Welcome to Meet the Press Reports, where each week we do a deep dive into a single subject.

And today, in the second of three episodes, focused on key threats to our nation, it's

cybersecurity.

America's cyber war is escalating, and the more technologically advanced we become, the

more vulnerable we are.

Everything from cell phones in our hand to the electrical grid to our military is run

by software code.

Code that's written by humans, and all the things that go wrong there.

So what happens when a human makes a mistake in that code?

And what happens when countries can use that human error as a weapon?

Well, sadly, the answer is they find ways to exploit it.

By secretly gaining access to the technology that makes our world work, you've possibly

never heard of zero days.

But here's why you should know them.

It's the term for weaknesses in code that are so dangerous that companies responsible

for managing the code have zero days to fix it before it's a problem.

It's an immediate problem.

A zero day attack can allow hackers to embed inside your software permanently.

That's what's so scary here.

Getting off medical equipment if they'd like to.

Or how about releasing water from dams?

Or simply poisoning our drinking water?

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