CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript:

Interview

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Let's bring in a key member of the Senate Intelligence Committee right now, also a member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Angus King. He's the independent senator from Maine. He caucuses with the Democrats.

Do you agree with the president, Senator, that Sony made a mistake by pulling the movie?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, it sounds to me like maybe I should invite the president and the president of Sony over for a beer so they can work this out.

I agree with the general point. I think the president of Sony makes a good point, that it wasn't they that made this decision. It was the theaters that said we're not going to open and carry the film.

But the president's general point is that you can't give in to intimidation and threats like this. And I think that's correct. But, Wolf, I have got to say, this is -- the real story here is the vulnerability of this country to this kind of attack.

It was a movie production house. What if it had been the New York Stock Exchange or the power grid or the gas pipeline system? I mean, this is a huge problem. And in a sense, you know, it's a cliche to use the term wakeup call, but, man, oh, man, this is something that we have got to do.

And frankly I think it's the one big piece of unfinished business from the last Congress. John McCain says we're going to get on it in the first two weeks and I sure hope so, because the fact that we're the most technologically advanced country in the world is the good news. And the bad news is we're the most technologically dependent.

So I think the real story here is, what does this tell us about our whole country's vulnerability?

BLITZER: Yes. It's really chilling when you think about what these hackers could do, especially a nation state, if you will.

I want to play another clip, Senator, from Fareed's exclusive interview with the Sony CEO. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ZAKARIA: You are well known as somebody who supported President Obama.

LYNTON: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Were you disappointed in what you heard today?

LYNTON: I would be fibbing to say I wasn't disappointed.

The president and I haven't spoken. I don't know exactly whether he understands the sequence of events that led up to the movie's not being shown in the theaters. And, therefore, I would disagree with the notion that it was a mistake. It's a generally held view by the public and the press that's what happened, and maybe that's how that view was held by him.

But knowing as I do the facts and how they have unfolded, you know, we stood extremely firm in terms of making certain that this movie would appear in theaters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What does it say to you about the way this whole situation unfolded, Senator, the message it sends to cyber-terrorists out there?

KING: It's a terrible message, but it's one -- you know, Wolf, we're getting -- right at this very moment, there are probably 1,000 attempts to hack American businesses right now.

It happens all the time. I have run into it in small businesses here in Maine and large businesses. We just -- whether it's international hacking or just good-old garden variety crooks. We had Target and we have had other major companies. This is a huge issue.

I have been saying for the last year-and-a-half the next Pearl Harbor will be cyber. And shame on us if we're not ready for it, particularly having this incident occur, which is really a kind of dress rehearsal for something that could be much more serious in terms of effect on infrastructure and those kinds of things.

This is a -- what they call an asymmetric vulnerability because of our technological advancement. You know, the bad news is, we're extraordinarily vulnerable. And we have got to figure this out. And one of the things I think one of your reporters mentioned, there needs to be a closer area of cooperation between government agencies like the NSA and the FBI and the private sector, so that when there is a threat or when they detect an intrusion of some kind, we can immediately respond with all the knowledge and information we have both in the government and outside.

And that's what is not happening right now. That's what I think Congress has got to fix hopefully in the first couple of weeks, if not the first month or so, of the new year.

BLITZER: Yes. Stand by for a moment, Senator. We have more questions on what happens next, what the U.S. should do. Specifically, how much of a threat to the United States is Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime? Much more with Senator Angus King.

BLITZER: We're back with Senator Angus king. He's a leading member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee.

Senator, I want you to stand by.

We're getting some new information about North Korea's cyber- warfare. I'm going to want you to react to that.

South Korea is now revealing details of an attack on its nuclear power plant system.

Let's go to Seoul, South Korea, for all the details.

CNN's Kyung Lah is joining us live.

What are you learning, Kyung?

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf,, we need to underscore that this is the very first time we're hearing about this in this country. It's coming to light just now.

We have to underscore as well that it was a successful attack. Just like with Sony, what investigators here on South Korea are saying, it was the same malware that allowed hackers to get into one of the most difficult government agencies, one of the most protected in this entire country, the one that runs nuclear power plants.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAH (voice-over): South Korean officials say the North has launched a series of crippling attacks in that country, the most brazen coming to light just this week, a hack of South Korea's nuclear power plant system.

Lim Jong-in is a security expert who works with South Korea's military and says hackers posted on a blog nuclear power plant blueprints and other secret documents and then wrote this.

LIM JONG-IN, KOREA UNIVERSITY: If (INAUDIBLE) stop operation of nuclear power plant, they will destroy.

LAH (on camera): Wow. Very serious.

LIM JONG-IN: Yes.

LAH: That raise some serious alarm bells with the government.

LIM JONG-IN: Yes.

LAH (voice-over): Not just because of what was stolen, but because of what this means. They're getting better at it. While the North consistently pleads innocence, the South maintains the evidence is there. Last year, South Korea's banks and media companies were hacked, ATMs frozen, television news knocked off the air, similar malware to what ground Sony systems to a halt and similar code to what led to this latest breach of South Korean nuclear power plants.

There's a pattern, says In, practiced first in South Korea, then aimed overseas.

(on camera): Should America be prepared for North Korea to try to break in to these types of agencies in America?

