Hollywood is going crazy about the capitulation by Sony Picture Entertainment. If you haven't heard the story, the short version is that they caved in to N. Korean hackers.
What Hollywood and the news media are missing is that Sony isn't a mult-national in the US style. They're a Japanese firm with a few US figure heads.
They have Asian sensibilities and will act accordingly.
That means that they will move to save "face". They will not readily accept being embarrassed publicly.
That's why Sony agreed to the demands of these "terrorist" hackers.
The US military would be advised to make note of this incident and consider it carefully in future moves into the Pacific. You push a country into a corner in that region of the world and the reaction will be totally different than what we would normally expect. Historically many of our toughest fights have occurred in this region and I expect the trend to continue into the future.
Saving face, not bringing shame to the name of your family and a whole slew of what many progressive Americans would consider old fashioned values are alive and well there. Yeah. I hope the US military is paying attention.
As yet, there is no evidence that DPRK is behind the hacking, just the usual "authorities who can't be named" making charges. But that's nothing new. It's been suggested that China, with considerably more resources, was behind it but it may never be known who the culprits are.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Japan, they have no friends in their neighborhood anyhow.
Don Bacon
DeleteChinese would have nothing to gain from The Interview being pulled from theaters. It is not a story about them, it doesn't affect them, so they don't care.
The Chinese may or may not have done this. But what they do know now is how far is a leading corporation of one of USA's most powerfull allies is willing to go to in a conflict of its own. And that too after a re-election where every Japanese was supposed to be all gung ho about national unity and a strong mandate and projecting power through a maverick
DeleteThe employees of Sony realistically comprise a very decent/representative sample of Japans population. What is evident from this is the fact that the Japanese are just not interested in fighting a battle that is as inconsequential as this.....a corporate battle. The last time anti Japan protests happened in China and a whole lot of Japanese cpmpanies in China took a lot of flack and damage....the Japanese quickly and neatly swept it under a carpet and business as usual.
On your major point, yes it's true that Japanese, and Chinese (the basis of it all) are different from Westerners in their thinking. Reading a translation of The Tao Te Ching about Taosim is helpful. They tend to take a longer, less impulsive view of aggravations, for one thing. The Tao, the way, --think of water going down a hillside, encounters a rock, flows around it, and eventually gets to wherever the terrain leads.
ReplyDeleteSo one must not be the rock nor the water but the terrain itself.
DeleteNo. That's not The Way.
DeleteAgree with Sol, it's being really bothering me how CNBC, Bloomberg,etc keep saying this is an American company...lots of the emails were from Americans inside the company but SONY isn't an American company.
ReplyDeleteIt should make all those people that keep saying that in a conflict between China and US, that all these "Asian" countries would come flying to USA side and would support us in a "hot" war....
But it was an attack on a sacred US institution, Hollywood -- "Never before has there been such transparency about exactly how much a studio pays, and about how they handle negotiations.",,,"In Hollywood, Sony Hack's Chilling Effect On Movie Pipeline"..."Hollywood incredulous over Sony's 'unAmerican act of cowardice'"".
Deletehollywood and the press are misstating things a bit. hollywood isn't a sacred US institution. if anything they're at war with the citizenry and most of them are more "global citizens" rather than US patriots. that's another thing this hack revealed. just how back biting the entire place is. film execs talk about supposed allies like dogs and then they expect to be defended by the same people they've attacked. meanwhile the public sits back and drinks in the silliness of it all.
Deletethe only reason why this cave in is gaining attention is because a movie...the only thing that the supposed stars can do...was canned...and that directly affects their livelihood.
hollywood.... Kim / Norh Korea should just put a horse's head (or whatever pet the producer have) on the bed, just like the corleones did to these west coast hollywood types.. hacking is tooo .... impersonal... finding your beloved pet's head in your bed when you wake up in the morning is more .. shocking ?
DeleteSolomon misunderstood the Asian sensibilities, there is no such thing as "Asian sensibilities" and every countries are different.
ReplyDeleteWhat you describe is the "Japanese sensibility", which is very much a group-oriented culture where members are constantly mindful of how one's viewed in the eyes of peers. This is why Japanese culture places such a high value on protecting one's personal reputation(aka "honor") even at the cost of one's own life.
The "Chinese sensibility" in contrast is a highly individualized culture where one's objective is to maximize one's own benefit/profit any means, and Chinese don't care how one is viewed in the eyes of others as long as they can profit in the process, the Chinese culture it is all about "What's in it for me", not "For the common good of our country". This explains why Chinese tourists are notoriously ill-behaved outside of China because Chinese tourists don't care that their actions would make China look bad in the eyes of outsiders;
This cultural differences will explain why Japanese excel in team sports like baseball and soccer while sucking at individual player sports, while Chinese excel in individual player sports but absolutely such at team sports.
