The United States is woefully unprepared to deal with cyberwarfare, says former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, so it's a blessing in disguise that hackers chose to target the entertainment industry rather than the defense industry.
"Fortunately, they picked a trivial industry to go after," Bolton said Thursday on Fox News Channel's
"On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."
"It's just as well that they caused such havoc in such an insignificant industry as opposed to the aerospace or defense industry," he said.
There also are fears of attacks on banking or the nation's power grid. Tech expert David Kennedy told Van Susteren that several countries, including Iran and Russia already have hacked into the U.S. power grid. And water treatment facilities still run on 1970s technology.
Bolton said the United States hasn't paid enough attention to the threat cyberattacks pose to government and businesses. He said the Pentagon estimates the top 2,000 American companies have been hacked by China already.
"We don't know if Sony is the worst attack because we don't know what the Chinese or others have left behind that can blow up later," he said.
Sony Pictures
has pulled release of "The Interview," a comedy portraying the assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, after hackers wiped out its corporate computers and threatened violence at movie theaters. The U.S. government believes North Korea is behind the hacks.
If the conclusion is that it's North Korea, the country should be put back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and restore all economic sanctions, Bolton said.
"This regime never should have been let out of international sanctions, and I think we're paying for it in part now," he said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.