Zero Days
Alex Gibney's investigative documentary reconstructing Stuxnet — the joint US/Israeli operation against Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuges — through Symantec / Kaspersky reverse engineers and former NSA insiders.
- Directors
- Alex Gibney
- Released
- 2016
- Writers
- Alex Gibney
- Runtime
- 116 min
- Language
- English
Available on
Watch this if
Anyone who wants the visual companion to Kim Zetter's Countdown to Zero Day. Gibney has the access and the patience to walk viewers through the mechanics, the geopolitics, and the institutional ambivalence around using cyber weapons.
Skip this if
Viewers wanting a balanced both-sides treatment of offensive cyber. Gibney's frame is critical of the secrecy and of the strategic-cost calculus; the documentary makes its argument deliberately.
Key takeaways
- Stuxnet was the moment cyber capability became a recognized strategic instrument; the film makes the policy stakes legible to general audiences.
- The technical depth — propagation, PLC payload, centrifuge sabotage — is presented through the analysts who actually reversed it, and is unusually honest about what was known versus inferred.
- The film's most striking material is the off-the-record interviews with NSA / CIA / IDF personnel about NITRO ZEUS, the much larger Iran cyber-war contingency plan Stuxnet was the public tip of.
Notes
Pair with Countdown to Zero Day (Zetter) for the canonical print version, with The Perfect Weapon (Sanger) for the next decade of the same story, and with Sandworm (Greenberg) for the GRU continuation. The single best documentary on a specific cyber operation in the field. Required viewing if you brief leadership on offensive cyber risk.