'This Is Cyberwar, Not Tabloid Fodder'

hackers getting a nation to fight FOR the release of a seth rogen comedy is Black Mirror-level performance art

— Casey Johnston (@caseyjohnston) December 17, 2014

OK, to be fair, modern Hollywood has beclowned itself so badly in the post-9/11 era, that there is a weird kabuki-like performance art to the whole North Korea-versus Hollywood story, but as Abe Greenwald writes at Commentary, “The Sony hacking story has largely been treated as a juicy showbiz gossip scandal. We’re probably going to regret that:”

If North Korea is behind the computer hacks and threats to terrorize theaters showing The Interview, it confirms a new era of rogue-state terrorism, one for which there’s no counterterrorism blueprint. According to the New York Times, Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema has killed its scheduled New York premier of the anti-Kim Jong-un comedy. The Hollywood Reporter says that the country’s top five theater chains have pulled out of showing the film. Time says the movie’s stars, James Franco and Seth Rogen, have called off their publicity tour. A spate of film executives are backpedaling for their lives as their emails are picked through and published to viral derision. The Times’s Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write that the theater threat “opens a new range of worry for Hollywood.”

As Allahpundit adds at Hot Air, “Rarely do you see a terrorist victory quite this total. Bow down, America:”

I hope our fearless leadership in Washington is preparing some form of retaliation, cyber or otherwise, for the NorKs for terrorizing an American industry into submission. By dropping the film under pressure, the theaters are making the same concession that newspapers made in refusing to publish the Mohammed cartoons, replacing the free-speech norms of American culture with the norms of a more illiberal one. Going forward, with respect to North Korea at least, Hollywood will follow North Korean rules for what can and can’t be said. That can’t stand. And it’s a disgrace that Obama hasn’t said so already.

Speaking of retaliation, this is a nice idea but fraught with problems. Imagine being a North Korean peasant who picks up a DVD of “The Interview” that he found on the ground, brings it back to his home having no idea what it is, and then gets a surprise visit from the NorK gestapo, who find the disc on his kitchen table. What happens to that guy? There has to be a better way to strike back. This is one, especially if Sony makes the download free.

Update (Allahpundit): North Korea’s GDP as of 2011 was $40 billion. Sony’s market cap today is $22 billion. Seems like a reasonably evenly matched virtual fight. Why doesn’t Sony build its own cyberarmy and counter if the feds won’t?

Update (Allahpundit): What’d I just say about following North Korean rules?

The chilling effect of the Sony Pictures Hacking and terror threats against The Interview are reverberating. New Regency has scrapped another project that was to be set in North Korea. The untitled thriller, set up in October, was being developed by director Gore Verbinski as a star vehicle for Foxcatcher’s Steve Carell. It’s a paranoid thriller written by Steve Conrad and it was going to start production in March. Insiders tell me under the current circumstances, it just makes no sense to move forward. The location won’t be transplanted.

Jihadi hackers would be nuts not to try this the next time a war movie is in the works. In hindsight, it’s amazing Zero Dark Thirty made it to the screen.

Oh sure, ISIS and the Iranians are great at headchopping and blowing stuff up, but they don’t have the technological know-how to pull off serious Neo-in-the-Matrix-level corporate database hacking cyberwar activities, right? Which brings us back to Abe Greenwald at Commentary:

In February, hackers laid digital waste to Sheldon Adelson’s Sands casino, forcing the Sands to temporarily disconnect from the Internet. It was a massive undertaking that wiped out or compromised millions of files. Bloomberg reports that “recovering data and building new systems could cost the company $40 million or more” (a figure coincidently close to the $44 million Sony sunk into The Interview). Why did hackers target Adelson? The cyberterrorists who hit him call themselves the “Anti-WMD Team.” They are based in Iran, and claim retaliation for Adelson’s hawkish remarks about the Islamic Republic. Here’s the rub, via Bloomberg:

The security team couldn’t determine if Iran’s government played a role, but it’s unlikely that any hackers inside the country could pull off an attack of that scope without its knowledge, given the close scrutiny of Internet use within its borders. “This isn’t the kind of business you can get into in Iran without the government knowing,” says James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

So, if the evidence is pointing in the right direction, dictatorships are tanking our enterprise, holding us hostage, and essentially turning us into their offshore subjects.

And thus we come full circle with our opening Tweet:

Sony email hack reveals Amy Pascal likened movie stars on TV as ‘the new black baby’ http://t.co/kRi0xrMjA0

— Ed Driscoll (@EdDriscoll) December 17, 2014

It’s hard to imagine worse people than today’s Hollywood executives and actors, but North Korean, Iranian and Cuban terrorists all qualify. And our semi-retired president, in full YOLO mode, is negotiating with at least two thirds of those monsters. Sleep tight, America.

For liberals who squeal about torture, human rights, and the dignity of human freedom, you’re in bed with monsters. Soak in it, hypocrites.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) December 17, 2014