ZERO DAY or “computing, the worm in the fruit of our modern societies?”
The series begins with an observation common to our reality: the mass of citizens, deeply distrustful of institutions, turn away from usual information channels at the risk of giving in to conspiracy excesses. In a scene from the first episode of the series, it takes all the oratorical talent of George Mullen, the former president in charge of the investigation played by Robert De Niro, to miraculously bring a crowd back to reason. Will this reason last? That’s one of the stakes of the series. So, after viewing the series (in binge-watching, I confess…), we can allow ourselves at least three reflections. The first could be summarized as “The Revenge of the Boomers,” the second “The Opportunistic Marriage Between Tech and Politics,” and ultimately “The Fragility of Our Technological Societies.”
Are Boomers Really Making a Comeback?
The reflection titled “The Revenge of the Boomers” is embodied by Robert De Niro, a valiant octogenarian in his role as a former American president appreciated by his fellow citizens as well as by the administration. This title is linked to the expression “Ok, Boomer!” This expression, born in the early 2000s, holds the generations born after the Second World War accountable for the state of the world that younger generations inherit. These younger generations being both envious and bitter about the Thirty Glorious Years, a fantasized period that was the backdrop of the youth of these elders judged guilty without trial. This youth is also angry at the observation of powerlessness or resistance to the necessary evolutions of contemporary planetary society in the face of proven climate changes and their increasingly violent manifestations. In the eyes of younger generations, the world seems incapable of changing its “software,” in terms of consumption, production, geopolitics… individual and collective behaviors.
How, then, could an old president who seems to be struggling against the demons of senescence solve an investigation that takes place in a world whose keys of understanding he might no longer possess? Is the series honest when it seems to ignore environmental questions? Is it honest when it puts an old white heterosexual male at the center of the plot? Is it playing into the politics of the current White House occupant ahead of time? It’s important to note here that the series was conceived in 2022, well before Donald Trump’s new rise to power.
When Politics Starts to “Mess Around” with Tech
Counterpointing these legitimate questions, we can address our second theme of reflection, “The Opportunistic Marriage Between Tech and Politics.” Without spoiling too much of the series’ plot, we discover at one point that politics and high-tech converge to the point of maintaining “unnatural” relationships, certainly to the point of conflict of interest. By highlighting this fictional flaw, one might be tempted to draw a parallel with reality in the USA. Once again, we must place the chronology of the series’ production in recent American history. Thus, in 2022, when the series’ production was launched, nothing suggested the rapprochement between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, up to the appointment of the thunderous multiple entrepreneur as head of DOGE, this strange organization with powerful powers without having the status of a federal department, a ministry in French vocabulary. We can just note that, at the end of 2022, Musk bought Twitter, perhaps marking his transition from an atypical genius entrepreneur to an actor in American public life. Regarding him, there was not yet talk of politics, even if already at that time, Musk’s attachment to absolute freedom of expression – libertarian(?), in any case, at the expense of any moderation – was already at the heart of debates.
With these historical clarifications taken, this marriage between the political world and that of tech entrepreneurs, described here as opportunistic, takes on its full dimension in the Zero Day series. There, there is no longer really a parallel to be drawn between the series and the Trump/Musk duo. In the series, the politician who compromises himself in the computer attack is just a Republican who is a fixture in the American political scene, particularly conservative and above all very paternalistic. He thinks that the people need a “good lesson” in democracy. The means that he and his accomplices will implement are most disturbing. If there is a parallel to be drawn between reality and fiction, it is perhaps between Musk and the head of a social network who intervenes in the series’ plot: same self-absorbed personalities, sure of their facts and the relevance of their actions… all this in the name of an ideal that borders on mere commercial, strategic opportunity – of a demiurge? – in order to eliminate all competition. Ultimately, politics and tech are mutually misled in this alliance which proves, between them, to be a zero-sum game… not to mention the numerous losses, if one takes a global view of the society where they act.
Does computing carry within it the seed of a black swan?
