December 26, 2014 • 27 mins
Did North Korea really wage cyberwar to stop The Interview from airing? How did this happen -- and is there a conspiracy afoot? Join Ben and Matt as they welcome HowStuffWorks tech expert Jonathan Strickland onto the show for a discussion of the recent Sony hacks.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
ladies and gentlemen, I'm Ben. We've got our super producer,
Noel is always on the ones and twos. But that's
(00:22):
not all right. Yeah, we got Matt. I'm the guy
who's here who listens mostly and sometimes fills in. But
we've got one other person been Yes, our very special guest.
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up. I don't care where
you are. Clap. If you're in a place where you
can't clap, you shouldn't be there anyway. Anyhow, Clap and
cheer for our friends. Special guest, resident tech expert and
(00:43):
host of numerous how suff work shows, Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
as a it's a pleasure to be on the show.
I love the show. I am so glad to be
on this show. You are distorting my voice right a
little bit? Yeah, okay, alright, Just I mean, I know
you said my name so clearly. My identity is already
(01:04):
out there, but I it would just made me feel
a little more, you know, comfortable. Sure, Yeah, Now, the
reason we have Jonathan on the show. Yeah, I'm dying
to hear this. You are our tech expert. You're the
guy that Ben and I go to when we've got
something pressing, recovering something that is tech heavy, because you
know your stuff. Buddy. I follow, I follow the tech news,
(01:25):
that's right, And and today we're covering something really tech heavy,
the hack attacks that were perpetrated against Sony Pictures Entertainment
most recently, not the two thousand and eleven attacks, yes,
or the attacks on the Sony network, the PlayStation network,
or any of the other ones. Like you were mentioning
the Microsoft UM in particular the ones on Sony Pictures
(01:50):
Entertainment because it has had some weirdly far reaching consequences. Yeah,
and we're just gonna kind of go over I don't
mean to co opt this, by the way, but we're
just gonna go over uh kind of a timeline of
events and uh just kind of look at what happened,
what we know so far and the effects. Sounds great. Yeah,
(02:13):
I I have followed the Sony story quite a bit,
and I am interested to hear what you guys have
to think about. You know this, this is a big one, right,
This is a big story for multiple reasons, not just
the extent of the attack, which I'm sure you guys
will get into, but also, like you were saying that,
the consequences of that attack, how it's it's affecting everything
(02:35):
from business decisions, which you might call draconian or cold hearted,
depending upon your perspective. It's it's really opening up yet
another UH avenue for the criticism of unequal compensation in
the workplace. This is something that has been a scene
(02:56):
throughout two thousand fourteen in the tech sector and elsewhere. Uh.
There are a lot of themes that are all wrapped
up in this one story. So thank you very much
for having me on for this one. Are you kidding? No,
I'm not kidding. If I were a kidding, I would say, hey,
North Korea, bring it on. I am kidding. Well, technically,
the name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic
(03:18):
of Korea. It's a country that's slightly smaller than Mississippi. Uh.
South Korea is actually a little bit smaller than North Korea,
but has double the population. If you have watched the
news in the past few years, then you probably know
North Korea is the thing that pops up with a
some kind of bellicost hyperbolic threat about reigning fire and
(03:42):
their nuclear Their nuclear work is something that garnered a
lot of attention here in the West. Yeah, and also
they have a habit of doing things like missile tests. Well,
perhaps there are other things going on in the Pacific area. Um,
there's also and you see this kind of of increase
in I guess, I mean it's almost like showmanship. It's
(04:04):
it's not quite aggression. It's kind of very Cold War
era kind of stuff where North Korea will put on
a demonstration and then the United States will hold war
games in that area in that region, or North Korea
will warn against war games and then after they happened,
then put on a demonstration. And so it's a very odd,
(04:24):
sort of almost cartoonish relationship here. Like if you were
to explain to this to someone who had no knowledge
about relations between North Korea and the rest of the world,
they would think you were talking about some sort of
fantasy novel Dr. Seuss book. Maybe, because one interesting fact
that some people don't know is that North Korea never
(04:46):
officially made peace after what is known as the Korean War.
In the West, there is a ceasefire which holds, which
is why we have a d m Z, which is
a lovely little spot of bio diversity actually on the
Korean peninsula. We say all this just to say that
it is and has been, since the close of the war,
remarkably tense situation between most of the rest of the
(05:09):
world and the world's only patrilineal communist dictatorship. I think,
I think, I think North Korea and China are kind
of buddies, right, but pretty much no one else. Um. Yeah,
and did you know trivia, one of the world's most
dangerous golf courses, butts up against the DMZ, so you
(05:32):
do not want to knock the ball out of bounds?
Games so much more interesting? Yeah? You thought the ones
in Florida with alligators were bad? Yeah? I really want
to know the rules, like the standing rules for if
ball goes past this point, you just you call it
out of bounds and you play it again. Is there
just a stack of balls? Then? Yeah? I don't know
(05:52):
anymore to tell again, let's let's get back to the hacking.
So yeah, so funny thing happens June A well funny
Maybe it depends on your taste in comedy talking about
the trailer for the film The Interview, which is a
film starring Seth Rogan and Uh and what's his face
(06:14):
the Franco Right, James Franco and Uh. Premise of the
film is that you've got a celebrity talk show host guy.
