Sony Pictures Entertainment was set to release a satirical comedy, “The Interview,” in late 2014, but a cyberattack hit the organization that leaked corporate information, leading the company to initially pull the film and opening up a string of theories over who was behind the attack and how to respond.

Speculation began to mount as a clearer picture of the unprecedented hacking, both comprehensive and large in size, began to emerge. The breach is thought to be retribution for Sony’s production of the film, which carries a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Then, a threat was directed at movie theaters and moviegoers planning to screen and see “The Interview.” The message warned those against involvement ahead of the film’s Dec. 25 opening, indicating a “bitter fate” and alluding to the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

An unknown group, The Guardians of Peace “GOP,” claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. Media and those familiar with North Korea began to point blame on the country, which had already publicly condemned the film last June and has a history of cybercrime. Responding to accusations, top North Korean leadership rejected any involvement in the attack.

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The White House responded as Sony canceled the film’s New York premiere and said it would discontinue distribution. Following his year-end press conference, President Barack Obama condemned the hacking, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that North Korea was behind the attack. The President said the United States would respond “proportionally,” and on Jan. 2, signed an Executive Order that put into action a series of sanctions imposed by the Department of the Treasury.

David Straub, a Korea expert at Stanford University, answered questions about the Sony hacking and its policy implications for the United States and North-South Korean relations. Straub is the associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He formerly served as the State Department’s Korean affairs director.

What do we know about the Sony hacking? Who’s responsible?

Based on many types of evidence, including confidential information, U.S. government officials appear to be quite confident that North Korea did in fact conduct this operation. There’s still some disagreement in the media and among tech experts over who is responsible. They’ve cited a number of reasons but the main one is that the FBI’s official statement attributing the attack to North Korea provided evidence that they believe is far from conclusive. I myself am not a technical expert, but based upon my following North Korea for many years – the attack strikes me as being very likely to have been a North Korean operation. The FBI statement noted that the Sony attack is similar to an attack that the North Koreans conducted against South Korean banks and media outlets in March 2013. In that attack, many South Korean banks had their hard drives completely wiped clean. It was a hugely destructive attack and very similar to what happened to Sony.

Does North Korea’s response to the Sony hack coincide with past behavior?

In addition to the 2013 South Korean bank cyberattack, the North Koreans apparently sank a South Korean naval vessel in 2010, killing 46 sailors. In both instances, the North Koreans denied that they did it, expressed outrage over being accused, demanded that the South Koreans produce proof, said that they could prove that they didn’t do it, and then requested that the South Koreans conduct a joint investigation. These same demands are being made in response to the U.S. blaming Pyongyang for the Sony cyberattack. It couldn’t be more similar. More generally, the North Korean regime is very calculating. They know they can’t win an outright military confrontation with South Korea, much less the United States, so what they do is try to find a weak link and go after it in a way in which they have plausible deniability – a situation where it’s very difficult for the attacked party to prove who did it.

Describe North Korea’s hacking capabilities.

North Korea is a very secretive country, so it’s hard to be completely certain of their cyber capabilities. However, according to many accounts, the North Korean government has established professional hacking schools and units over the years, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of trained hackers. North Korea has engaged in a number of attacks in the past, the most prominent one was the attack on South Korean banks in March 2013. But also, a few years ago, North Korea conducted less sophisticated attacks on major U.S. government websites.

Why would they conduct an attack?

The North Koreans appear to have both the capability and the motivation to attack Sony. The nation’s entire political system rests on a cult of personality – now a cult of family, actually – that began with the founder of the regime, Kim Il-sung, and extends to his grandson today, leader Kim Jong-un, who has been in power since Dec. 2011. It’s the only thing holding the political system together at this point. The cult of personality is so strong that any direct criticism of the top leader is something that North Koreans will compete among each other to reject. From this standpoint, it seems very likely that they would feel they had to prevent the showing of a movie that features an assassination of Kim Jong-un. And, the hackers had plenty of time to prepare for and implement the attack because everyone knew well ahead of when the movie would be released.

The United States placed new financial sanctions on North Korea. What impact will the sanctions have?

President Obama made it clear that the U.S. government would respond at a time, in a place, and in a manner of its own choosing. Not all measures taken would be made public. So far, the first publically announced measure was the President’s Executive Order on Jan. 2 imposing additional sanctions on a number of North Korean agencies and officials. This in itself is unlikely to have major consequences because most of those entities were already sanctioned. But, the Executive Order states that the sanctions are being implemented not only because of the cyberattack against Sony, but more generally because of North Korea’s actions and policies, including its serious human rights abuses. So in a sense, the North Koreans got the United States to expand its reasons for sanctioning them.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking, saying the United States will "respond proportionally," at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19. Photo credit: WhiteHouse.gov

What other steps will the United States likely take?

