The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
Biography
Alexandra Stark was a pre-doctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center's Middle East Initiative. She is a PhD candidate (expected 2019) in International Relations at Georgetown University. Her dissertation research analyzes the conditions under which states in the MENA region are likely to intervene in civil wars. Her research is supported by the USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the Cosmos Scholars Foundation. She holds an MSc in International Relations from LSE and a BA from Wellesley College, where she was an Albright Fellow.
Last Updated: Jan 14, 2020, 1:33pm