He has. He does this show where it's essentially he
sits down with other like celebrities and has a conversation
with them, very fluffy stuff and Uh and his producer
is about to dump him to go do bigger, better
(06:37):
things when they get word that Kim Jongoon, the current
leader of North Korea, is a huge fan of the
show and wants them to come and interview him, and
that allows James Franco's character, who is the host, to
hold on to Seth Rogan who's his producer, and go
over there. Meanwhile, they are contacted by the United States
government and told, Hey, while you're over there, if you
(06:59):
could just do us a solid and kill Kim Jong
while you're there, that would be great. And then hilarity
is supposed to ensue. Right in theory, this is a comedy, yes,
just interesting trivia here. I was listening to Howard Stern
interview with Seth Rogan and he you know, because he
wrote it or co wrote it, I guess. And he
(07:19):
was saying that it was initially supposed to be Kim
Jong Ill was the bad guy that they're supposed to
go assassinate, but when he died, they changed it over.
And so when we move forward to June tween, we
start seeing some signals from the North Korean government, isn't
that right? Yeah, there was a reaction from a North
Korean official. I don't want to butcher his name, so
(07:42):
I'm just tell you Kim Mung Choi. Yeah, Well, Kim
Young Choi says, this is a quote. There's a special
irony in this storyline as it shows the desperation of
the U. S Government and American society. A film about
the assassination of a foreign leader mirrors what the US
has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. And let
(08:06):
us not forget who killed Kennedy. Americans from North Korea. Yeah,
and this is actually kind of the norm for their
diplomatic tone. That's an interesting way of putting it. Yes,
that our diplomatic tone. They're diplomatic. It sometimes lacks diplomacy,
but yes, yeah, so This is uh, Matt, as you
(08:28):
have said in these wonderful notes. Uh, this is not
the first time the North Korean government played a part
of antagonist in a Hollywood film. Yeah, there were several others.
There was a James Bond movie where in North Korea,
I guess was the bad guy. Um. And then, like
you said, to America, which is still one of my
favorite movies. Yeah. And then there's that remake of Red Dawn,
(08:48):
which I still have not seen well. And the interesting
thing there was that the original villains and Red Dawn
were to be China, but the decision was made to
switch China to North Korea, and of course for or
the reason that everyone would suspecting money. Yeah, China is
an enormous market for United States films, but if they
(09:10):
were to make China the bad guy, that endangered that
entire market. Plus there's this incredibly incestuous relationship with Hollywood
and Beijing that we could go into, but it's not
really relevant here. But any rate, North Korea became the
bad guys in that film because of that. And so
this president exists on both sides. But by July of
(09:33):
we have North Korean Ambassador to the U n Ja
Song numb right into bon Ki Moon, who, as you know,
is the South Korean head of the u N at
this time, and uh he makes uh. The North Korean
ambassadors makes a really great point in the following quotation
to allow the production and distribution of such a film
(09:55):
on the assassination of an incumbent head of a sovereign
state should be regarded as the most undisguised sponsoring of
terrorism as well as an act of war. The United
States authorities should take immediate and appropriate actions to ban
the production and distribution of the aforementioned film, otherwise it
will be fully responsible for encouraging and sponsoring terrorism. Now, clearly,
(10:18):
if the United States government did engage in such things,
that would immediately be a case of censorship in the
United States, we generally consider to be something we're not
supposed to engage in on a governmental level. And let's
also not forget that the West is home to so
many parody films. The things that have been done on
(10:41):
film fictionally to every single president except for maybe Harding,
his career didn't really take off. But man, the fun
we had with Taft, we're still having with Taffening. So
what I guess what we're saying is that there is
a degree of perception in a play here. You know,
(11:02):
remember when Borat, Now this was not a US film,
but when Borat came out right, uh, Kazakhstan was not
happy with the way that the Kazakh people were portrayed,
which makes sense, but they didn't threaten um. Well, they
didn't call it terrorism but there But also this point
here is really interesting. Is this a situation where there's
(11:25):
a definite wronger right or is this opinion? I think
it's a little strong to call it an active terrorism.
Well I do too, But then again, we live in
a country where we have entertainment where presidents have been
assassinated as part of the story. You know, they're the
Death of a President film, or or twenty four which
(11:45):
has had that happen. I mean Boilers man, Okay, I
didn't say what's season? Okay, right, they're like, I haven't
seen in twenty four is an active sitting president Like
that is actually really sitting assassinate he's actually standing at
the time. A So, okay, is it Barack Obama? No? No, okay,
(12:08):
but we're talking about an actual human being that is
in office, right, So we're seeing that there is an international,
well a national outcry from another nation that this film,
you know, we don't want this film to go forward.
Is essentially what North three is saying. And I don't
know really what the I can't say at least what
(12:32):
the pressures were, at least from our government or from
the U N or anything on Sony to censor the
film in anyway, if any at all. But we do
know that the theatrical release of the interview got pushed
back from October to December twenty Christmas day. Um. Not
long after this little less than a month after this,
(12:53):
it was officially pushed back. UM. Now here's where it's
a little interesting to me. Uh. There there were official
edits going on at Sony of the film where they
were digitally changing the buttons that were worn by the
North Korean soldiers because originally they were actually showing, um,
the buttons that are worn in reality by North Korean
(13:14):
soldiers that commemorate Kim Jong ill and Kim Jong oon.