President Obama left open the possibility that North Korea might be returned to the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which the nation was removed in 2008. I think it was a mistake to remove North Korea from that list in the first place. It was done to promote progress on the nuclear talks, which eventually failed, and ignored a number of terroristic actions that North Korea has committed in recent years. Another possibility, which is being pushed by Republicans in Congress, is to increase financial sanctions that mirror the type that were successfully implemented in Iran.

How will the U.S. response influence cybersecurity policy going forward?

The attack on Sony is a huge wakeup call to American businesses, and even to the U.S. government. It’s the first attack of this size on a company located in the United States. It got tremendous profile in the media and the President has been personally engaged in responding. Nearly everyone has heard about it, so U.S. companies are now going to be focused much more on cybersecurity because it has exposed some potential vulnerabilities – a “if North Korea can do it, presumably others can too” mentality. Moreover, if an attack can be executed on a film company, it could also be done to other businesses and even to elements of U.S. critical infrastructure.

How do you view North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s possible offer to meet with South Korean leadership this year?

Kim Jong-un said that he was open to the possibility of a summit with South Korea in his annual New Year’s address, although he made no specific proposal. He made clear that the summit would be conditional on actions to be taken in advance by South Korea. Among these, Kim demanded ending U.S.-South Korean military exercises and halting the flow of propaganda-filled balloons sent over the border into the North by non-governmental activist groups in the South. Moreover, North Korea has a history of expanding its conditions later, without any warning. So, I think one has to be skeptical. The signal is unfortunately less likely to be a sincere effort toward real, sustained dialogue, and more likely to be a North Korean propaganda effort devised to confuse, divert and divide international public opinion. That said, South Korea has acted entirely appropriately in welcoming the signal and reiterating its own offer of high-level talks. Let’s hope for the best.

David Straub also participated in an interview with Public Radio International on Jan. 1 about the prospect for North-South talks, the audio can be accessed on the PRI website.

China is building more nuclear power plants than any other country today, with 21 plants up and running, 28 under construction and another 58 planned for development. The world’s most populous country is anxious to reduce its reliance on air-polluting fossil fuels and focus on alterative sources for a growing middle-class that is consuming more energy.

This rapid expansion in the number of nuclear power plants and associated nuclear fuel-cycle operations, such as fuel fabrication, possible fuel recycling and waste disposal, pose enormous nuclear safety and security challenges. Safety concerns were exacerbated by the 2011, tsunami-induced Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Security concerns also stem from the fact that nuclear materials must be safeguarded to stay out of the hands of non-state actors and the facilities protected from potential terrorist attacks. These issues are of great concern to Chinese and Americans, so it stands to reason that China and the United States should want to join forces.

Four CISAC scholars – including veterans of Track II diplomacy, Siegfried Hecker and Chaim Braun – are working behind the scenes trying to get both sides to do just that.

The four traveled in October to China for meetings with Chinese scientists and policy analysts to discuss new approaches to nuclear security at a weeklong conference in Hangzhou and a one-day workshop in Beijing. The conference hosted top international nuclear energy and security experts. It was one in a continuing series featuring CISAC scholars and colleagues from several Chinese nuclear institutes and think tanks.

“We’re certainly back on a very positive slope with the Chinese,” said Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC who first began visiting his counterparts in China in 1994 as head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “They are very keen to foster continued cooperation on all things nuclear. It’s important in terms of national security – and it’s of great benefit to both sides.”

The Chinese have been a nuclear weapon state for decades, but are relative latecomers to nuclear electricity. While it only produces some 3 percent of the world’s nuclear energy today, China is on its way to become a world leader in nuclear power production and technology exports by 2020.

“The Chinese are taking a really pragmatic view of nuclear power,” said Jason Reinhardt, a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC and national security systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories. He traveled with Hecker and Braun to attend the conference, along with Larry Brandt, a visiting scholar at the center.

“All of us are better off if countries like China and Russia and the U.S. work together on nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues,” Reinhardt said. “So part of that is just going over there and seeing what they want to do and how they want to collaborate.”

Reinhardt is working on his Ph.D. at Stanford in decision and risk analysis with advisor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, a professor of engineering and CISAC affiliated faculty member. He believes systems analysis can provide insights to improve capabilities to counter nuclear terrorism, facilitate nuclear agreements and reduce the risks of nuclear accidents.

“I think that the way policies are formed and the way technical information is used to inform policies is very different in China, as a matter of history and culture,” Reinhardt said. “So I’m trying to create a compelling story as to why systems analysis is a great way to collaborate between countries.”

Reinhardt said China and the United States have different priorities and approaches to nuclear security, with Beijing placing a high priority on preventing radiological and power plant attacks. The United States has done much since 9/11 to protect its nuclear power plants. Washington’s concerns are focused more on terrorist attacks with nuclear bombs and the potential of radiological, dirty bomb attacks. 

