scores of others during a screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. The withdrawal of the movie by Sony and the refusal by major cinemas to show it led to soul-searching in the media and provoked a larger discussion about freedom of speech and artistic expression in the face of terroristic threats. Many Sony employees who had already suffered the brunt of the cyberattacks and were feeling vulnerable were in no mood to be in any further danger, especially for a product that wasn’t by any measure an artistic achievement. “Why are we all paying the price for a movie that isn’t even very good?” one employee asked. Others, like George Clooney, Steve Carell, and Michael Moore, felt compelled to advocate a firm stance against this type of coercion and criticized Sony for failing to protect artistic freedom.
Finally, on December 19, less than a month after the GOP threat appeared on Sony computers, the FBI announced that the North Korean government was responsible for the intrusion. Following an intensive investigation that involved multiple government agencies and the intelligence community, the FBI said that technical analysis revealed links to other known North Korean malicious cyberactivity. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recalled in his memoir that “without a shadow of a doubt in my mind and those of our top cyber specialists…the Sony hacks had originated in North Korea.” The FBI press release stated:
We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there….Though the FBI has seen a wide variety and increasing number of cyber intrusions, the destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart. North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior. The FBI takes seriously any attempt—whether through cyber-enabled means, threats of violence, or otherwise—to undermine the economic and social prosperity of our citizens.
The 9/11-type attack never happened, but the fear was real and the chaos and confusion it engendered shaped the decision-making of private U.S. entities and the exercise of their rights. President Obama criticized Sony’s decision and cautioned, “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States….Imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.” Peter Singer, a top U.S. expert on cyberwarfare, said, “The problem now is not the hack. It’s how Sony responded to it. It’s the cave-in….They rewarded and incentivized attacks on the rest of us.”
The over-the-top North Korean response to the release of the movie showed that the regime’s tools of coercion go beyond missiles and nuclear weapons and that Kim Jong Un has the will and the capacity to punish perceived offenses outside his country’s borders. “The movie offers an alternative that North Koreans aren’t even given the leeway to think about. It offers an alternative imagination,” said Jang Jin-sung, the propagandist-cum-defector. “It’s not that people really believe all this propaganda about Kim Jong-un, that he’s a God, and need someone to tell them otherwise or show them another way of thinking. North Koreans are people, and they aren’t stupid. In the North Korean system, you have to praise Kim and sing hymns about him and take it seriously, even if you think it’s only a shit narrative.” And Kim Jong Un was making sure that no one challenges that narrative, even Americans. The Sony incident was the result of Kim’s paranoia combined with his brazenness and high risk tolerance for testing his capabilities. The New York Times reporter David Sanger concluded, “Cyberweapons were tailor-made for North Korea’s situation in the world: so isolated it had little to lose, so short of fuel it had no other way to sustain a conflict with greater powers, and so backward that its infrastructure was largely invulnerable to crippling counterattacks.”
THE PREQUEL…AND THE SEQUEL
Sony was a wake-up call for Washington, dispelling any doubts about Pyongyang’s cyber capabilities, though one could argue that the United States hardly needed one. For years, the regime’s growing cyberattack prowess had been worrying experts. North Korean entities had already staged a number of intrusions into South Korean banks, the military intranet, and the email accounts of government officials and media organizations, reflecting the