And uh, Sony was officially stating that these buttons were
a clearance problem, that's why they were changing them. Um,
But it was known that this was a kind of
blasphemy to show this on film, at least to North
Korean's North Korea's view, well, sure, because in the in
(13:38):
the culture of North Korea, the leaders are exalted, deified
even and if you've seen some of the interviews or
documentaries about this, I'm I've been fastening with North Korea
for a long time that you know, so stopped me
if I start talking about irrelevant stuff. Please keep it through, guys,
you two and all. All right, So there are actices
(14:00):
that might seem very strange to people from outside of
this culture, such as, um, you know, we have this
old picture of Nikola Tesla here in the studio. Right.
If he were you know, Kim Jong il or Kim
Il sung, and we were in North Korea, we would
have a picture like that in every house, and we
would also have a button that everyone has to wear.
(14:22):
So it is, it is a really really big deal,
and Sony was probably smart to alter them. But I
don't think that changes how offensive it would still be, right, Yeah,
I mean it's kind of like saying the To me,
it's the same thing as as leading up to but
not saying a curse word. Right, you don't say it,
(14:44):
but the people who hear you know what you were intending,
and they think it anyway. So yeah, like somehow that
that that ends up exonerating you of offending other people.
Know that doesn't because actually what you've done has made
the other person to do the work for you. Actually,
Louis c. K has a great bit of about that
in my head. Yeah, so so it's the same sort
(15:04):
of thing, right, Like, if you see it, even if
you know it's been altered, you know what the original
intent was. And so it's not like that somehow magically
erases the intent. There was also the story about how
and here's a spoiler alert for anyone who plans to
see the interview, because breaking news, there are a couple
of places where you might actually get a chance to
do that. But spoiler alert. There is a scene in
(15:28):
the movie in which the leader Kim Jong un is
actually killed and uh, it's a I believe he's in
a helicopter that is struck by a very powerful explosive.
Uh looks like a tank round. Yeah, it looks like
a tank round. And so then there is the sequence
of Kim jongun dying by being blown up in slow motion,
(15:51):
and that one of the things we learned as a
result of all the stuff we're about to talk about
is that there was a whole sear eas of changes
that were dictated by the by Sony to Seth Rogan,
who very clearly was getting uh exasperated by all the
(16:11):
changes towards the end of it to make it less
and less graphic. So they're watering it down. And as
as we know, and as you probably know too, listeners,
often when people attempt to make those kinds of series
of compromises, what they end up doing is making something
they didn't want to make in the beginning. Hey, guys,
I feel like I'm just playing the interrupted guy this
(16:34):
whole thing. I'm sorry, but we we do need to
take a break just for a moment to hear a
word from our sponsors, So we will be right back. Uh.
So we know that it is retroactively revealed around November
(16:54):
twenty one, uh, that some top execs at Sony's are
getting these e mails with ransom requests pretty much right. Yeah,
it was something that the executives didn't take very seriously,
I guess because this was a couple of days before
the big hit occurred. Um, and I've just gotten excerpt
(17:17):
from one of the alleged emails. It said, notice to
Sony Pictures Entertainment. We've got great damage by Sony Pictures.
The compensation for it monetary compensation. We want pay the
damage or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole.
And in November, sources at Sony go public with the hack.
They have been hacked by a group called Guardians of
(17:39):
Peace or GOP, but a different one. That's also another
reference to Well, anyway, we'll get into it. Yeah. Uh,
And you can find uh screen grabs of an allegedly
hat Sony terminal online. It's got red skeleton background. The
following message, Jonathan, could you do this like an evil voice? Warning?
(18:00):
We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning.
We continue till our request be met. We've obtained all
your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If
you don't obey, us will release data shown below to
the world. Determine what you do till November twenty eleven
(18:25):
o'clock pm GMT. That's great. I'm glad that they I'm
glad that they put the Greenwich meantime there because that
could have really been right. It been like, well, how
eleven win like, if it's a specific time, We've got
some We've got some time guys communication. And then below
that there were five links to I guess very top
(18:46):
secret material and secret material um that, some of which
has subsequently been leaked, but not necessarily all of it exactly.
There's still there's still a couple of still a couple
of cards up the sleeve, perhaps even a dead man's
hand kind of thing going on. Uh. Yes, So the
Guardians of Peace described themselves as an international organization including
(19:10):
famous figures in the politics and society from several nations
such as the United States, United Kingdom, and France. We
are not under the direction of any state. This is
an important thing to point out because you might be thinking, hey,
you guys spent an awful lot of time talking about
North Korea in the interview at the beginning of this podcast, right,
I mean, possibly too much time because Jonathan was in
(19:34):
the show I'm known as the talkie one. Yeah, this
is This is also important because obviously, if you've been
following the story at all, you know that there had
later been um some allegations made that North Korea was
at least in part if not wholly behind these attacks,
and these allegations came from Uncle Sam, and that in fact,
(19:54):
the impetus for the attacks of the first place was
specifically because of this movie. We talked about the interview. However,
if you've been paying attention to the messages we've been reading,
you'll notice that there's been no mention of the interview
so far. You'll mention. You'll notice a couple of things,
And also one of them is that the English on
these statements, at least the grammar, isn't that great. But
(20:19):
it also doesn't necessarily seem to be the same kind
of stilted English that we tend to see in actual
communications from places like North Korea. Right. We do know, however,
that a lot of information was leaked, so December one,
(20:39):
if you could just know, you talked a little bit
about this on tech stuff, right, Okay, so if you
guys could just detail some of the information, Yeah, no specifics,
so that we all don't also get attacked. But sure, well,
I mean, first of all, my heart goes out to
say what you will about any large company or whatever,
but I don't wish anyone to have suffered the kind
(21:02):
of huge setbacks that Sony Pictures has, um, you know,
my opinions of their movies, notwithstanding I don't wish them
harm so some of the because I'm not a big
fan of a lot of Sony Pictures. Look, just release
Spider Man back to Marvel, That's all I'm saying anyway. Um, So,
they they had several films stolen from them. They had
(21:26):
essentially in screener format. Screeners are the kind of movies
that a movie studio will send out to uh to
usually two members of say the Academy Producers Guild. Right,
it's the idea that there's there's certain communities that get
to see this so that they can end up nominating
it for an award or voting for it or whatever.
