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
Amanda Rizkallah was an associate at the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative and a former pre-doctoral research fellow (2015-2016). She is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at UCLA, and an Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) Herb York Global Security Fellow. With an emphasis on Lebanon, her doctoral dissertation examines how patterns of wartime territorial control and population displacement shape post-war political competition and governance. She also examines the role of civil war settlements in mediating these effects. Her research interests include civil war, sectarian conflict, the politics of displacement, and post-war reconstruction and reconciliation, with a focus on the Arab world. Amanda Rizkallah earned a B.A., summa cum laude, in political science from UCLA in 2008. For more information about Amanda and her work, please visit her personal website: www.amandarizkallah.com.
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