That leaves us to address our third reflection: “The Fragility of Our Technological Societies.” I will not address the feasibility dimension of the computer attack as it is described in the series. The only information provided by the series: a clandestine farm of computer servers is mentioned. Is it sufficient to launch an attack that would take advantage of computer flaws present in all systems of a country the size of the USA, without ever having been referenced and informed or even just identified? Perhaps this is the biggest creative license that the authors allowed themselves and, for the viewers, the biggest effort of “voluntary suspension of disbelief” to achieve!
But, whether this attack is feasible or not, there are other conditions that could lead to the same result: the more or less instantaneous blocking of a country, or even all or part of the planet. In foresight, this is what we call a black swan, that is to say an event with a very low rate of realization – so low that the event flies under the radar or, worse, that it remains unthought, under the blows of a more or less voluntary intellectual and collective omerta – but which nevertheless occurs or, conversely, an event with a huge rate of realization but which does not occur. We have all recently experienced the first case. This black swan was called COVID-19.
Regardless of the massive hacking aspect, the black swan I want to evoke here is the risk that, one day, the Earth finds itself caught in the “winds” of high-energy particles that would have been emitted by a powerful solar storm. Without going into details – one can look at the Red Planet chronicle on Space’ibles (https://cnes.fr/projets/spaceibles/inspirations) – if one day the Earth were struck by one of these very high-energy solar events, all electronic systems located on the side illuminated by the Sun, up to the twilight zone, would be instantly deactivated, or even partially destroyed. All computer systems of all devices caught in this storm would stop. We’re talking about satellites (communication, GPS and others…), airplanes, trains, power supply and regulation systems, our computers (in hospitals, banks…), our beloved phones… And that’s just for starters!
In the Zero Day series, Robert De Niro is tasked with finding the “bad guys.” In the case of a solar storm, there would be no one to condemn. There would just be an event with a very low rate of realization that occurs! This is what this series tells us with all the American dramatic talent. What it points to is the fragility of our modern societies, what it points to is the dependence on computing under which we have all fallen.
On the Good Use of Resilience
So, when viewing this series, the question that we have the right to ask ourselves, starting today, is what resilience capabilities our societies are equipped with to face such an event, whether voluntary or accidental. What skills should we acquire or preserve, (re)learn or imagine? An example: in France, we are dismantling the so-called RTC telephone lines. This is the copper wire that for more than a century carried our telephone communications, then recently our dear ADSL. Today, it is replaced by fiber optics and cellular relays. It is obvious that, when everything is going well, fiber is much more efficient for transmitting a computer signal. But in the event of a computer catastrophe, a good copper line can allow communication from one point to another of a territory with a simple electrical signal; it can allow the coordination of rescue actions.
Similarly, we see analog radio broadcasts, FM or AM, being gradually deactivated, in favor of DAB, Digital Audio Broadcasting. And we, listeners, are invited to buy digital radio sets. Once again, in the event of a catastrophe, that damned black swan that we don’t want to see and yet eventually shows its face. Being able to send an analog radio signal, not dependent on computers, and to receive it collectively is, once again, a technological resilience at the service of society. All this being said without taking into account the protection systems that could be adapted to essential systems, which are not just military…
By analyzing Zero Day in this way, I am not making a technophobic Coming Out. Quite the contrary. Loving my computer tools, I wonder what our modern and technological societies should undertake to become stronger, more resistant to the shocks of the future, whether these shocks are of an ethical nature and concern relationships between generations, whether they are political to the point of weakening our democracies, or even of the order of paradigm changes, which take only a moment or spread over the long term. We must then question: how will our modern societies, which have become giants with feet of clay, protect themselves from these shocks that could well precipitate them to the ground if nothing is undertaken to give them flexibility, to endow them with resilient systems? It is interesting to note that the term resilient is used here in its primary understanding – the capacity of a material to absorb the energy of a shock by deforming – and not in its psychological and social dimensions, a mention used to the point of wear.