(21:47):
And these were clearly coming from this source because they
still had water marks on the screen or water marks,
so you know, it wasn't like a clean copy of
the movie. You had this overlay on top. But uh,
these were movies that included ones that had not yet
been released. There was Fury, which had already come out,
and Annie which had not come out, and a few others,
(22:08):
and so that was very high profile. But then there
was just tons of information that got released as well.
Some of it was merely embarrassing, things like a list
of internal communications between employees that ended up revealing some
very personal opinions about the direction of the company. I
think Angelina Jolie is a bad actor. I think we
need to stop making Adam Sandler movies. You know. George
(22:31):
Clooney wrote me a really nice email. Yeah. Well, and
there's even stuff about the president. Uh. People had to
apologize formally before yeah, and then and then beyond that,
beyond the just the internal communications, we started getting information
about things like executive salaries. Uh. And that's where we
really saw the disparity between people of certain races and
(22:53):
genders like white men and then everybody else. So, as
you have noted here, Matt, we don't want to exacerbate
the situation. So who won't go into too much further detail.
If you want information about the specific content of these leaks, um,
you can find it online. I mean pretty much every
(23:16):
scouring over the stuff, and I don't know from In
my opinion, it's really weird. And we'll talk about this
maybe a little later. The the journalists view of this,
like what what is really newsworthy about the specific leaked
information should even be talking about it in that kind
of specifics when you're looking at well, I mean, I
(23:36):
don't know. There there's there multiple layers, right, there's the
layer of the heck itself is newsworthy and needs to
be talked about BBC Guardian Zeer and and that needs
to be talked about because not only is a newsworthy event,
but it's something that should alert other companies to say,
we really do need to take a serious look at
our our cyber security, right and we need to really
(23:58):
look at that. And we know that cyde security or
cyber attacks have been on the rise globally. The United
States and China are as we speak, engaged in a
really weird great game online. Oh yeah, and including a
game where we discover things like Chinese code that's embedded
deep in US infrastructure. That's that's interesting and so um,
(24:22):
you know there's that that part's newsworthy. There's another layer
that's something that investigative journalists would normally go after things
like this disparity and pay. Now, that's that's something that
an investigative journalist would look into and want to try
and whole another story. But the way that this information
was revealed does raise some ethical issues that are really murky.
(24:45):
These are not easy questions to answer, and in fact
it I think it depends upon the outlet. Some of
them are really engaged in schaden freuda right there, just
like especially the ones about the Adam Sandler quote quotes
the things about like even Sony kids, dude, Adam Sandler movies. Um,
and yeah, there's something really funny about that. I laughed
when I read it too. But at the same time
(25:06):
you think about and you're like, wow, that's kind of
a crappy thing to report on. Um. I mean, I
don't know that I wouldn't have done it myself. If
I had thought about it, I probably would have. I
might have felt badly about later. I've I've actually stopped
saying horrible things about our coworkers and email. Yeah, I
just say it's straight to the face. These days, I
just sort of yell at we have an open office plan,
(25:28):
so I think they'll get the message. Ever since I
stopped calling people jerks and just referred to them as Josh,
he's certainly gotten a message. Yeah, he's working on a
macaroni picture of you guys for Christmas, but for really
gets into the whistleblower territory right where, you know, and
it really made me question deeply some of my beliefs
(25:51):
about whistle blowers and information that I feel is important
to be shared when it's you know, when you have
that moral conundrum of a man other people need to know,
is it your responsibility? And then I gotta tell you, guys,
it's it's hurting my brain a little, but I like it.
I don't think. I don't think this is quite the
same as whistle blowing outside of the systemic policy problems
(26:14):
that that kind of inequality and pay can have. But
what we know that's interesting here is that December two,
just this past month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation says
they're officially looking into North Korea for doing this. And
I don't know about you, guys, but one movie is
kind of flimsy for a state sponsored hack of this magnitude.
(26:38):
I am not saying it wasn't them, but I'm saying
if it is. But that's touchy. Hey, guys, I am
really sorry. I hate to interrupt Jonathan Ben I hate
you when you interrupted me too. I know. Look, we're
going a little along here, would you guys mind if
we split this up into two. Okay, well, let's end
on a cliffhanger. Usually we do the email at US,
(27:00):
but let's let's do a cliffhanger gull so we can
get people set up for part two? Was it North Korea?
Was it the m P A A? Was it someone
inside Sony the whole time? To find out, you'll at
least have to listen to part two. Dun Dun Dun, Dun, dun,
dun dun dun dune. Oh, that was kind of NBC ish.