Having understood this highly individualistic nature of a Chinese person driven by "gain/loss" calculations in decision making thought process, the US strategists must understand that deals on any issues could be reached with the Chinese as long as there is something to be gained on the Chinese side in the bargaining process. Chinese do not make an agreement to save one's "honor/face/reputation", Chinese make an agreement to gain something they want and are willing to give and take.
you are wrong. you look at the Chinese society and think that they're individualistic when the very basis of the society is communist? don't mistake Hong Kong and perhaps a few wealthy individuals in some of the larger cities with the country as a whole.
Deleteyour arrogance is telling and your information wrong. your hatred of the Japanese clouds your view of the entire world and causes you to degrade the Japanese at every turn while pumping up the attributes of the one people in the region that the US sees as a potential enemy.
i truly am surprised that i continue to let you post here but you occasionally come up with a few nuggets of gold. i guess thats it.
Solomon
Delete> when the very basis of the society is communist?
So what kind of a communist society has an extreme disparity between the rich and the poor as severe as China's. Heck, China doens't even have a universal health care and no health insurance except for a small minority of voluntary employer provided ones, everyone else pays out of pocket.
The very fact that China never had a universal healthcare, which every other communist countries had, demonstrates that it was communist in name only; Communist China was really a feudalistic society that became capitalist in the mid-80s.
> while pumping up the attributes of the one people in the region that the US sees as a potential enemy.
What do you mean? How is Chinese being highly individualistic and making poor team players constitute pumping up the attributes of Chinese?
True that, besides having a one party system there is not much of a communist structure in place as you pointed out its missing the basics. China is as capitalistic as things get ,no one said captialism =democracy far from it.
DeleteAs for why Sony Pictures decided to pull the Interview, it was the peer pressure, not saving faces.
ReplyDeletehttp://recode.net/2014/12/17/the-interview-new-york-premiere-canceled-as-exhibitors-re-evaluate-films-release/
Rival Studios Urge Theaters to Drop Sony’s “The Interview” Over Terror Threat
The Sony Pictures Entertainment comedy at the center of a devastating cyber attack is facing another obstacle: Rival studios.
The other studios are concerned that hackers’ threats might cause audiences to stay home during the Christmas break, a time when moviegoers typically flock to theaters, the sources said.
Sony didn't agree to the demands. The movie wasn't going to be released because all the major movie chains backed out. Kinda hard to release a movie when 99% of all theaters refuse to show it. Sony/SPE at that point pretty much couldn't release the film and decided to put it in the vault and release it later.
ReplyDeleteAs far as embarassement is concerned. The damage had already been done. Complete dumps of all the senior email accounts plus myriad other documents are already out there. The hackers pretty much have already released everything that could embarass sony. If anything, the real emarassment is that Sony, despite being a target of numerous hacks over the years, still had a division where security was at best a complete after thought and run so poorly that they did completely brain dead things like store private encryption keys unencrypted or with plain text files containing the passwords. The greater embarassment is that anyone of a senior level in SPE still has a job. To put it in perspective, the complete lack of security and willful neglect of security would be like if every document at Coca Cola had the secret formulas printed as a cover sheet.
Christ, the company failed even having a basic email retention policy enforcement. Go to any major corp in Silicon valley and try saving your emails for years. No major company in silicon valley would of had anywhere near the penetration sony had nor would they of been able to get so much.
Considering that hackers were extorting Sony for cash before turning the plate and attacking the 'Interview' i kind a doubt it DPRK is behind it.
DeleteThis is Seth Rogen's one and only chance to appear on TIME Magazine.
ReplyDeleteUnrelated news, Taiwan just showed their new anti-ship missile. Looks bad ass.
ReplyDeletehttp://defense-update.com/20141218_hsiung-feng-iii.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=feedburner/defenseupdate#.VJOgR__g4NA
I read up on that. Looks decent.
Deletehttp://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/ma-31.html
Deletehttp://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-163.html
Copy of a copy. Boeing took the Strela-MA (simplified KH-31/AS-17 Krypton) after Russia foolishly tried to 'glasnost' sell it on the U.S. market as a target, copied and simplified it even further and the Coyote was the result.
Taiwan likely borrowed or stole from this package (there were also rumours of the HFIII going back to the late 90s when mention was made of the French ANS which was of a similar configuration).
