Zero Days (2016) - Alex Gibney

Alex Gibney is what I consider a popcorn documentary filmmaker, a director whose documentaries are always well crafted and told but for the most part lack the nuance and subtlety necessary to be profound.  His latest film Zero Days is no exception, a documentary detailing the development of the Stuxnet, an advanced self-replicating computer malware jointly designed by the U.S. and Israel, designed to infiltrate and disable the Iranian nuclear power plant.  Zero Days is a film shot and directed in a way to evoke the aesthetic and tension of an espionage thriller, a documentary thats narrative plays out like a mystery for as long as possible, detailing the sophistication of Stuxnet.  Gibney does his best as filmmaker early on, sometimes to a comical degree, like a scene where a baloon bursting is documented in such a way that it feels like an action set piece.  The one thing that has always bothered about Gibney is that his arrogance can be felt in his films at times, excuding so much confidence thst he is holdijg your hand and showinf you rhe light.  When Gibney brings in a unanimous NSA source is when the film does get more intriguing, as Zero Days draws parallels of how the cyber age of military conflict is among us, and given the intangible nature of this type of warfare, the world's nation states have been slow to react accordingly with treaties and agreements similar to those done with biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.  All this is rather absorbing but the most compelling aspect of Zero Days is the debate about secrecy when it comes to Top Secret documents, arguing that while government secrecy is still important in some aspects, like when it comes to the safety of it's operatives, cyber warfare has create larger concerns. The fundamental problem with secrecy as it relates to cyber warfare, is that all the classified information has made it nearly impossible for us to have a democratic conversation about the defensive and offensive use of cyber weapons, when mature conversation is needed considering the power of code in the modern age we live.  Make no mistake these weapons could be just as deadly as any tyoe of physical attack, and can be replicated by nations around the world given the nature of code, and the cyber arms race happening in countries around the world.  

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