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.

Pretty handy overview of hacking by nations against other nations. We start with USA hacking an Iranian nuclear project destroying the machines. Iran then responds by hacking casinos owned by a billionaire Jew in USA for 1 single comment he made. Losing him $40m. We jump to Russian, North Korean, Chinese hacking. All presented in a short format with maybe 1 interviewee saying a few things and then a few videos of some items. It's a very shallow overview that just scratches the surface. You really could make a 3 hour doc on just Petya and NotPetya where the Russian government hacked Ukraines tax paying systems. These viruses are a giant project and wiped out billions in profit all over the West. Single companies lost hundreds of millions. Yet in the doc it's not even explained. They just mention it, say it was big, then move on to other Russian attacks. Of course largely focusing on Hillary and her emails and how Trump kinda worked with the Russians.

So the doc is a fine overview of country hacking anno 2020. We even get the Sony hack presented. But overall I'm not quite satisfied with this meager level of depth. It just feels like you are learning about names and events only. There are many docs and podcasts on the single hacks that are endlessly more fascinating. This is a dry overview to jump into much more engaging stuff. The doc is just not fun as such. It's interesting, but many interviews are with the known Democrats who act like leaders of USA like Podesta and Hillary. Not really people I care for or people that are experts in any way. They just have their political point about how Trump is bad and what happened to them. The DNC hack of course plays the biggest role in the doc. And it's indeed engaging. But yet again it feels hollow. They don't really explore Trump, Wikileaks, Russian hackers, revenge tactics. It feels like a full-length news segment on hacking. I would rather watch single docs on specific hacking events that then also present a short overview.

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.

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.

The documentary is quite good not doubt about that, it points the cyber warfare that happened in the past few decades , anyway in my opinion the people that are interviewed have embraced xenophobia entirely ! .China, Iran, NC, Russia are the bad people and US is the poor angel . USA put his fingers in so many pies without consent for sure ! , public disinformation , taxes , control over population with Facebook -Insta- etc .,AI, inside jobs ,vaccines and much more and you know why ...bcs people are dumb ! , and you can control them easy ! every country is doing it ! - I'm sure for those who made a little bit of research you know what I'm talking about ! .I was glad that I live in this era without wars ,and then I realize we are already in it for few years!. This gen of warfare is with cyber attacks , network infrastructure ,AI , and viruses ! - I'm in for world peace ,but we all know that's not going to happen anytime soon !