President Obama stopped short of calling the North Korea hacking an act of war.
The hack of Sony Pictures was instead “an act of cybervandalism,” Obama told CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday.
“Sometimes this is a matter of setting a tone and being very clear that we’re not going to be intimidated by some cyberhackers,” he said on “State of the Union” when asked whether he thought the hack was an “act of war.”
The president also stood by his criticism of Sony Pictures for pulling the comedy “The Interview” from its planned Christmas Day release.
Hackers from North Korea leaked thousands of internal documents and emails from Sony, while also making terroristic threats against theaters that were planning to show the movie, which depicts the assassination of leader Kim Jong-Un.
“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?”
This rare Sunday show appearance — for Candy Crowley’s last show on CNN — was the president’s first since Nov. 9, when he discussed the midterm elections.
