Who is responsible for hacking into the Sony Pictures computer systems? And what will the Obama administration do about the wider threat posed by this cyber terrorism?

US investigators are planning to release a statement sometime on Friday officially laying blame on whomever is suspected, and at this time all footprints lead to North Korea. This is not atypical for the Communist nation; despite the nation’s poverty, North Korea has developed a large network of computer hackers, according to a defector who once worked as a computer expert for the North Korean government.

However, the culprits may not be from North Korea alone. Catherine Herridge at Fox News reports that an intelligence source sees the fingerprints of Iran, China, or Russia as well. The source says that the malware used to hack into Sony have a sophistication seen more frequently in hacking from those nations than from North Korea.

So what to do?

Sony Pictures already gave its response.  It rolled over and capitulated to the demands of the hackers, as it canceled its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” the film which depicted the assassination of North Korean president Kim Jong-Un. A future thriller set in North Korea starring Steve Carell has also been scrapped. Hollywood filmmakers and actors were outraged at the decision of Sony and various movie theaters to cancel “The Interview”– which is deliciously rich in irony considering that many of the Tinseltown glitterati supported Edward Snowden’s disclosure of National Security Agency wiretaps, and urged the president of Ecuador to grant him political asylum. (Equally ironic is the purchase Sony Pictures made in May of this year of the film rights to Glenn Greenwald’s book praising Snowden.)

What will the Obama administration do?

Sources indicate that the administration could place even tighter economic sanctions on North Korea by restriction of trade through hitting Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang.

Others are not so positive that such sanctions would be efficient. William Reinsch, a former US Commerce Department official who was responsible for sanctions against North Korea, notes, “We don’t sell them anything, we don’t buy anything from them and we don’t have diplomatic relations. There aren’t a lot of public options left.”

While seeing the liberal luminaries at Sony Pictures squirm as their emails were hacked may provide schadenfreude to conservatives, we should be taking cyber threats very, very seriously.

Bloomberg Businessweek recalls an IT department joke saying that there are two kinds of corporations:  those who have been hacked and those who don’t yet know they’ve been hacked. Some of the big corporations who’ve discovered this past year that they were hacked include Target, Home Depot, hospital operator Community Health Systems, and JPMorgan Chase. Hacked government agencies include the White House, State Department, Postal Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and of course, the National Security Agency at the hands of Edward Snowden in 2013.

The most frightening aspect of this incident, however, lies in the threat to the United States power grid.

Last month Admiral Michael Rogers, Chief of US Cyber Command and the head of the National Security Agency, appeared before the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee with the ominous warning that China currently has the power to take out the US power grid section by section. A concerted attack could shut down the networks that control power and water grids, aviation systems, and financial services, and do so in a matter of hours. Said Adm. Rogers:

“The cyber-challenges we are talking about are not theoretical. This is something real, and they have the potential to lead to truly significant, almost catastrophic, failures if we don’t take action.”

The Admiral is not the only person sounding the alarm about the weakness of our grid, and the unwillingness of those in the government to address it. Judge Jeanine Pirro, a legal analyst at Fox News, broadcast the peril of this enormous risk earlier this year. In February she presented a one-hour special dedicated to the vulnerability of our power grid, especially to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). She concluded her opening remarks with this caveat:

“I’m not saying this to panic anyone – but *everyone* – including our enemies, know that an artificially created electromagnetic pulse will shut down all power… which risks our survival.

We possess the world’s largest power distribution system. What is our government doing to make sure that our grid – likened be some to that of a third world country – is protected?

Are we ready for an attack on our grid and the catastrophic failure that would result?”

It’s obvious that we need to beef up our cyber security, lest some nation hack our essential systems, or destroy them with an EMP. So what will Obama do? Perhaps now that his Hollywood supporters and friends are victims of cyber attacks, he may decide to respond in a presidential manner, and work to prevent such massive devastation from hitting the nation.

Or then again he may just make a speech, call for an exploratory committee, and head off for another round of golf.