(27:25):
Thanks so much, guys. Tune in next with you for
more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
ladies and gentlemen, I'm Ben. We've got our super producer,
Noel is always on the ones and twos. But that's
(00:22):
not all right. Yeah, we got Matt. I'm the guy
who's here who listens mostly and sometimes fills in. But
we've got one other person been Yes, our very special guest.
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up. I don't care where
you are. Clap. If you're in a place where you
can't clap, you shouldn't be there anyway. Anyhow, Clap and
cheer for our friends. Special guest, resident tech expert and
(00:43):
host of numerous how suff work shows, Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
as a it's a pleasure to be on the show.
I love the show. I am so glad to be
on this show. You are distorting my voice right a
little bit? Yeah, okay, alright, Just I mean, I know
you said my name so clearly. My identity is already
(01:04):
out there, but I it would just made me feel
a little more, you know, comfortable. Sure, Yeah, Now, the
reason we have Jonathan on the show. Yeah, I'm dying
to hear this. You are our tech expert. You're the
guy that Ben and I go to when we've got
something pressing, recovering something that is tech heavy, because you
know your stuff. Buddy. I follow, I follow the tech news,
(01:25):
that's right, And and today we're covering something really tech heavy,
the hack attacks that were perpetrated against Sony Pictures Entertainment
most recently, not the two thousand and eleven attacks, yes,
or the attacks on the Sony network, the PlayStation network,
or any of the other ones. Like you were mentioning
the Microsoft UM in particular the ones on Sony Pictures
(01:50):
Entertainment because it has had some weirdly far reaching consequences. Yeah,
and we're just gonna kind of go over I don't
mean to co opt this, by the way, but we're
just gonna go over uh kind of a timeline of
events and uh just kind of look at what happened,
what we know so far and the effects. Sounds great. Yeah,
(02:13):
I I have followed the Sony story quite a bit,
and I am interested to hear what you guys have
to think about. You know this, this is a big one, right,
This is a big story for multiple reasons, not just
the extent of the attack, which I'm sure you guys
will get into, but also, like you were saying that,
the consequences of that attack, how it's it's affecting everything
(02:35):
from business decisions, which you might call draconian or cold hearted,
depending upon your perspective. It's it's really opening up yet
another UH avenue for the criticism of unequal compensation in
the workplace. This is something that has been a scene
(02:56):
throughout two thousand fourteen in the tech sector and elsewhere. Uh.
There are a lot of themes that are all wrapped
up in this one story. So thank you very much
for having me on for this one. Are you kidding? No,
I'm not kidding. If I were a kidding, I would say, hey,
North Korea, bring it on. I am kidding. Well, technically,
the name of North Korea is the Democratic People's Republic
(03:18):
of Korea. It's a country that's slightly smaller than Mississippi. Uh.
South Korea is actually a little bit smaller than North Korea,
but has double the population. If you have watched the
news in the past few years, then you probably know
North Korea is the thing that pops up with a
some kind of bellicost hyperbolic threat about reigning fire and
(03:42):
their nuclear Their nuclear work is something that garnered a
lot of attention here in the West. Yeah, and also
they have a habit of doing things like missile tests. Well,
perhaps there are other things going on in the Pacific area. Um,
there's also and you see this kind of of increase
in I guess, I mean it's almost like showmanship. It's
(04:04):
it's not quite aggression. It's kind of very Cold War
era kind of stuff where North Korea will put on
a demonstration and then the United States will hold war
games in that area in that region, or North Korea
will warn against war games and then after they happened,
then put on a demonstration. And so it's a very odd,
(04:24):
sort of almost cartoonish relationship here. Like if you were
to explain to this to someone who had no knowledge
about relations between North Korea and the rest of the world,
they would think you were talking about some sort of
fantasy novel Dr. Seuss book. Maybe, because one interesting fact
that some people don't know is that North Korea never
(04:46):
officially made peace after what is known as the Korean War.
In the West, there is a ceasefire which holds, which
is why we have a d m Z, which is
a lovely little spot of bio diversity actually on the
Korean peninsula. We say all this just to say that
it is and has been, since the close of the war,
remarkably tense situation between most of the rest of the
(05:09):
world and the world's only patrilineal communist dictatorship. I think,
I think, I think North Korea and China are kind
of buddies, right, but pretty much no one else. Um. Yeah,
and did you know trivia, one of the world's most
dangerous golf courses, butts up against the DMZ, so you
(05:32):
do not want to knock the ball out of bounds?
Games so much more interesting? Yeah? You thought the ones
in Florida with alligators were bad? Yeah? I really want
to know the rules, like the standing rules for if
ball goes past this point, you just you call it
out of bounds and you play it again. Is there
just a stack of balls? Then? Yeah? I don't know
(05:52):
anymore to tell again, let's let's get back to the hacking.
So yeah, so funny thing happens June A well funny
Maybe it depends on your taste in comedy talking about
the trailer for the film The Interview, which is a
film starring Seth Rogan and Uh and what's his face
(06:14):
the Franco Right, James Franco and Uh. Premise of the
film is that you've got a celebrity talk show host guy.
