The tumult over a sex-filled satire full of depictions of Pyongyang orgies and the death of North Korean despot Kim Jong-un has done nothing to dispel my dire world view.
And in a series of conversations, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense policy analyst for the Rand Corp., did nothing to dissuade me either after the FBI concluded that the government of Kim Jong-un was behind the attack by the group called “Guardians of Peace” (GOP). That conclusion prompted President Barack Obama, in his year-end press conference, to say “we will respond proportionally at a place and manner and time we chose.”
The President declined to offer specifics.
His options, of course, depend on how the administration views the attack.
Here are some things to consider.
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First, there is the economic cost. Sony executives estimate the company will lose nearly $200 million as a result of having their systems broken into and shut down, having sensitive information publicly released and canceling the Christmas Day release of the “The Interview,” the satire film about an assassination of Kim that sparked the North Korean response. There also is the ripple effect of financial losses from theaters, associated marketing and other revenue streams. But the attack on Sony has perhaps an even more disturbing effect, as evidenced by Sony’s decision to pull the film, a move Obama called “a mistake.”
“If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie,” said Obama, “imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reporting they don’t like, or even worse, 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.”
Then there are the threats, made by GOP (clever folks, those hackers) of attacks on movie theaters showing “The Interview.”
So how should the administration view the Sony hack attack?
“I would characterize it as an act of war,” says Bennett, who knows more than most in the U.S. what it is like to be on the wrong end of a Kim hissy fit.
Bennett, who advised Sony CEO Michael Lynton on the movie, which he has seen, was among those who had emails leaked by the hackers.
“It was a movie with a lot of sexual content and that sort of thing, designed for a young audience,” says Bennett. “But I thought the depiction of Kim Jong-un was particularly good. The actor did a fairly good job of depicting my sense of what Kim Jong-un is like — deceptive, clever, bloodthirsty. A very tough guy.”
Though the North Koreans are upset because they think “The Interview” shows Kim Jong-un’s assassination, Bennett says that’s not how the movie plays out. Seth Rogen, playing a TV reporter called upon to assassinate Kim, fails in his mission, says Bennett, and Dear Leader is only dispatched after he tries to kill the Rogen character.
But I didn’t reach out to Bennett for his cinematic acumen. Despite being caught up in the whole Sony mess, he remains an expert on national security in general and North Korea in particular.
The economic loss created by the hack attack, says Bennett, puts it at the edge of an act of war. The threats put it over the edge.
And that begs the question of how to respond.
Bennett says that in Korean culture, an opponent’s weakness is seen as opportunity.
“In Korean culture, if we react weakly, they will conclude they can keep doing this any time they want,” he says. “So we have to take some forceful actions.”
The hackers, he noted, didn’t act all at once, but incrementally, as each attack was met by…crickets. The concern, says Bennett, is that unchecked, the North Koreans could target power grids, water supplies and other critical infrastructure.
While the President didn’t say what his proportional response would be, Bennett has some suggestions. He has long argued that both Koreas will be better off in the likely event that Kim Jong-un is eventually offed by his own people. But Bennett, who coauthored “The Collapse of North Korea: Military Missions and Requirements,” does not believe it wise for that action to be taken by an outside party. There are, he says, other options.
Last year, after North Korea unleashed a destructive hack attack against South Korean TV stations, banks and personal computers, individuals claiming to be with the hacktivist group Anonymous returned the favor, says Bennett.
“They put almost all the major North Korean websites out of operation,” he says. “So there are some things like that in cyberspace we likely can do.”
The U.S. clearly has the capability, as the Washington Post recently pointed out. The paper obtained documents showing that in 2011, 231 offensive cyber operations were conducted and of those, nearly three-quarters were against top-priority targets, which former officials say includes adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea and activities such as nuclear proliferation.
Bennett offers another option.
Edit the unreleased movie down to the 10 or 15 minutes depicting Dear Leader getting offed and tell his government that if they don’t knock it off, Sony will deliver 100,000 copies on DVDs to the South Koreans who will then float them over in balloons, “so that you are going to get what you don’t want, so make a choice.”
The danger, of course, is escalation into a shooting war. But the administration, says Bennett, has to make it clear that option is on the table.
Likening Dear Leader to a mafia don concerned only about his own skin, Bennett suggests the U.S. put Kim Jong-un into the crosshairs.
“We have to let them know we are prepared to escalate,” he says. “Only our escalation is not against the people, but our target is you, Kim Jong-un.”
Not everyone holds this opinion.
Recently retired Air Force Col. Tony Buntyn, former vice commander of the Air Force Cyberspace Command, calls the actions against Sony “just another hack” and that the threats made by GOP are “just more North Korean bluster,”
Buntyn, now president of U.S. Cyber Solutions, a Tampa internet technology company, doesn’t see a real threat from all this.
“Does the North Korean government have the capability to come over here and blow up a theater?” he asks rhetorically. “If they did that, that’s an act of war. They are not going to risk that. It would be a very short war.”
But Buntyn doesn’t think it will come to that anyway.
“Personally, I was never going to see the movie,” he says. “Now, if it is open, I am going to go. Who is North Korea? Come and get me.”
He would even make it a family affair.
“I trust in the U.S. government,” he says. “They don’t always say everything they know. Given this situation, I know they know more than they are saying. I think they have a handle on it, I would take my wife and kids to see this movie on the day it opens,”
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With the Christmas/Chanukah season in full swing, I figured it was a good time to check back on a project I’ve written about frequently — the efforts by Romy and Gaby Camargo to build a spinal cord injury treatment center in Tampa. Camargo, a chief warrant officer with the 7th Special Forces Group, has been paralyzed from the shoulders down and in need of breathing assistance since being hit by a sniper’s bullet in Afghanistan on Sept. 16, 2008. For nearly three years, Camargo has been making the long drive for treatment in Orlando twice a week. Now he is a few steps closer to opening his Stay In Step SCI Recovery Center. The couple havw found a home for it — a 4,300-square-foot space at 10500 University Center Dr., Suite 130. They have raised about $340,000 of their projected $400,000 goal and hope to open the doors in February. But there’s a long list of equipment they still need, ranging from a $74,000 stepper stander therapy system to body solid resistance tubes at $55 a piece. For information, go to www.stayin step.org.
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The Pentagon announced the deaths of two soldiers in Afghanistan last week.
Sgt. 1st Class Ramon S. Morris, 37, of New York, New York, and Spc. Wyatt J. Martin, 22, of Mesa, Arizona, died Dec. 12, in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when the enemy attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device. They were assigned to 2nd Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
There have now been 2,346 U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the nation’s longest war. And three in Operation Inherent Resolve, the nation’s newest conflict.