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The US may have opened a can of worms it will never be able to get back into the can.  In this case the euphemism may be literal not in the biological sense, but it is definitely literal in the technological sense.

The US decided it would attack Iran and wage war on the Iranian nuclear energy program and so engaged in actions that are acts of war, according to even the US government’s own admission.  When the US engaged in sabotage against Iranian nuclear facilities, it created a computer worm called Stuxnet to destroy Iran’s outdated centrifuges. 

The US not only attacked the Iranian nuclear energy program, but the attacks upon the Iranian oil bourse created years of setbacks and losses in the billions for iran.  If the Us were to sue north Korea, it would open up the floodgates to Iranian claims that would make any settlement from North Korea look like pocket change in comparison.  Agreat article about the Iranian oil bourse is located here:

http://www.facts-are-facts.com/news/sne-2506-oilbourse.ihtml

One consequence of this policy was not only that Iran updated and expanded the number of its centrifuges, but also that the US now justified and legitimized cyber warfare as merely a foreign policy prerogative.  So this attack not only placed the innocent Iranians in danger of a nuclear accident, but it also ended up being counterproductive to US interests not just in regard to Iran, but also further eroded what used to be called US soft power.  This was the international authority the US once wielded due to its legitimacy, willingness to cooperate, reasonableness and ability to set a good example.

But now that the US has normalized the using of computer warfare as a means of foreign policy, it seems North Korea may have decided to take a page from the US’s foreign policy playbook.

While the US chose to mock North Korea and the eccentricities of its ruling dynasty, it now realizes the North Korea is no joke and has the ability to attack US interests and infrastructure while retaining the ability to defend itself from US military attacks.  If the US now thinks it now has a problem with North Korea cyber warfare, it would find its problems exponentially greater if it decided to attack North Korea in any way whatsoever.

The US has painted itself in a corner after having spent the last decade acting unilaterally and establishing a precedent for behaving in a manner that is outside of what used to be considered international norms.  The US can not now complain about cyber attacks from North Korea attacking a movie company after having been the first to initiate such actions against a nuclear energy facility.  And with regard to the US now complaining about the costs, Iran lost thousands of centrifuges.  The attack by the Stuxnet and other subsequent attacks were extremely sophisticated and are outlined in an article here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/19/stuxnets-secret-twin/

So now the US has learned that not only are their blowback effects as the result of covert and overt operations, but there is also the problem of blowback with regard to the carrying out foreign policy as part of both covert and overt cyber warfare operations.  Given that the US operates its entire economy on the basis of information systems and North Korea’s economy is primarily agrarian, it seems the US is much more susceptible to North Korean attacks than vise versa. 

Currently Sony has bowed to North Korea’s cyber attacks that experts inside Sony have estimated could cost close to $120 million dollars.  One wonders just how much chaos a country like North Korea can create if properly motivated.

Now that the US has lost any moral footing it might have used to climb out of the hole it has dug for itself, really an abyss, it is finding itself the victim of the very international lawlessness of which it had boasted both in word and deed. One wonders whether if Bush were still the president would there now be a clamoring for war by the neocons against North Korea given they have nuclear weapons.  This also makes one realize that, in fact, one can carry out asymmetrical attacks against the US without fear of retaliation if one has nuclear weapons and so can alter US corporate behavior. Besides, corporations do not care about ideology or issues of principle; their concern is for the bottom line. Who ever thought a low-tech nation like North Korea could so easily throw wrenches into such a sophisticated and complex system given the inherent technological advantages of the US economy and the cyber security companies that have sprung up?

Now the US will have to determine what its next course of action will be.  The bigger question for business is whether corporations will be held hostage by US policy.