Myself, if you want to do this old-school (close-in and with limited defense penetration capabilities at only .5nm per second) you are still better off going with a Naval TACMs capability as this will get you 300km of reach in a similar 2,900lb class munition, delivered at an average of Mach 4.5 @ burnout, Mach 3.5 terminal. It's shorter at about 13ft in length and it's fatter at about 24" diameter which means the motor can run end to end for a tailored impulse with cargo bays on the sides which can dispense a pair of ADM-160 MALDs which can then come in lower.
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-140.html
Shoot short on simple GPS/INS coordinate homing, dispense outside the terminal Grumble or HQ-9 equivalent envelopes, cross the horizon at Mach 1.25 and, with target acquisition, either overspeed the turbine to Mach 2 or so or add an axial (FFAR) booster rocket to get to Mach 3 and score the terminal Kashtan or equivalent penetration.
On it's own, MALD will fly 500nm and only weighs 300lbs with a 10ft length.
While the warhead which Raytheon tested was only on the order of 50lbs, that would be more than enough to crack the facing on a SPY-2 equivalent (AMDR etc.) aperture. Alternately, you could go for an explosive pumped HPM array and now you don't have to get much more than 1-2nm away from the protected target to kill it electronically.
The big issue is, of course, ASST. Helicopters are simply too slow, short ranged and easily visible in look down to be trusted as a principle targeting aid, even at the terribly short ranges of 80nm.
Instead, you want something like this-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjqcezm4ZDI
Which gives you a stealthed enclosure capable of 300 knots and 20,000ft as wide horizoning.
Another unrelated news item but this is the first time I have heard about this, I know that the Brits are in trouble, that they were asking for USMC to operate F35Bs on their carriers but this is ridiculous...."A prophesy which started to come true earlier this year when the Royal Navy had to do a deal to borrow engineers from the US Coast Guard to help man it's warships." WTF?!?!?!?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/policy/2014/12/18/new-government-will-decide-future-of-uk-military-general-nick-houghton/20614949/
Holy shit, Lockheed Martin is now proposing a "Super F-35" to replace F-22(F-X) and Super Hornet(F/A-XX).
ReplyDeletehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/new-super-f-35-rule-the-us-military-11892
LM is running out of believable promises for the failing F-35, so it's time to conjure up a new unicorn to woo congress and suck the Pentagon budget dry with.
DeleteThe only way to win this game is not to play. We should immediately cancel all remaining F-35 development, and buy/upgrade existing systems.
As for the US retaliation, there is a way to distribute Stuxnet grade malware into North Korea. There are tons of USB keys containing pirated South Korean TV drama and comedy shows being smuggled into North Korea from Chinese border, so load CIA malware into those USB keys and watch the malware spread in North Korea like wild fire.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2014/12/18/world/asia/things-that-annoy-north-korea/index.html
Soap operas
North Korea is well known for its efforts to rigidly control what information from outside its borders filters through to its citizens. But that apparently doesn't stop some of them from eagerly seeking out illicit copies of TV shows from South Korea and other countries. South Korean dramas are reported to be particularly popular.
The potential risks of watching the shows, which highlight the disparities between North Korea's largely impoverished population and its neighbor to the south, are enormous. South Korea's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in October that officials from the North's ruling party had been executed by firing squad for viewing a South Korean soap opera.
no offense,cbut i rather faced north korean firing squad than spending my life in jail forced to watch korean drama endlessly...
DeleteKind of a tangent but it amuses me to no end how the same Hollywood-types who cheered at the site of Manning and Snowden leaking national secrets are now complaining that their own hacked data shouldn't be displayed on the web.
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese may have something to do with the hack. This hack did NOT originate from DPRK: DPRK does NOT have an internet link that large to suck up 5 TB worth of data in such a short time. China does. And by the way, this attack has to originate from China because if this was done in any western country the physical site would've been in the news already.
ReplyDeleteThe word in the street is that the Chinese are NOT at all pleased with this action, yet again. This is why they've "bent over backwards" to the questions and un-officially pointed a finger to. China cyber officials are known to have trained DPRK cyber hackers. And military hackers are suppose to be hiding in the background, which the DPRK hackers clearly didn't do. What really ticked off the Chinese cyber officials is that the Chinese have developed an exploit no one (but themselves) have seen. And the DPRK hackers used this exploit to hit Sony.
The question now is this: What can the US do to punish DPRK? NOTHING. Another useless embargo? How about an equally useless UN Resolution?
What can DPRK do? Short of launching a physical attack on SK, EVERYTHING. DPRK can "go to town". Hack more commercial websites, maybe a few power grids ... How about crash the US air traffic control tower's system at, for example, La Guardia. DPRK knows they can do anything and get away with murder. The have a "playbook" and have read Obama is gutless. All roar and no bite. Zzzzz ...
