I’m sure there are a number of interesting movies and documentaries on nuclear security.
Three movies that come to mind immediately:
WarGames—a 1983 film that I found simultaneously interesting and very silly. The plot features the US giving control of their nuclear arsenal to an AI system running on a supercomputer (you can guess where it goes from here), a teenage hacker excitedly exclaiming “let’s play ‘Global Thermonuclear War’”, and Tic Tac Toe as the solution to this film’s version of the AI alignment problem. Curiously enough, Wikipedia claims that:
President Ronald Reagan, a family friend of Lasker’s, watched the film and discussed the plot with members of Congress,[2] his advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Reagan’s interest in the film is credited with leading to the enactment 18 months later of NSDD-145, the first Presidential directive on computer security.[3]
3. Fail Safe, also from 1964, which I haven’t seen.
As with all fiction, there is a danger that viewers consider them as realistic depictions of reality or plausible scenarios, which in fact they are clearly not, at least in their details (or, in the case of WarGames, regarding almost everything). They may still be educational or thought-provoking insofar that they all feature accidental nuclear war, which is a facet of risk some may not have considered.
Another relevant film is The Day After, which was seen by 100 million Americans—”the most-watched television film in the history of the medium” (Hänni 2016)— and was instrumental in changing Reagan’s nuclear policy.
“President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed,” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”. The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer’s, told him “If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone.” Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan’s memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.” (Wikipedia)
“Director Meyer and writer Hume produced The Day After to support nuclear disarmament with the ‘grandiose notion that this movie would unseat Ronald Reagan’, and the nuclear freeze groups heavily exploited the ABC movie as a propaganda.” (Hänni 2016)
I’m sure there are a number of interesting movies and documentaries on nuclear security.
Three movies that come to mind immediately:
WarGames—a 1983 film that I found simultaneously interesting and very silly. The plot features the US giving control of their nuclear arsenal to an AI system running on a supercomputer (you can guess where it goes from here), a teenage hacker excitedly exclaiming “let’s play ‘Global Thermonuclear War’”, and Tic Tac Toe as the solution to this film’s version of the AI alignment problem. Curiously enough, Wikipedia claims that:
2. Stanley Kubrick’s famous 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
3. Fail Safe, also from 1964, which I haven’t seen.
As with all fiction, there is a danger that viewers consider them as realistic depictions of reality or plausible scenarios, which in fact they are clearly not, at least in their details (or, in the case of WarGames, regarding almost everything). They may still be educational or thought-provoking insofar that they all feature accidental nuclear war, which is a facet of risk some may not have considered.
Another relevant film is The Day After, which was seen by 100 million Americans—”the most-watched television film in the history of the medium” (Hänni 2016)— and was instrumental in changing Reagan’s nuclear policy.
“President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed,” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”. The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer’s, told him “If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone.” Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan’s memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.” (Wikipedia)
“Director Meyer and writer Hume produced The Day After to support nuclear disarmament with the ‘grandiose notion that this movie would unseat Ronald Reagan’, and the nuclear freeze groups heavily exploited the ABC movie as a propaganda.” (Hänni 2016)