Captain Chen Dawai of the People's Liberation Army cyberwarfare unit is tasked with finding the hacker, and enlists the aid of his sister Lien, a networking engineer.

He meets with FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett in Los Angeles and reveals core parts of the code in the tool was written by himself and Nicholas Hathaway, his college roommate, during their time at MIT.

Hathaway, knowing how necessary he is to the investigation, demands new terms: his prison sentence commuted if his assistance leads to the hacker's identification and capture.

Hathaway manipulates the update system on Jessup's phone GPS that tracks his location, allowing him to follow his own lead and arrange a meeting with the hacker's partner at a restaurant.

Clues uncovered by Dawai and Barrett lead the team to Hong Kong, where they work with Police Inspector Alex Trang.

The National Security Agency's Black Widow software has the ability to repair the data, but they refuse to allow the Chinese access.

Reluctantly sanctioned by Barrett, Hathaway hacks into the NSA and uses Black Widow, discovering that the hacker's server is based in Jakarta.

In an interview done at the LMU Film school, Michael Mann said he was inspired to make Blackhat after reading about the events surrounding Stuxnet, which was a computer worm that targeted and reportedly ruined almost one fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges.

Although Collateral, Miami Vice and Public Enemies were predominantly digital features, Mann employed 35 mm film sparingly.

[13] Upon viewing the film, however, Gregson-Williams posted a message on Facebook stating that his score went almost unused in the final edit, which included synthesized music not prepared by Ross or himself.

According to critic Nick Pinkerton, Mann's concern with surveillance follows in the footsteps of earlier films by Fritz Lang and Henry Hathaway.

The emerging relationship between power and network technology in the mid-20th century was a major theme in those directors' respective works, particularly Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) and Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1948).

[18] In an early scene, several books seen on Hathaway's prison-cell bookshelf serve as an "ideological gate key" to the film, according to critic Niles Schwartz.

These include books of philosophy and critical theory like Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, Jacques Derrida's The Animal That Therefore I Am, Jean Baudrillard's America; a biography of nuclear physicists Ernest Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer; and Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, an introduction to string theory.

An in-depth analysis by industry trade publication Deadline of why Blackhat did not perform primarily examined the marketing strategy as "the major challenge they were unable to overcome"[25] with independent tracking services supporting this conclusion: "total awareness for Blackhat was in the 40–50% range on January 4 and grew to 50–60% on January 15 (versus American Sniper's 80–90%).

"[25] Additionally, "the film wasn't helped by a marketing campaign that failed to convey a sophisticated plot and a romance... Blackhat instead chased a young audience with action footage that did not seem fresh.

[27] Deadline credited Wang Leehom and Tang Wei's inclusion with increased success in other nations including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

[29] Due to the less-than-stellar numbers at the American and Asian box offices, Universal Pictures International opted not to release Blackhat theatrically in Australia.

[37] It includes the theatrical, international, and director's cuts of the film, the same supplements as the Blu-ray, and new interviews with cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas.

[38] Michael Mann premiered a re-edited version of the film at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 20, 2016, which was labeled a "revised cut.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Thematically timely, but dramatically inert, Blackhat strands Chris Hemsworth in a muddled misfire from director Michael Mann.

[48][49][50] Christy Lemire in the Chicago Sun-Times stated in her review, "Anyone who makes his or her way in the world sitting in front of a computer screen all day is not going to look as hunky as Hemsworth.

"[52] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave the film a largely positive review, stating, "Michael Mann's thriller Blackhat, a story about the intersection of bodies and machines, is a spectacular work of unhinged moviemaking.

"[20] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also gave it a positive review, writing, "It lures us in with the promise of up-to-the-minute villainy, but the satisfactions of 'Blackhat' are surprisingly old school.

"[54] Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, gave Blackhat three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating in his review, "'Blackhat' is mainly about what happens when the real world is annexed by the virtual: what it does to geography and relationships; how it signal-jams our species' sense of time as a series of self-contained moments, and substitutes an existence that can feel like an endless, intrusive buzz.