What is systems and risk analysis with regard to nuclear security?

Systems analysis is a structured scientific approach to tough problems, used to inform decision-making, Reinhardt said. One of the best sets of tools available – particularly when there is a lot of uncertainty – is decision and risk analysis.

And nuclear security is rife with uncertainty. What might an attack look like? Who are the attackers? What would the consequences be? How might the attackers change their strategy given our investments in countermeasures?

The questions are many and the connections complex. Risk analysis can borrow from probability theory, game theory and economics to bring some order to this chaos and provide insights that can inform policymakers.

“Systems analysis is using science and engineering techniques to answer policy questions for government,” said Reinhardt, whose work at Sandia includes projects with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focusing on countering nuclear terrorism, promoting international engagement, and strengthening border security.

“We talk about concepts and taxonomies and ways to organize thinking, then mathematical models to help explore trade-offs – and then there are physical models and we go out in the field and experiment to try and get smarter,” Reinhardt said. “All of these help us understand the implications of proposed policies.”

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Reinhardt gave a presentation in China in which he proposed a joint study to develop a common framework. Moving forward, the study would primarily be academically focused in an effort to inform policymakers – not to set policy.

“I said that building a common framework for analysis and exercising those together would be a really powerful tool for creating collaboration at a very high level,” he said. “The United States and China have cooperated in areas of nuclear security in the past. These new efforts will build on that success and take them to a new cooperative level.”

He suggested they begin to work together to create a model that would:

1. Develop a list of potential attack scenarios, compile a list of potential perpetrators, and estimate probabilities of attack;
2. Compare the efficacies of different types counterterrorism measures to ward off radiological terrorism attacks;
3. Determine which countermeasures can and should be the focus of collaborative technical research;
4. And determine the next steps to develop Chinese and U.S. collaborations on countermeasures.    

The CISAC team will follow up with their Chinese colleagues during a visit in February and work to bring a young Chinese researcher to the center during the first half of the academic year.

“They’re trying to understand what they can implement to reduce internal and regional nuclear risks,” he said. “This requires that you first consider how to understand, assess, and measure these risks. Doing that together, I think we can come up with some answers that are valuable to both countries.”

A Growing Focus on Nuclear Power and Climate Change

The meetings in China came just as Washington and Beijing announced a landmark pact to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s two largest consumers of energy. China is increasingly turning to nuclear power to address the adverse consequences of fossil fuels. As China expands its research and dependence on nuclear power – which in turn will cut down on greenhouse gas emissions – CISAC intends to help the Asian powerhouse protect its nuclear energy resources from potential accidents and deliberate attacks.

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Braun, a consulting professor at CISAC and an expert on nuclear proliferation smuggling rings and power plants around the world, also attended the conference and was invited along with Hecker to visit the Qinshan Nuclear Station about 50 miles southwest of Shanghai.

“For me, the visit to Qinshan’s Phase 3 plant was especially exciting, as I worked on the early phases of the construction of Qinshan Phase 3 while at Bechtel,” said Braun, who earlier in his career belonged to the Bechtel Power Corporation’s Nuclear Management Group and led studies on plant performance and maintenance.

Braun said Qinshan Phase 3 is now used as an experimental station to explore reprocessed uranium recycling and experiment with an alternate nuclear fuel, namely thorium.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, China leads the global clean-energy race, and last year attracted $54.2 billion in investment for alternative energies. That includes exporting safe, reliable nuclear technology to other countries that want to do the same.

“Russia and China are the two most important technological relationships we should be building right now,” Reinhardt said. "Any prospects for the future of arms control and reductions are all predicated on continued relationships with Russia and China.”

SCPKU hosted the International Diplomacy Lecture Series this fall which focused on driving discussions to better understand U.S. and cross-cultural diplomacy between the U.S., Asia, and China.  As part of the series, Karl Eikenberry's talk, "Post-Karzai Afghanistan," addressed how the new president and his administration will face a daunting set of security, governance, and economic challenges, even as the U.S.-led NATO coalition continues the drawdown of its combat forces.  Eikenberry was former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and is currently at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) as a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Distinguished Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  Terry Lautz's lecture, "Cultural Diplomacy in East Asia and U.S. China Relations," evaluated China's soft power push and compared the practice of cultural diplomacy in East Asia and the United States.  Lautz is a Visiting Professor at Syracuse University and former Henry Luce Foundation Vice President.  Thomas Fingar's talk, "U.S. China Relations and the 'Re-Balance' to Asia," analyzed the origins and objectives of the Obama Administration's "Re-Balance" to Asia as well as questions and concerns raised by the China and others in the region. Fingar is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI at Stanford University.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU October 27, 2014, as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.
Photo credit: SCPKU