The hackers warned Sony not to release The Interview, and then on December 16, the group issueda message threatening large terrorist attacks on theaters that showed the film. The National Organizationof Theatre Owners contacted the Department of Homeland Security for information and advice. The FBIand NSA released a bulletin explaining that they had no credible information about a plan to attacktheaters, but they could neither confirm nor deny whether the hackers had the ability to launch such anattack. Shortly after the bulletin was released, the four largest U.S. theater chains withdrew their requeststo show the movie—Carmike Cinemas first, followed by Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, andCinemark. Within hours, Sony announced that it had canceled the film’s release. White House officials,Hollywood personalities, and the media were aghast. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel tweeted that the decision bythe major theater chains to refuse to screen The Interview was “an un-American act of cowardice thatvalidates terrorist actions and sets a terrifying precedent.”On December 19, President Obama addressed the issue publicly: “Sony is a corporation. It sufferedsignificant damage. There were threats against its employees. I’m sympathetic to the concerns that theyfaced. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake.” Obama explained, “We cannot have a society inwhich some dictator in some place can start imposing censorship in the United States.” The president’sremarks highlighted the seriousness of the incident to the American public, many of whom came to viewthe incident as an attack on the freedom of expression.In response to Obama’ s comments, Sony officials released a statement later the same day: “ Let usbe clear—the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it onChristmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it.... After that decision, weimmediately began actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform.It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so.”In fact, on Christmas Day, the planned release day in the theater, The Interview became availablethrough video on-demand outlets such as Amazon.com, and within less than a month, the movie hadbrought in over $40 million in revenue. Approximately 6 million viewers had rented or purchased themovie in this way. Several hundred movie theaters that opted to screen the movie generated another $6million. Over the next two months, Sony also released the movie on Netflix, on DVD and Blu-Ray, and intheaters in other countries.Meanwhile, Sony has worked to recover from the damage done to the company itself by the hack.Sony Pictures’ parent company, which is based in Japan, asked regulators there for an extension to file itsthird-quarter financial results. It also fired executive Amy Pascal whose leaked emails contained derogatory remarks about Hollywood producers and the U.S. president’s movie preferences. The companyalso provided one year of free credit protection services to current and former employees.In February 2015, President Obama held the first-ever White House summit on cybersecurity issuesin Silicon Valley. The summit was billed as an attempt to deal with the increasing vulnerability of U.S.companies to cyberattacks— including those backed by foreign governments. However, the chiefexecutives of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo all refused to attend the summit. Those companieshave long advocated for the government to stop its practice of collecting and using private data to trackterrorist and criminal activities and have worked to find better ways to encrypt the data of their customers.However, U.S. security agencies have continually pressured the IT giants to keep the data as unencrypted aspossible to facilitate the government’s law enforcement work. Ultimately, both the government and privatebusinesses will need to find a way to work together to meet two contradictory needs—the country’s needto make itself less vulnerable to cyberattacks while at the same time protecting itself from potential realworld violence. Q1)What might Sony and the U.S. government done differently to discourage future such attacks onother U.S. organizations? Q2)Are there measures that organizations and the U.S. government can take together to prevent bothreal-world terrorist violence and cyberattacks?