(voice-over): "Of course," he says. "Even though the U.S. is one of the best prepared nations, cyber-attacks are really hard to protect yourself from. So they have to constantly be vigilant."

SETH ROGEN, ACTOR: You want us to kill the leader of North Korea?

ACTRESS: Yes.

JAMES FRANCO, ACTOR: What?

LAH: With Sony's stunning decision pulling this movie, it may send a simple signal to North Korea: Cyber-attacks work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: Now, one concern that Korean investigators here have is what could be next in America. One thing that Koreans, South Koreans suspect that North Koreans want to target is NASA, because there is nothing more, Wolf, that they would love than to control the communication, the way we communicate in the United States -- Wolf.

BLITZER: I just want to be precise, that one threat issued by the North Koreans to the South Koreans, something along the lines, he said if you don't stop your nuclear power plant, you will be destroyed, is that what they're threatening?

LAH: That was the threat. It was the threat that if you don't do what we want, we're going to destroy your nuclear power plant. That was the threat that was posted on a blog along with blueprints of that nuclear power plant.

It fits a pattern, because we have heard the North Koreans try to threaten, whether it be the United States or South Korea. They threaten. They can't follow through, but they do make the threat.

BLITZER: Wow.

Kyung Lah reporting for us from Seoul, South Korea, it's only 40 miles or so from the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, with North Korea. Let's bring back Senator Angus King, a member of Senate

Intelligence and Armed Services Committee.

So, how much of a threat, Senator, do you believe North Korea really poses to the United States?

KING: I think it's a serious threat.

I felt like saying after listening to that report, I rest my case. This Sony thing, it's a movie, OK? It's important and it's annoying and difficult and certainly devastating for the people at that company, but what if it was a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange or one of our -- or our banking system?

This is real stuff, Wolf. We're focusing on North Korea, but there are other countries around the world that have this capacity and that are using it, sometimes just for good old theft of intellectual property and sometimes money.

But the national security implications of this are extreme. I mean, I don't want to scare people, but this is something that we have to attend to. And one of the other problems is, it can be done relatively cheaply. You don't have to build a huge missile complex or complicated weapons or anything else. You just have to have some really smart, diabolical people with a laptop on the network.

This is one of the threats. This is one of the disadvantages of the 21st century. We just have to learn how to deal with it and how to defend ourselves and that's -- I think it's one of our great challenges in the next couple of years.

BLITZER: What other countries are you talking about?

KING: Well, we know China is doing this in a very serious way, not necessarily in a national security way, but more on intellectual property and those kinds of things.

We know that Iran has this capacity. We know that the Russians have this capacity. Those are ones that we know for sure, along with North Korea. And then the other thing, you know, it's like talking about terrorism. What about some guy in a basement in Peoria who decides it would be fun to stop all the stoplights in Chicago or something?

There's a sort of internal threat. I don't necessarily call it terrorism. But, again, this is a vulnerability based upon our technological dependence, which makes our -- enriches our lives tremendously, but this is the downside of it. And I think it's something that's going to be happening more frequently.

And we're going to have to do -- and there's never going to be 100 percent defense. There's never going to be total assurance. But I do think there are more things we can do when you combine the knowledge and expertise in the private sector and what we know in the public sector in the government.

We have really got to face this, I think, as one of the most, if not the most serious threat that this country faces right now.

BLITZER: Because I have heard cyber-warfare experts, government experts tell me their nightmare scenario is the U.S. power grid. Here's the question. Is that vulnerable?

KING: You know, I'm not an expert. I know that there are plenty of people working on making it not vulnerable. But I suspect Sony probably thought they had pretty good defenses, too.

That's the concern, is the power grid, gas pipelines, the New York Stock Exchange, the financial system, all of those kinds of things. I can't say whether it's vulnerable or not. But I don't think anybody can say to a certainty that they're invulnerable. And we just have to -- I think we have to start with the assumption that, A, this is a serious threat, B, we have to deal with it in a timely way.

We don't have two or three years to think about this, and that it's going to take the best resources we can muster, both in the private sector and the public sector, in order to defend ourselves.

BLITZER: Very quickly, what do you want the U.S. to do now to North Korea?

KING: I think -- again, I'm not making these decisions, but I like the president's response that there will be a response, it will be proportional, and it will be at a time of our choosing.

I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of cyber-response. One of the problems is, this is essentially a hermit country. There are not a lot of things -- we can't cut off aid or remove our ambassador or cut off a banking system. But they're engaged in a lot of enterprises around the world that I think we might have an opportunity to disrupt that are bringing money into the country that I think that -- I suspect there's some people in Washington right now who are thinking about networks that may be disrupted, financial networks that might be disrupted and make them pay a price.

I think they do have to pay a price. And I think the president made that clear today.

Wolf, I don't want to leave without echoing your comments to Candy. Frankly, I don't know how we're going to have a presidential election in two years without Candy Crowley. I mean, it just won't seem the same.

So I also want to add my thanks to her for the great work she's done over the years in keeping us all informed and asking the right questions at the right time.

BLITZER: Yes. Well said indeed. We're all going to miss Candy very much here at CNN. Our viewers in the United States and around the world will miss her as well.

But she's moving on to a new chapter. And she's going to be just as excited, just as nice as ever. We wish her, of course, only, only the best.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

KING: Thanks, Wolf. Always good to be with you.

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