There is a new disaster film topping the charts on Netflix, “Leave the World Behind,” which some are calling “eerily realistic.” The fictional disaster film is based on a book, and it’s about foreign attacks against U.S. infrastructure and the societal collapse within the U.S. in the wake of those attacks.
The Obamas themselves co-produced the movie, and the film’s director, Sam Esmail, commented that Barack Obama’s realistic script notes “scared the f—” out of him.
Meanwhile, in reality, The Washington Post reported that Chinese hackers targeted more than two dozen U.S. entities this year, including communications networks, the Texas power grid, water, utilities, and oil and gas pipelines.
Brandon Wales, the executive director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), recently issued a warning to Americans.
“It is very clear that Chinese attempts to compromise critical infrastructure are in part to pre-position themselves to be able to disrupt or destroy that critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict, to either prevent the United States from being able to project power into Asia or to cause societal chaos inside the United States,” Wales said.
The report echos a similar premise of the new film, lending the film its “eerie” quality.
“Leave the World Behind” is a new venture for the Obamas. It marks the first fictional film that the Obamas and their production company, Higher Ground Productions, have ever worked on.
The director of the film said that the Obamas’ insight was “eye-popping.”
“I am writing what I think is fiction, for the most part,” Esmail told Vanity Fair in an interview. “I’m trying to keep it as true to life as possible, but I’m exaggerating and dramatizing. And to hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details… I thought I was off by a lot! The fact that he said that scared the f— out of me.”
In reality, China is certainly not the only source of credible cyber threats against the United States. CISA announced on Friday, Dec. 1, that Iranian hacker groups launched ransomware and cyberattacks on U.S. water systems.