He has. He does this show where it's essentially he
sits down with other like celebrities and has a conversation
with them, very fluffy stuff and Uh and his producer
is about to dump him to go do bigger, better
(06:37):
things when they get word that Kim Jongoon, the current
leader of North Korea, is a huge fan of the
show and wants them to come and interview him, and
that allows James Franco's character, who is the host, to
hold on to Seth Rogan who's his producer, and go
over there. Meanwhile, they are contacted by the United States
government and told, Hey, while you're over there, if you
(06:59):
could just do us a solid and kill Kim Jong
while you're there, that would be great. And then hilarity
is supposed to ensue. Right in theory, this is a comedy, yes,
just interesting trivia here. I was listening to Howard Stern
interview with Seth Rogan and he you know, because he
wrote it or co wrote it, I guess. And he
(07:19):
was saying that it was initially supposed to be Kim
Jong Ill was the bad guy that they're supposed to
go assassinate, but when he died, they changed it over.
And so when we move forward to June tween, we
start seeing some signals from the North Korean government, isn't
that right? Yeah, there was a reaction from a North
Korean official. I don't want to butcher his name, so
(07:42):
I'm just tell you Kim Mung Choi. Yeah, Well, Kim
Young Choi says, this is a quote. There's a special
irony in this storyline as it shows the desperation of
the U. S Government and American society. A film about
the assassination of a foreign leader mirrors what the US
has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. And let
(08:06):
us not forget who killed Kennedy. Americans from North Korea. Yeah,
and this is actually kind of the norm for their
diplomatic tone. That's an interesting way of putting it. Yes,
that our diplomatic tone. They're diplomatic. It sometimes lacks diplomacy,
but yes, yeah, so This is uh, Matt, as you
(08:28):
have said in these wonderful notes. Uh, this is not
the first time the North Korean government played a part
of antagonist in a Hollywood film. Yeah, there were several others.
There was a James Bond movie where in North Korea,
I guess was the bad guy. Um. And then, like
you said, to America, which is still one of my
favorite movies. Yeah. And then there's that remake of Red Dawn,
(08:48):
which I still have not seen well. And the interesting
thing there was that the original villains and Red Dawn
were to be China, but the decision was made to
switch China to North Korea, and of course for or
the reason that everyone would suspecting money. Yeah, China is
an enormous market for United States films, but if they
(09:10):
were to make China the bad guy, that endangered that
entire market. Plus there's this incredibly incestuous relationship with Hollywood
and Beijing that we could go into, but it's not
really relevant here. But any rate, North Korea became the
bad guys in that film because of that. And so
this president exists on both sides. But by July of
(09:33):
we have North Korean Ambassador to the U n Ja
Song numb right into bon Ki Moon, who, as you know,
is the South Korean head of the u N at
this time, and uh he makes uh. The North Korean
ambassadors makes a really great point in the following quotation
to allow the production and distribution of such a film
(09:55):
on the assassination of an incumbent head of a sovereign
state should be regarded as the most undisguised sponsoring of
terrorism as well as an act of war. The United
States authorities should take immediate and appropriate actions to ban
the production and distribution of the aforementioned film, otherwise it
will be fully responsible for encouraging and sponsoring terrorism. Now, clearly,
(10:18):
if the United States government did engage in such things,
that would immediately be a case of censorship in the
United States, we generally consider to be something we're not
supposed to engage in on a governmental level. And let's
also not forget that the West is home to so
many parody films. The things that have been done on
(10:41):
film fictionally to every single president except for maybe Harding,
his career didn't really take off. But man, the fun
we had with Taft, we're still having with Taffening. So
what I guess what we're saying is that there is
a degree of perception in a play here. You know,
(11:02):
remember when Borat, Now this was not a US film,
but when Borat came out right, uh, Kazakhstan was not
happy with the way that the Kazakh people were portrayed,
which makes sense, but they didn't threaten um. Well, they
didn't call it terrorism but there But also this point
here is really interesting. Is this a situation where there's
(11:25):
a definite wronger right or is this opinion? I think
it's a little strong to call it an active terrorism.
Well I do too, But then again, we live in
a country where we have entertainment where presidents have been
assassinated as part of the story. You know, they're the
Death of a President film, or or twenty four which
(11:45):
has had that happen. I mean Boilers man, Okay, I
didn't say what's season? Okay, right, they're like, I haven't
seen in twenty four is an active sitting president Like
that is actually really sitting assassinate he's actually standing at
the time. A So, okay, is it Barack Obama? No? No, okay,
(12:08):
but we're talking about an actual human being that is
in office, right, So we're seeing that there is an international,
well a national outcry from another nation that this film,
you know, we don't want this film to go forward.
Is essentially what North three is saying. And I don't
know really what the I can't say at least what
(12:32):
the pressures were, at least from our government or from
the U N or anything on Sony to censor the
film in anyway, if any at all. But we do
know that the theatrical release of the interview got pushed
back from October to December twenty Christmas day. Um. Not
long after this little less than a month after this,
(12:53):
it was officially pushed back. UM. Now here's where it's
a little interesting to me. Uh. There there were official
edits going on at Sony of the film where they
were digitally changing the buttons that were worn by the
North Korean soldiers because originally they were actually showing, um,
the buttons that are worn in reality by North Korean
(13:14):
soldiers that commemorate Kim Jong ill and Kim Jong oon.
