Hillary Clinton ultimately got away with paying sloppy attention to cyber security. She received a weak slap on the wrist for her seeming naiveté, ignorance, or lack of regard for sending sensitive government emails via a private server.
Had she seen Zero Days, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s latest documentary, she would have been even more traumatized by how vulnerable she was to cyber-security breaches and attacks. At the very least, it would have given Team Hillary a greater understanding of the internet.
Hillary herself briefly features in the film as Secretary of State. But in fairness to the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, Gibney’s film reveals widespread ignorance in the US government as to how computers work let alone what it means to plug in a server. Her mistake is one that could have been made by most public officials.
Cataloging how far the threat of hacker chaos and digital shutdown has come since Hillary bought the first server, Zero Days succinctly illustrates how we are all perched on the edge of the digital precipice. Nowadays, a few skilled hackers from some Podunk country can ravage our cyber systems and possibly activate total collapse.
A decade ago, the Bush administration barely understood what the cyber universe was going to become. Once the Obama regime came in, cyber warfare was more than possible — it was apparently initiated by the United States and our ally Israel, when Iran’s nuclear facilities were hit by the Stuxnet virus.
The film investigates the development of this malware or “worm” (so called for its ability to burrow into multiple computers), suggesting that it was jointly created by the US and Israel, and how it spread beyond its intended target. Though this virus installed itself in Iran’s system and destroyed some machines necessary for nuclear escalation, Gibney shows how its detection prompted retribution — ultimately superseding and neutralizing the malware’s initial success — and started a global effort to escalate cyber-warfare.
I can’t wait to see Alex Gibney’s ZERO DAYS again, in light of all this continued obsession with Clinton emails.
— Erin Teachman (@newmethos) July 2, 2016
Building his story out of an investigation of Stuxnet — who created it, how it blossomed in both Iran’s government network and in our collective consciousness — Gibney transformed his detective work into a larger warning, one which even has sci-fi implications.
Along the way, he revealed a conundrum regarding cyber security. Info must be shared to stay ahead of the pack, but if cyber control is to be maintained, that info can be exploited — so secrecy is required. Both a thriller and cautionary tale about the global cyber-warfare infrastructure, Zero Days outlines the players and potential villains.
The film offers a detailed account of how this secretive mission, envisioned by two allies with clashing agendas, ended up creating a bigger problem than the one it was supposed to solve.
Zero Days is a shot across the bow, a warning that the Pandora’s box that has been opened can’t simply be shut again.