This Documentary Will Show You Just How Fragile Our Democracy Really Is
TIME
March 25, 2020
Stephanie Zacharek
If you don’t want to know how easy it is for a canny individual—or a malicious state actor—to hack into the electronic voting technology used in the U.S., don’t watch Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections. In this unnervingly persuasive HBO documentary, directors Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale marshal cyber-security experts, statisticians and lawmakers to expose cracks in the system that could easily allow hackers to affect voting results. The filmmakers’ sources also include actual hackers, among them an individual who breached Alaska’s voting system in 2016 just to see if he could. Although he explains in an on-camera interview (his face obscured to protect his identity) that he declined to alter any data, he says he could have sold his “backdoor” access for millions.