The Perfect Weapon

"The Perfect Weapon" (2020 release; 87 min.) takes a look a the history of cyberwarfare. As the film opens, we are in "2007" and President Bush is contemplating his options on what to do with Iran. Someone mentions to him that in cooperation with Israel, the US is able to plant malware into Iran's nuclear facilities. W. likes that option, which is surprisingly successful. Eventually Iran discovers it, and realizes that it can also use cyber to strike back... At this point we are 10 min. into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary directed by John Maggio, whose previous work includes, among others, The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee as well as Panic: The Untold Story of the 2009 Financial Crisis. Here he looks at the rapid rise of a fairly new phenomenon: cyberwarfare, in all of its different forms including ransomware. Starting in 2007, we get what amounts to a Cyberwarfare 101 introductory course, hitting all of the 'greatest hits', including Iran's attack on the Sands casino empire, North Korea's attack on Sony Pictures, Russia's attack on the DNC, the global NotPetya ransomware attack, and culminating with this year's cyber activities by China regarding the coronavirus. The lesson is very clear: it's a brand new world out there, and war is more often than not conducted digitally. This is an okay and mostly an a-political documentary, but not one that blew me away.

"The Perfect Weapon" premiered recently on HBO and is now available on HBO On Demand (where I caught it the other day) and other streaming services. If you have any interest in cyberwarfare or geopolitics, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

As a cyber security aficionado but not a professional, I really liked this. I've read about pretty much all of these attacks, but it was good to see the government's perspective on what was going on.

Wish there was a little more technical information, but it's not as vague as it could've been.

You don't have to look any farther than the other reviews to see how relevant this documentary is. Sowing discord among the US population has never been easier as the world becomes increasingly digitalized. The US opened the door to cyberwarfare with stuxnet and we are now only beginning to see the long term consequences. The documentary does a great job of outlining the largest cyber attacks up until the present day and further speculates on what the future holds. A great watch and I hope it alerts the public to the importance of this threat and realizing that warfare will never be the same.

Mistakenly believed this was a Documentary about Cyber Security and Cyber War. Instead, this "movie" was briefly about Cyber Incidents involving Iran and North Korea. Then the next hour of the movie was a tired excuse / rationalization of the Democratic Party Presidential Election loss in the 2016 Election due to alleged and still unproven Cyber Interference. The final 15 minutes about the continuing threat of the Chinese Government continuing to steal Intellectual Property while becoming a Cyber menace to the World was also interesting.

This Documentary would have been a lot stronger if it skipped the political commentary by Political Hacks and focused more on Cyber Security and potential Cyber Threats in the future.

Briefly talks about two very interesting hacking cases regarding Las Vegas and the North Korea movie, then predictably gets right into eLeCtIoN iNtEraFeReNce!!!!!!!!!!! Because none of us have heard enough about that, let's beat the dead rotting horse corpse for another 45 minutes, epic.