And uh, Sony was officially stating that these buttons were
a clearance problem, that's why they were changing them. Um,
But it was known that this was a kind of
blasphemy to show this on film, at least to North
Korean's North Korea's view, well, sure, because in the in
(13:38):
the culture of North Korea, the leaders are exalted, deified
even and if you've seen some of the interviews or
documentaries about this, I'm I've been fastening with North Korea
for a long time that you know, so stopped me
if I start talking about irrelevant stuff. Please keep it through, guys,
you two and all. All right, So there are actices
(14:00):
that might seem very strange to people from outside of
this culture, such as, um, you know, we have this
old picture of Nikola Tesla here in the studio. Right.
If he were you know, Kim Jong il or Kim
Il sung, and we were in North Korea, we would
have a picture like that in every house, and we
would also have a button that everyone has to wear.
(14:22):
So it is, it is a really really big deal,
and Sony was probably smart to alter them. But I
don't think that changes how offensive it would still be, right, Yeah,
I mean it's kind of like saying the To me,
it's the same thing as as leading up to but
not saying a curse word. Right, you don't say it,
(14:44):
but the people who hear you know what you were intending,
and they think it anyway. So yeah, like somehow that
that that ends up exonerating you of offending other people.
Know that doesn't because actually what you've done has made
the other person to do the work for you. Actually,
Louis c. K has a great bit of about that
in my head. Yeah, so so it's the same sort
(15:04):
of thing, right, Like, if you see it, even if
you know it's been altered, you know what the original
intent was. And so it's not like that somehow magically
erases the intent. There was also the story about how
and here's a spoiler alert for anyone who plans to
see the interview, because breaking news, there are a couple
of places where you might actually get a chance to
do that. But spoiler alert. There is a scene in
(15:28):
the movie in which the leader Kim Jong un is
actually killed and uh, it's a I believe he's in
a helicopter that is struck by a very powerful explosive.
Uh looks like a tank round. Yeah, it looks like
a tank round. And so then there is the sequence
of Kim jongun dying by being blown up in slow motion,
(15:51):
and that one of the things we learned as a
result of all the stuff we're about to talk about
is that there was a whole sear eas of changes
that were dictated by the by Sony to Seth Rogan,
who very clearly was getting uh exasperated by all the
(16:11):
changes towards the end of it to make it less
and less graphic. So they're watering it down. And as
as we know, and as you probably know too, listeners,
often when people attempt to make those kinds of series
of compromises, what they end up doing is making something
they didn't want to make in the beginning. Hey, guys,
I feel like I'm just playing the interrupted guy this
(16:34):
whole thing. I'm sorry, but we we do need to
take a break just for a moment to hear a
word from our sponsors, So we will be right back. Uh.
So we know that it is retroactively revealed around November
(16:54):
twenty one, uh, that some top execs at Sony's are
getting these e mails with ransom requests pretty much right. Yeah,
it was something that the executives didn't take very seriously,
I guess because this was a couple of days before
the big hit occurred. Um, and I've just gotten excerpt
(17:17):
from one of the alleged emails. It said, notice to
Sony Pictures Entertainment. We've got great damage by Sony Pictures.
The compensation for it monetary compensation. We want pay the
damage or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole.
And in November, sources at Sony go public with the hack.
They have been hacked by a group called Guardians of
(17:39):
Peace or GOP, but a different one. That's also another
reference to Well, anyway, we'll get into it. Yeah. Uh,
And you can find uh screen grabs of an allegedly
hat Sony terminal online. It's got red skeleton background. The
following message, Jonathan, could you do this like an evil voice? Warning?
(18:00):
We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning.
We continue till our request be met. We've obtained all
your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If
you don't obey, us will release data shown below to
the world. Determine what you do till November twenty eleven
(18:25):
o'clock pm GMT. That's great. I'm glad that they I'm
glad that they put the Greenwich meantime there because that
could have really been right. It been like, well, how
eleven win like, if it's a specific time, We've got
some We've got some time guys communication. And then below
that there were five links to I guess very top
(18:46):
secret material and secret material um that, some of which
has subsequently been leaked, but not necessarily all of it exactly.
There's still there's still a couple of still a couple
of cards up the sleeve, perhaps even a dead man's
hand kind of thing going on. Uh. Yes, So the
Guardians of Peace described themselves as an international organization including
(19:10):
famous figures in the politics and society from several nations
such as the United States, United Kingdom, and France. We
are not under the direction of any state. This is
an important thing to point out because you might be thinking, hey,
you guys spent an awful lot of time talking about
North Korea in the interview at the beginning of this podcast, right,
I mean, possibly too much time because Jonathan was in
(19:34):
the show I'm known as the talkie one. Yeah, this
is This is also important because obviously, if you've been
following the story at all, you know that there had
later been um some allegations made that North Korea was
at least in part if not wholly behind these attacks,
and these allegations came from Uncle Sam, and that in fact,
(19:54):
the impetus for the attacks of the first place was
specifically because of this movie. We talked about the interview. However,
if you've been paying attention to the messages we've been reading,
you'll notice that there's been no mention of the interview
so far. You'll mention. You'll notice a couple of things,
And also one of them is that the English on
these statements, at least the grammar, isn't that great. But
(20:19):
it also doesn't necessarily seem to be the same kind
of stilted English that we tend to see in actual
communications from places like North Korea. Right. We do know, however,
that a lot of information was leaked, so December one,
(20:39):
if you could just know, you talked a little bit
about this on tech stuff, right, Okay, so if you
guys could just detail some of the information, Yeah, no specifics,
so that we all don't also get attacked. But sure, well,
I mean, first of all, my heart goes out to
say what you will about any large company or whatever,
but I don't wish anyone to have suffered the kind
(21:02):
of huge setbacks that Sony Pictures has, um, you know,
my opinions of their movies, notwithstanding I don't wish them
harm so some of the because I'm not a big
fan of a lot of Sony Pictures. Look, just release
Spider Man back to Marvel, That's all I'm saying anyway. Um, So,
they they had several films stolen from them. They had
(21:26):
essentially in screener format. Screeners are the kind of movies
that a movie studio will send out to uh to
usually two members of say the Academy Producers Guild. Right,
it's the idea that there's there's certain communities that get
to see this so that they can end up nominating
it for an award or voting for it or whatever.
