There is no story in the news that illustrates our obsession with pop culture more than the Sony hack attack. North Koreans, upset about a movie that mocks their Dear Leader, launched the attack and threatened to attack movie theaters that showed the film. For the entire first week of the scandal, the media was entirely focused on what was "leaked" about movie stars and Sony executives. Only now are we starting to see the real story emerge.
This was a serious attack.
This was a cyberattack on U.S. soil by a foreign government. This isn't some hacktavist group looking for nude pictures of Kate Upton. This was a military operation, carried out by a central government with the intent of disrupting commerce in the United States. We would be well advised to take this seriously even though the reasons for the attack are quite silly. A young, culturally naive dictator doesn't like being mocked by Hollywood. Of course, in his mind, he is a big star. Dennis Rodman went to visit him after all. So this mocking really struck a nerve. He then acted like a child and launched a cyberattack on a movie company. You couldn't make this stuff up, and the immaturity is stunning. But what this also tells us is that we are incredibly vulnerable. Apparently, this attack was extremely sophisticated. He could've targeted our power grid or worse. The next dictator may choose to exploit those vulnerabilities, which leads me to my second point.
This childish dictator has nuclear weapons.
If ever there were an argument for taking extreme risks to stop nuclear proliferation, this is it. An impudent young man, raised in the fantasy world of North Korea's dictatorship, succeeded his father and now controls one of the largest militaries in the world. If Kim Jong-Un acts like this in response to a silly movie, what do you think he would do if the world really mocked him? The level of instability in this man's head should give us all a moment of pause. Presumably, he has his finger on the proverbial button. While he can't necessarily reach the United States with his nuclear weapons, he certainly can hit South Korea, maybe Japan, and either way cause substantial global chaos. And he may do so on a whim.
"Nuclear deterrence" is only a deterrent so long as the opponent is a rational leader. There is a serious problem, however, when the other side is unpredictable, unstable or insane. This is precisely why even reluctant hawks believe that stoping nuclear proliferation, by any means, is an acceptable risk. Yes, war is terrible, but nuclear war is worse. We can never really know who will inherit some unstable country's nuclear deterrent. Perhaps nuclear weapons are safe in the hands of the Pakistani military leaders, but what about the extremists that helped hide Osama Bin Laden right down the street from the military academy? Should we not fear those people getting their hands on nuclear weapons? The same holds true for Iran. Maybe the current Ayatollah will not use nuclear weapons to exterminate Israel, but what about the next guy? Should we not take these leaders at their word when they threaten to use weapons of mass destruction?
Liberals arguing for gun control in this country would never agree to allow mentally unstable citizens to possess firearms. As we've seen all too often, you give a crazy man a gun and he will shoot up a school, killing as many innocents as possible. Many of those liberals argue that we should ban all guns and confiscate weapons already in the possession of citizens; that disarming everyone to save even one child from gun violence is worth the trade. Yet, many of those same liberals, the President included, would allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and instead employ a strategy of "containment" and "deterrence." It is a near certainty that a nation that elects leaders who threaten to "wipe" other countries "off the map" will not always have rational leadership. We should anticipate that and act accordingly.
We live in a society with no privacy.
If you haven't already figured it out by now, let me make it clear. Everything you do, say, write, record, email, save, surf or snap is capable of being discovered. In fact, the vast majority of all of that information is already in the public view. You have no privacy. Cameras in public record your steps. Cameras on the street record the places you drive. The NSA has your phone and text records, showing the people you contact and, probably, the content of the messages. Mega-companies, foreign governments and the U.S. government have a record of every single thing you do on the internet. Every search, every website you visit and every password you change is recorded somewhere or monitored. The FBI and NSA have spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the past decade developing and deploying data-mining tools to catch everyone thinking about violating any law or launching any attack.
It is impossible to gather all of this information and have it never be used in a malicious way. Sony is case in point. Embarrassing emails, employee information, health information, you name it, all gathered, stored and hacked. The next time you're asked to give out some personal information to some insurance company or healthcare conglomerate, you have to ask yourself where that information will wind up. It may be North Korea.
It is absolutely time for us as a nation to demand that our privacy be restored. Mega-companies don't need to know what brand of socks I like and target internet ads to my interests. They don't need that information. They want it, sure. It makes them more money. But they don't need it and they are not in any way entitled to it. The same holds true for government. Our government doesn't need to know everywhere I've been or everyone I've talked to. They just don't. Even if they are catching criminals and terrorists with that information, there are better ways to do it and, even if there are not, this is one of those times that we should refuse to sacrifice liberty for security. A society in which everything we do is monitored is not free. To the contrary, it is very dangerous.
We continue to underestimate our adversaries.
Once again we have underestimated the ability and will of an adversary to do us harm. This is not a uniquely American trait, but we seem to be best at it. We mock Putin with photoshopped pictures of him and his "pet polar bear." Meanwhile, he invades and conquers a country. We mock ISIS as a "JV team," as they round up whole villages of women and children and exterminate them. We mock Kim Jong-Un with funny pictures and a movie, while he develops nuclear weapon delivery systems, cripples a company with a sophisticated hack, forces humiliating concessions from them and embarrasses the country.
At some point, we have to start taking these people seriously as the threats emerge, not after. If we don't, the next surprise could be something much worse than a hack attack over some movie.
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