevent US anger at North Korea from spiralling out of control yesterday by saying the massive hacking of Sony Pictures was not an act of war but instead was cyber vandalism.
Washington’s longstanding dispute with North Korea, which for years has centred on its nuclear weapons programme, has entered new territory with the accusation that Pyongyang carried out an assault on a major Hollywood entertainment company.
Obama and his advisers are weighing how to punish North Korea after the FBI concluded on Friday that Pyongyang was responsible. North Korea has denied it was to blame.
The US President put the hack in the context of a crime.
“No, I don’t think it was an act of war,” he told CNN’s State of the Union show that aired yesterday. “I think it was an act of cyber vandalism that was very costly, very expensive. We take it very seriously. We will respond proportionately.”
Obama said one option was to return North Korea to the US list of State sponsors of terrorism, from which Pyongyang was removed six years ago.
President tries to prevent US anger at N. Korea from spiralling out of control
North Korea vowed yesterday to hit back against any US retaliation.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland, the cesspool of terrorism, by far surpassing the ‘symmetric counteraction’ declared by Obama,” according to North Korea state news agency KCNA.
The hack attack and subsequent threats of violence against theatres showing the film prompted Sony to withdraw a comedy, The Interview, prepared for release to movie theaters during the holiday season.
The movie depicts the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Obama and free speech advocates criticised the studio’s decision, but Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton defended it, saying US theatres did not want to show it.
Sony lawyer David Boies said the Hollywood studio planned to release the movie at some point.
“Sony only delayed this,” Boies said on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday. “It will be distributed. How it’s going to be distributed, I don’t think anybody knows quite yet.”
In the CNN interview, Obama acknowledged that in a digitised world “both state and non-state actors are going to have the capacity to disrupt our lives in all sorts of ways.”
“We have to do a much better job of guarding against that. We have to treat it like we would treat, you know, the incidence of crime, you know, in our countries.”
Republican Senator John McCain disagreed with Obama, telling CNN the attack was the manifestation of a new kind of warfare. Republican Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, would not call the hacking an act of war. But he did criticise Obama for embarking on a two-week vacation in Hawaii on Friday without responding to the attack. Rogers said on Fox News Sunday the US had the capability to make it very hard for North Korea to launch another similar attack, but that Obama waited too long to act.
“You’ve just limited your ability to do something,” Rogers said.