(21:47):
And these were clearly coming from this source because they
still had water marks on the screen or water marks,
so you know, it wasn't like a clean copy of
the movie. You had this overlay on top. But uh,
these were movies that included ones that had not yet
been released. There was Fury, which had already come out,
and Annie which had not come out, and a few others,
(22:08):
and so that was very high profile. But then there
was just tons of information that got released as well.
Some of it was merely embarrassing, things like a list
of internal communications between employees that ended up revealing some
very personal opinions about the direction of the company. I
think Angelina Jolie is a bad actor. I think we
need to stop making Adam Sandler movies. You know. George
(22:31):
Clooney wrote me a really nice email. Yeah. Well, and
there's even stuff about the president. Uh. People had to
apologize formally before yeah, and then and then beyond that,
beyond the just the internal communications, we started getting information
about things like executive salaries. Uh. And that's where we
really saw the disparity between people of certain races and
(22:53):
genders like white men and then everybody else. So, as
you have noted here, Matt, we don't want to exacerbate
the situation. So who won't go into too much further detail.
If you want information about the specific content of these leaks, um,
you can find it online. I mean pretty much every
(23:16):
scouring over the stuff, and I don't know from In
my opinion, it's really weird. And we'll talk about this
maybe a little later. The the journalists view of this,
like what what is really newsworthy about the specific leaked
information should even be talking about it in that kind
of specifics when you're looking at well, I mean, I
(23:36):
don't know. There there's there multiple layers, right, there's the
layer of the heck itself is newsworthy and needs to
be talked about BBC Guardian Zeer and and that needs
to be talked about because not only is a newsworthy event,
but it's something that should alert other companies to say,
we really do need to take a serious look at
our our cyber security, right and we need to really
(23:58):
look at that. And we know that cyde security or
cyber attacks have been on the rise globally. The United
States and China are as we speak, engaged in a
really weird great game online. Oh yeah, and including a
game where we discover things like Chinese code that's embedded
deep in US infrastructure. That's that's interesting and so um,
(24:22):
you know there's that that part's newsworthy. There's another layer
that's something that investigative journalists would normally go after things
like this disparity and pay. Now, that's that's something that
an investigative journalist would look into and want to try
and whole another story. But the way that this information
was revealed does raise some ethical issues that are really murky.
(24:45):
These are not easy questions to answer, and in fact
it I think it depends upon the outlet. Some of
them are really engaged in schaden freuda right there, just
like especially the ones about the Adam Sandler quote quotes
the things about like even Sony kids, dude, Adam Sandler movies. Um,
and yeah, there's something really funny about that. I laughed
when I read it too. But at the same time
(25:06):
you think about and you're like, wow, that's kind of
a crappy thing to report on. Um. I mean, I
don't know that I wouldn't have done it myself. If
I had thought about it, I probably would have. I
might have felt badly about later. I've I've actually stopped
saying horrible things about our coworkers and email. Yeah, I
just say it's straight to the face. These days, I
just sort of yell at we have an open office plan,
(25:28):
so I think they'll get the message. Ever since I
stopped calling people jerks and just referred to them as Josh,
he's certainly gotten a message. Yeah, he's working on a
macaroni picture of you guys for Christmas, but for really
gets into the whistleblower territory right where, you know, and
it really made me question deeply some of my beliefs
(25:51):
about whistle blowers and information that I feel is important
to be shared when it's you know, when you have
that moral conundrum of a man other people need to know,
is it your responsibility? And then I gotta tell you, guys,
it's it's hurting my brain a little, but I like it.
I don't think. I don't think this is quite the
same as whistle blowing outside of the systemic policy problems
(26:14):
that that kind of inequality and pay can have. But
what we know that's interesting here is that December two,
just this past month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation says
they're officially looking into North Korea for doing this. And
I don't know about you, guys, but one movie is
kind of flimsy for a state sponsored hack of this magnitude.
(26:38):
I am not saying it wasn't them, but I'm saying
if it is. But that's touchy. Hey, guys, I am
really sorry. I hate to interrupt Jonathan Ben I hate
you when you interrupted me too. I know. Look, we're
going a little along here, would you guys mind if
we split this up into two. Okay, well, let's end
on a cliffhanger. Usually we do the email at US,
(27:00):
but let's let's do a cliffhanger gull so we can
get people set up for part two? Was it North Korea?
Was it the m P A A? Was it someone
inside Sony the whole time? To find out, you'll at
least have to listen to part two. Dun Dun Dun, Dun, dun,
dun dun dun dune. Oh, that was kind of NBC ish.
(27:25):
Thanks so much, guys. Tune in next with you for
more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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