Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Zero Day,’ Robert De Niro stars as former President George Mullen. Resigned to a quiet life, he is working on a memoir, whose deadline is fast approaching. That should have been the most pressing thing for his now mundane life, but things take a turn when a massive cyberattack jolts the entire country into a state of emergency. For one whole minute, all the cell phones, laptops, navigational devices, and so on are shut down. While it might not seem much on paper, it causes a huge loss of life and property. Trains lose their control and collide with one another. Airplanes are forced to fly blind. Patients on life support systems are suddenly cut off.
The unprecedented nature of the attack requires the government to take quick action. Russia emerges as the prime suspect, but President Mitchell wants to be sure of it before making any moves that might lead to a straight-out war. It is also important to find the culprit because the last attack came with a warning that it will happen again. No one knows when and for how long this time, but one thing is clear: the next attack must be stopped. To solve the case, the Zero Day Commission is set up, and to ease things for them, they are allowed to do whatever they want, even if it means infringing on the basic rights of the country’s people.
Someone responsible and trustworthy is required to exercise this power, and that is where George Mullen comes in. He may have been the President years ago, but he remains a popular figure within both political circles. He is also known not to beat around the bush and get to the bottom of the truth, no matter what. Moreover, the trust that people have in him will allow them to believe the findings of his investigation. However, there is more to the story than that. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Who Orchestrated the Cyber Attack?
With the cyberattack being a terrorist act, the suspicion naturally goes to foreign powers. It is the most natural thing to think that the enemies of the state are trying to harm it. Everyone is ready to believe that Russia had something to do with it, but George Mullen refuses to give in to that theory without proper investigation. The more he digs into the case, the more he realizes that it is not the work of someone from the outside but from powers working within the country. Their motives remain to be seen, but it doesn’t take much for George to clear Russia or any other foreign power of suspicion. It is an act of domestic terrorism, and a radical leftist organization called the Reapers is focused on it.
The chain of evidence leads the investigation into uncharted waters, but it also tests George’s mental and ethical resolve. While dealing with such a high-pressure situation, he is also dealing with what appears to be symptoms of dementia. He is starting to forget things and hear things that are not there. His mental health becomes a cause for concern for everyone around him, especially his wife, who doesn’t want him to do anything untoward, considering the amount of power he has in his hands at the moment. Concerns are also raised when George actually starts to use the powers in a way that others are scared would be used in the wrong hands.
The biggest problem with giving someone absolute power is that they would use it to repress people. Such a thing was not expected of George, as it was believed that despite all this, he would still do his due diligence, and for a moment, he does. Even though he doesn’t need to get warrants, he still does get them before arresting the members of the Reapers all around the country. But the more he spirals, the more he loses touch with his own sense of morality, and eventually, he decides that warrants are not needed, and he has his dissidents, like Evan Green, picked up from their house in the middle of the night.
In the end, George comes to his senses, and right before he is about to resign from his position, he finds a note from his aide, Roger Carlson, who was killed for trying to bring the truth to light, or at least not for suppressing it. Roger’s note reveals that there is a radio frequency on which the conspirators have been communicating with each other. Soon enough, the code for their communication is broken, and one by one, all the pieces start to fall into place. It turns out that the billionaires Monica Kidder and Robert Lyndon had a hand in the attacks. While Lyndon is in the wind, Kidder is arrested, especially after it comes to light that it was she who refined the tech that shut down all the systems for one minute.
While Kidder offers to tell the entire truth in return for immunity, her request is not granted, and soon after, she is found dead in her cell. It looks like suicide, but there is a good chance that she may have been killed by her co-conspirators, who turn out to be the members of the government. In a shocking twist, it is revealed that Richard Dreyer and several other members of Congress from both sides were involved in concocting and executing this plan. It also included Alexandra Mullen, George’s daughter and a congresswoman. The excuse for their act was that they wanted to get the country back on the right path, for which they needed a radical change in the government, and they thought that a cyberattack could hasten things for the plan.
Who Put the Device in George’s Birdfeeder? Who Used Proteus On Him?
Apart from the cyberattack, there is another mystery that looms on George and darkens his days. With the pressure of solving the case mounting on him from all sides, he starts to feel reality slipping from his grasp. He hears things, forgets stuff, and gets confused about details and people. It is in a throe of such confusion that he names Proteus as the secret defunct government program that was used to orchestrate the cyber attack. However, he forgets that the program had nothing to do with cyberattacks.
