North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s suggestions that the entire U.S. mainland is within the nuclear striking range of his country make U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson nervous. In his New Year message, Kim stated that “the United States will never start a war with me and our country because of North Korea’s missile capabilities.” In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes Tillerson said that that statement makes him nervous.
“It does make us nervous. It also stiffens our resolve. That kind of a threat to the American people by a regime like this is not acceptable. And the president’s meeting his responsibilities as commander in chief of asking our military, Secretary Jim Mattis at the Defense Department, to ensure we are prepared for anything,” the secretary of state said, according to Newsweek.
At the same time, Tillerson emphasized that the United States is using large sticks to persuade North Korea to enter discussions on denuclearization.
“We’re not using a carrot to convince them to talk. We’re using large sticks. And that is what they need to understand. This pressure campaign is putting…is having its bite on North Korea and its revenue streams. It’s having a bite on its military programs,” Tillerson said.
The Secretary of State added that weapons buy nothing for North Koreans.
“It buys them more of being the hermit kingdom, isolated, isolated from the world diplomatically, isolated from the world economically,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang is quietly expanding both the scope and sophistication of its cyberweaponry, laying the groundwork for more devastating attacks, The Washington Post reports, citing a report. A report from FireEye, a California-based cyber-security company, it seems that North Korea has been using previously-unknown holes on the Internet to carry out cyberespionage – the kinds of activities that could easily metamorphose into full-scale attacks.
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