Overview
- The Missile Defense Agency, in an internal memo dated Oct. 16, asserts U.S. intercept tests have been 100% successful for more than a decade.
- Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, in new MSNBC and CNN interviews, rejects the memo’s premise as “preposterous,” citing extensive research and consultations with missile-defense experts.
- Sen. Ed Markey and multiple analysts, including Laura Grego, Fred Kaplan and Joseph Cirincione, challenge the Pentagon’s framing and point to lower historical success rates in scripted tests.
- Director Kathryn Bigelow defends the film’s realism and independence from formal Pentagon input, noting the use of technical advisers and real-world settings to ground procedures.
- The Netflix release has reached a large audience, topping charts with more than 20 million accounts in its first three days, intensifying the policy debate the filmmakers sought to provoke.