Proteus was developed as a neurological weapon that would attack a person’s brain from afar. The symptoms would include forgetfulness and hallucinations, among other things. This discovery convinces George that someone is using Proteus on him to meddle with his mind and make him unfit to lead the investigation. He believes that whoever is behind the cyberattack must also be behind weaponizing Proteus against him. In the end, however, when the truth comes to light, Proteus is not mentioned anywhere. This means that whoever was behind it is still out there.
The show plays with the idea of the secret weapon, as we never find out if someone is using it. The only other person who hints at its use is Natan, George’s secret informant, who believes that the former President has already been targeted with it and must resign before he does something bad in his position of power. Still, no evidence is found to suggest that Proteus was actually used on George, and what makes this possibility even more far-fetched is the fact that the symptoms that George speaks of started before the cyberattack.
The show opens with him on a normal day, where he talks with Hector about the birdfeeder, which is somehow always empty. A couple of days later, it turns out that Hector had left his employ several years ago, and the new man, Wayne, had been working for him long enough for George to remember him. So, when he questions Wayne about his identity and becomes aggressive, Sheila becomes concerned about his mental state. After the entire matter of the cyberattack has been settled, George is back on his routine and finds a broken device inside the birdfeeder. This immediately makes him suspicious and he believes that it may have had something to do with Proteus.
George gives it to Valerie Whitesell, his chief of staff and one of the few people he can trust without doubt. She sends the device to be thoroughly inspected so not only can they find out what it was used for but also where it came from. The results show that the device cannot be proven to be connected to Proteus. It could have come from anywhere, and it doesn’t seem to have the potential to do neurological damage to a person. This shows that perhaps the whole Proteus thing was a construct of George’s mind and a way for him to tell himself that he was of sound enough mind to deal with things by himself, while in truth, he was in denial about what was actually happening to him. It seems that the old age might finally be catching up to him, and he needs to see a doctor to find out why he is having forgetfulness and hallucinations. Like the attack on his country, the attack on his mind also comes from the inside and is not the doing of a foreign power.
What Happens to Lyndon and Alex? What was in George’s Report?
When George discovers the true culprits of the cyberattack, he also realizes another thing. It turns out that President Mitchell and the CIA knew all along that someone within the government was responsible for the attack. However, they also knew that putting this truth out in the open could destabilize the entire system of government, and they didn’t want to take that risk. They knew that whoever was involved in this attack wouldn’t get their due, at least not in prison. Still, they needed to tell the people something that would satisfy them, and that is why George Mullen was brought in. Whatever answer he gave to the public would be believed, and the nation could move on from this crisis.
With his own daughter’s involvement in the attack, George is forced to take pause and has to mull over the whole thing. The nature of the crime would mean that the culprits would have capital punishment waiting for them. George and Sheila have already lost a son, and they are not ready to lose their daughter, too. So, everyone, including President Mitchell, advises George to pin the whole thing on Kidder, who is dead anyway, and save his daughter and, more importantly, the country’s belief in the system. At first, George agrees to do it. In his report, Kidder is named the only person responsible for the attack, and none of the politicians, including Dreyer and Alexandra, are mentioned in it.
Still, these politicians cannot be allowed to keep working, so a plan is made to remove them from government and their positions of power. Mitchell reveals that Dreyer has already started working on his retirement plan and, in the same vein, his co-conspirators would also be forced out, and the government would be clean again. Eventually, the day comes when Robert is called into the Senate to present his report, and when he starts out, he sticks to what he has been told. But then, his mind starts to play tricks on him, and in the end, he decides to tell the truth.
It is a shocking turn of events for everyone, including Sheila, who hoped that her husband would save their daughter, who has gone away for a while, mainly because she is racked with guilt over the many lives lost during the attack. Before leaving, she wrote a letter to her father where she confessed that she had broken the trust of the people and could not deal with the guilt anymore. Her words encourage George to accept what’s in front of him and come through on his oath to tell the people nothing but the truth. He reads the letter out loud during his presentation, following which he exposes Dreyer and every other person who conspired with him. What happens to them and the country remains to be seen, but George has done his duty and earned the spot for being the most honest and trustworthy politician who will not lie to his people.
Read More: Is Zero Day a True Story?
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