A new Netflix film about nuclear doomsday has angered the Pentagon with its accuracy and, according to one expert, isn't the only doomsday scenario going on in the current Department of Defense, CNN reports.
Kathryn Bigelow made cinematic history in 2010 by becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for her film The Hurt Locker. Bigelow's latest film, the nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, premiered on Netflix this week and is creating quite a stir in the Trump administration, with the Pentagon strongly disputing its accuracy.
The plot portrays the U.S. missile defense system failing to intercept the incoming missile, which strikes an American city.
The Pentagon issued an internal memo to address what it called "false assumptions." Officials argued that the movie's portrayal of a 50 percent success rate for the missile defense system was based on outdated information. In contrast, the Pentagon asserts its current interceptors have a "100 percentaccuracy rate in testing".
The movie's screenwriter Noah Oppenheim stated that he and Bigelow spoke with former Pentagon and White House officials during their research. He maintains that the missile defense system is "highly imperfect" and that the film's depiction is accurate.
"We did not seek the cooperation of the Pentagon at all, or the current administration in making the movie, but it's all out there in the public domain. And unfortunately, our missile defense system is highly imperfect," Oppenheim told CNN.
"And if the Pentagon wants to have a conversation about improving it or what the next step might be in keeping all of us safer, that's exactly the conversation we want to have. But what we show in the movie is accurate," he said.
Fred Kaplan, national security columnist at Slate, who has written books about the history of the nuclear weapons program, agrees, telling CNN, "Unfortunately, the movie in this case is right. And the Pentagon statement is incorrect."
Asked about the culture at the Department of Defense, Kaplan described some of the "incompetence" that plagues the Trump administration's Pentagon leadership.
"What I have heard about is total intimidation, terror, fear, fear of the complete incompetence at the upper levels of the Pentagon, intimidation, and so many commanders being fired without cause, in some cases just because they're Black or women. Other cases that they've raised critical questions about policy. You know, it's really a bad situation over there," he says.
Kaplan then brought some receipts proving the accuracy of Bigelow's film.
"I'm holding a printout of an official, unclassified defense department report called Ground-based Midcourse Defense Testing Record. This is of the system that we see depicted in this film. It is also the only defensive system that is capable, theoretically, of shooting down an intercontinental ballistic missile as it heads toward the United States," he explains.
"And according to this document, there have been 20 tests of this system. Twelve of them hit their target and eight of them for various reasons, did not. Now, this really is like a bullet hitting a bullet. And as a technological feat, you know, this is very impressive. Twelve out of 20, that's very impressive.But if the missile is coming into Chicago and you've got as one of the characters says, it's a coin toss. You know, the downside of that coin toss is not good," he says.
Kaplan says the Pentagon's denial of the accuracy of the film is "not just mysterious, but appalling and dangerous that the Defense Department should be misleading internal, you know, top ranking officials about this because on the one hand, it undermines confidence in in what they're doing."
He also says that if Trump believes what the Pentagon is saying, it could be even more dangerous.
"If the president believes this, it could make him it could encourage him to take reckless actions in a crisis thinking that, well, I can always shoot down the missiles with this system. I don't quite understand it in another way. Nothing works 100 percent, right? So for these guys to say, oh, yeah, it works 100 percent, even if you don't know anything about this subject, why would you believe that? It's incredible," he notes.
Bigelow's realistic depictions of other military issues such as her acclaimed 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty, have made her films jarring and intense for audiences.
Kaplan says this latest film is no different.
"I've been researching and writing about this for more than 40 years, and of all the books and movies that I've consumed on the subject, this one felt me, filled me with more dread than any of it. It's in the basic aspects of it, quite realistic," he says.