Obama said Friday the U.S. will respond "proportionally," in a "place and time and manner" of their choosing. He also called for improvements in cybersecurity.
ReplyDeleteSony has been hacked 56 times in the last 12 years, many seen here.
But this case involves Hollywood, which is a major campaign funding source for national politicians, which makes it a "national security" matter. Sure.
Now that was a comprehensive review of Sony's cyber security. Thanks for the link.
DeleteI said: What can the US do to punish DPRK? NOTHING.
DeleteI am wrong. The US can retaliate. But first, let me explain. I am a from the Philippines and we have a saying "talo pikon". It means "if I can get an negative reaction from you (like you get upset) then YOU LOSE". Why did DPRK hacker(s) do this? The movie The Interview. Due to the subject matter of the movie, Sony may no longer be able to make money: Sony can't show this in cinemas around the world, Sony can't make DVD nor can Sony get movie streaming companies (like Netflix) to show this. In short, Sony is in a bind.
What if the US Government "buy" the rights to the movie and then allow the movie to be downloaded using BitTorrent. Alternatively, the US can announce to the world that they will "turn a blind eye" of people downloading the movie over BitTorrent.
Think about it: If the movie goes to BitTorrent, WHO will DPRK retaliate??? They can't systematically hack every PC in the planet.
Here's another thing ... If the US Government doesn't want to distribute the movie via BitTorrent, they can host it themselves. If DPRK will try to attack the system then we can all learn what methods they are using.
It was wrong to make a caricature of this man.
ReplyDeleteWhen you use a man's likeness without his permission, it is identity theft.
When you imply something as invidious as assassination of that man as a head of state, even as a joke, it is certain to be taken invidiously and is possibly libelous (given the justifications used in the storyline).
When you belittle the leader of a threat state-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkJA1rb8Nxo
By making him seem like a little boy rather than a dignified leader, it is certain to negatively effect U.S. foreign policy initiatives and, in this case, put U.S. members of the armed forces at heightened risk for such things as hatchet attacks at border stations and that is treason.
My view of the story presented in the trailer is that it makes utter asses out of Americans at the same time it leaves Kim Jong Un looking far too human and approachable in a storyline that is both trite and vacuous.
I don't know the man but I for one am glad that someone still takes life as their reputation in it seriously and has the power to do something about it. The world would be a better place if the powers that control Hollywood got a regular teeth kicking like this, given the slamjob they do on our society, morals and presented cultural sophistication to the planet.
if you're a public leader it comes with the territory. how many times has Obama been mocked and made fun of? countless times. what about Tony Blair? Putin? even Jesus Christ has been the subject of derisive humor. only the little muppet from N. Korea has decided to attack a corporation for it.
Deleteon this one i totally disagree with you.
He does have a point though Sol. Can you imagine Hollywood making a comedy about the successful assassination of Obama, Merkel, Cameron, or any other living western leader? Would they dare make such a movie about Putin? Or Netanyahu?
DeleteWhat would the FSB or Mossad do if they tried?
Hollywood has backed down before from showing depictions of Mohammad. But only because Islamists are willing to defend their dignity. If the rest of us took our dignity as seriously as they do, Hollywood would reflect our cultural values instead of crapping all over them constantly.
The only silver lining here is Thank heavens Sony didnt make one of those silly Allah/Prophet Muhammed type movies. Again.
ReplyDeleteSony is international company with world wide distribution. It is forbidden by Islamic law to depict the face of their prophet. Why risk a world wide boycott from moslems ? If there's one thing that everyone should learn in today's world, it is respectiong other nation and other culture..
Deletewhat if some nutjob in syria create a movie showint beheading of obama / biden / bush ? im sure every american would roar in disgust (well maybe those obama haters will cheer the movie lol)... It's 2 way street there...
this hacking scandal and the blaming of north korea smells like something rotten under the leaves.. feels like the whole NK thing is just 'misdirection' , an easy way blaming NK for reason unknown, mostly a failed attempt to blackmail and extort money from sony , then conveniently blamed NK as culprit..
ReplyDeleteit feels like the badly acted terrorists in Die Hard (?) movie, pretending to be some kind of international terrorist holding a japanese company employee hostage , while in fact they just common thieves trying to rob the goods in the safe deposit..
it's about money , not some dumb revenge of the hermit kingdom by the Dark Lord Kim..
as a side note, didnt the north korean also got blamed for the cover up / blunder that sunk south korean destroyer a few years ago ? independent analysis by international experts showed no evidence of north korean attack causing the loss of cheong nan..
Could you sound any more like a NK shill buddy?
Delete