HBO Is Developing a Documentary Based on THE PERFECT WEAPON Which Focuses on the Rise of Cyber Wars Between Countries
HBO has started production on a new documentary that is based on David E. Sanger’s book The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.
The doc will explore the rise of cyber wars between countries and how cyber conflict is the primary way nations now compete and sabotage each other. “As fear mounts about potential cyber-attacks on the 2020 elections, the film will feature exclusive interviews with top military and intelligence officials, as well as new on-the-ground reporting from the frontlines of the cyber wars.”
The doc comes from non-fiction production house Ark Media, and John Maggio will direct and executive produce. Maggio directed HBO’s 2018 doc, Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis as well as The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee.
Here’s the book summary, which offers a bit more detail:
The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend against Russia’s broad attack on the 2016 US election.
Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target.
This is a fascinating subject, and it’ll be interesting to see how this documentary covers it.
Source: Variety