Zero Day Attack imagines a Taiwan pushed to the edge after a contested presidential election ignites tensions across the Taiwan Strait. As China intensifies military pressure and social unrest deepens, the fragile acting president faces an unthinkable choice — to declare war or surrender the country’s future.
As the first television drama to confront the Taiwan-China political tension head-on, this groundbreaking anthology brings together ten of Taiwan’s most acclaimed filmmakers. Each episode reveals how ordinary citizens from different walks of life confront invasion, uncertainty, and moral survival — not through the spectacle of combat, but through the quiet terror and humanity that emerge in the shadow of war and infiltration.
4:00 | Introduction 4:10-5:05 | Episode 1: War or Peace 5:05-5:55 | Moderated discussion with the production team 5:55-6:50 | Episode 10: The Flame of Peace 6:50-7:00 | Closing remarks
About the Speakers
Cheng Hsin-Mei
CEO/ Showrunner
From newsroom to writer's room, she has spent her career capturing the pulse of Taiwan's political and cultural reality. A Taiwan's Golden Bell Award-winning screenwriter and former journalist, Cheng is known for crafting stories that explore the fault lines of democracy, media, and identity in East Asia.
Major works include "Zero Day Attack", "Trade War", "The Mirror", "Island Nation",
"The Coming Through", "The Best of Youth", among others.
Janet Hsieh
Actor, TV Host, Author
Born in Texas and educated at MIT, Janet Hsieh brings a Taiwanese American, cross-cultural perspective to a story that connects Taiwan to the world. In Zero Day Attack, she portrays the president-elect, a leader forced to navigate immense internal and external pressures in the midst of a national crisis.
Gabrielius Landsbergis is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. Landsbergis served as minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, a pivotal period for the region. He led Lithuania’s diplomatic service guided by the principle of values-based foreign policy. During his tenure, Lithuania emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine, Taiwan, and freedom fighters worldwide. Before that, he served in the parliament of Lithuania from 2016, was chairman of the Homeland Union (Lithuanian Conservatives), and was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.
Kharis Templeman is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and program manager of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, as well as a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at Stanford University. A political scientist by training, he writes and speaks frequently about cross-Strait relations and Taiwan politics and policy issues.
