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.”
Speaker: Stephen Herzog, Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
Arms control has languished as a field of academic inquiry, despite a renaissance in nuclear security studies and significant advances in understanding proliferation. Few studies have attempted to emulate past academic shaping of arms control agreements and outcomes, with particularly limited emphasis on multilateral efforts. This is a problematic situation as the world looks beyond bilateral U.S.–Russian arms control toward the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT), Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (MENWFZ), and even the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The speaker attempts to fill this gap by offering a theory of state entry into multilateral nuclear arms control agreements.
Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtc-mrqz8jH9coGNTF7bloNM75UeKB3bJW