Giving in to communist tyrants, private sector edition

Of course, by now everybody knows that early last week, North Korea hacked Sony, released a bunch of emails, movies and private information on actors and such, and then threatened worse if Sony released "The Interview," a Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy centered around a plot to kill Nork dictator Kim Jong-un. The Norks threatened to go full 9-11 on theaters showing the movie, set to open Christmas Day:

“The world will be full of fear,” the message reads. “Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.)”

The threat was enough to make most of the major movie distributors cancel plans to show the movie:

The bulk of the country’s 10 largest theater chains — a group that includes AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Carmike and Southern Theatres — announced they would delay showing the picture or would drop it altogether. In statements, many of the theater chains suggested that Sony’s lack of confidence in the film prompted their decision.
Regal, for instance, said its decision was “due to the wavering support of the film ‘The Interview’ by Sony Pictures, as well as the ambiguous nature of any real or perceived security threats.”

 In response, at least one theater, that Dallas location of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced plans to show "Team America: World Police" instead. Paramount pulled the plug on that idea

Forget those plans by Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and other theaters to run Team America: World Police in place of The Interview. The Austin-based chain says that Paramount has now decided not to offer South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2004 satire that focuses on Kim Jong-il, the late father of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Sony apparently doesn't know when, if or how it will or won't release "The Interview," thus completing the private-sector surrender to a despotic communist regime. Think of it as a bookend in a week of letting communist tyrants run roughshod over freedom.

 I guess it's heartening to see that national security incompetence is not limited to actual national policy, since Sony and the movie industry don't make policy. But it's not like they were getting instruction on profiles in courage.  Shortly after surrendering to the despotic communist regime in Cuba*, Emperor Barry and his minions offered pretty much nothing as a response to North Korea's hack attack on Sony Entertainment. Far too busy packing his golf clubs for his 2-1/2 week vacation in Hawaii, following Sony's surrender to the Norks, Emperor Barry's primary response seemed to be that the federal government apparently has no real role to play in preventing or responding to such attacks, which obviously raise major national security implications:

"If we set a precedent in which a dictator in another country can disrupt through cyber, a company's distribution chain or its products, and as a consequence we start censoring ourselves, that's a problem," Obama said.
"And it's a problem not just for the entertainment industry, it's a problem for the news industry," he said. "CNN has done critical stories about North Korea. What happens if in fact there is a breach in CNN's cyberspace? Are we going to suddenly say, are we not going to report on North Korea?
"So the key here is not to suggest that Sony was a bad actor. It's making a broader point that all of us have to adapt to the possibility of cyberattacks, we have to do a lot more to guard against them."

The industry press did not take too kindly to Barry's "What, me do something?" approach to throwing Sony under the bus. You might expect a president, faced with a situation where a foreign dictatorship essentially blackmailed a movie studio into pulling the release of film, attacking the studio's First Amendment rights by threatening terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, to take vigorous action to defend that studio's rights. Well, you'd be thinking of a different president, then. Barry ignored the threats of terrorist attacks and blamed Sony for being cowardly. Variety was not amused:

Just when things couldn’t have looked any worse for the studio, President Obama turned sharply critical of Sony in a news conference Friday, second-guessing its decision to withdraw “The Interview” from theaters.
Why he bothered to pass judgment on Sony at all may have come as some surprise at a time when assembled reporters were likely more interested in hearing more about the investigation into North Korea’s involvement, as well as the U.S. response.
Cynics might suggest that targeting Sony gave Obama something to distract from the precious little he offered on what he knew or planned to do next. Blaming the studio also shifts already mounting criticism that the U.S. lacks any coherent cyber-security strategies despite the growing number of attacks pounding not only the government but many other corporations.
In other words, think of the Obama subtext thusly: “Cut me some slack on not defining what exactly the ‘proportionate’ response to North Korea will be because, hey, it’s not my fault (cue finger-point at Sony).”

Rather than take a laissez-faire attitude toward internet attacks on the U.S. -- even if upon a private company -- the administration would have been better served to get really disproportional and just shut down North Korea -- kill the lights, the internet, everything that requires electrons. Most North Koreans wouldn't notice, but the regime sure would. Short of making them suffer -- really suffer -- the U.S. is not going to have any major deterring influence on the Nork hackers. Frankly, I think this -- if this is indeed us at work -- is something the Norks would be willing to endure if that's the price of their continued hack attacks:

North Korea is having major Internet problems, just days after President Barack Obama promised a proportional response to the devastating hacks against Sony.
The country, which the FBI accused last week of the cyberattack, is suffering from periodic Internet outages, and experts at DYN Research found that recent problems were out of the ordinary, according to a report from North Korea Tech.
"I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before," Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, told North Korea Tech. "Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn't be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently."

Losing access to their porn websites for a while probably isn't going to deter the Norks too much. I guess I could be wrong -- maybe they really value their porn.

* The Obama administration sacrificed its only leverage for political reforms in Cuba in exchange for absolutely nothing of real value to the U.S., but that's kind of what you might expect when you entrust your negotiations to a speechwriter. (Ben Rhodes, the White House aide who was primarily responsible for the negotiations with Cuba, is listed as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting. Yes, he really is a speechwriter. He has no national security background. But his brother is president of CBS News, so he has that going for him.)