ZERO DAYS: NUCLEAR CYBER SABOTAGE, BBC4, 9pm
STUXNET is a computer worm which can self-replicate and “burrow” its way from computer to computer but it has no interest in pinching your bank details.
Instead, this destructive worm, allegedly set loose in Iran by American and Israeli agents, had the aim of sabotaging the country’s nuclear programme .However, across Iran, computers began to shut down as the worm burrowed out of control. “No-one was willing to admit it was loose.”
This film looks at the rules – or the frightening lack of rules – in cyber warfare and shows how the Stuxnet story “opened forever the Pandora’s box".
Intelligence agencies and hackers can be as clever as they like but this film warns that worms and viruses can’t be controlled easily and are not likely to be curbed by the usual international tools of conferences, agreements and treaties. There is the constant danger of unintended consequences.
PANORAMA – TRUMP: THE KREMLIN CANDIDATE?, BBC1, 8.30pm
I’LL bet there are thriller writers who have toyed with the idea of a novel where the American president is a Kremlin puppet, but they probably dismissed it as too ridiculous. Likewise with the horror of 9/11 – if Hollywood had produced such a script it would have been mocked.
And yet here we are. The Twin Towers were destroyed, showing the unthinkable is possible, so maybe we are about to see a US president, the most powerful man in the world, who could be cowed and ordered about by an aggressive Russia just because it apparently has a sex tape on him.
So is Trump going to be led by Putin, or is such talk just a way to damage and discredit the incoming president? This episode examines the relationship and asks if it is better for all if the two are buddies. If they fall out it could produce fall-out.
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