Last week, the Senate unanimously passed legislation imposing sanctions on North Korea, matching legislation passed by the House. The President is put in the position of signing a bill that is veto proof, which is kind of astounding. Getting all the members of both houses of Congress to vote the same way on anything is almost impossible, but these measures come close. So, we might ask why Congress needs to pass legislation for something everyone agrees is needed and why it has taken so long? [ see US Senate Passes North Korea Sanctions Legislation, Wall Street Journal, 10 February. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-senate-passes-north-korea-sanctions-legislation-1455146983].
Two parts of this legislation are interesting in that regard. First, it is related to both the nuclear test North Korea did, and to the cyber attacks it conducted on Sony. Second, it has sanctions directed at Chinese businesses that help North Korea engage in their nuclear activities. It is clear that China has had a hand in almost every aspect of North Korean programs, and we are finally getting around to blaming the real culprit in all the nonsense North Korea does. Crazy as they are, North Korea can't do some of the things they are doing without a lot of technical help and economic assistance from China.
The Sony hack was in November 2014. The nuclear testing was in January 2016. Those events were far apart and seemingly unrelated. The North Koreans must be confused by our lack of response, but the Chinese certainly are not. When I testified at the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission, I characterized the Sony attack as a warning to us. It was destructive, i.e. It destroyed information on servers after taking it, sifting through it, and releasing certain parts of it damaging to the studios. It was clearly not something an irrational country with almost no Internet would do. China knows how to demonstrate a concept without being involved, and has done it repeatedly using proxies. North Korea is a favorite.
At the time, David Sanger at the New York Times, said the US was considering a range of responses that included retaliation against China for the theft of security clearance records in June 2015. [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/world/asia/us-decides-to-retaliate-against-chinas-hacking.html?_r=0 ]. Many thefts preceded that one, and the US did nothing but the Chinese knew they had crossed a red line with the OPM hack. It was discovered in March and they would have known then that we knew it had happened. After reading Sanger's article, they would have been glad the Sony hack had served it purpose. The US did nothing but talk about retaliation because it had no viable deterrence strategy.
The Chinese are ahead of us in cyber strategy. They demonstrate what will happen if there is retaliation for some of the thefts of data that they have been carrying out. They do it through a proxy so they can deny being involved. Our business leaders look around and say that hack at Sony was something we would not like to have here. They want the White House to be restrained in their response, especially the ones that have big businesses in China. In the meantime, the Chinese steal our technology with impunity. This is not just politics. It is clearly a lack of understanding of the damage done to this country by having China steal anything they can get their electronic hands on.
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