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
Pamela Smith, the President & CEO of Verified Voting, plays a national leadership role in safeguarding elections and building working alliances between advocates, election officials, and other stakeholders. Pam joined Verified Voting in 2004, serving as President from 2007-2017 and most recently as a Senior Advisor to the organization. She is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises, a diverse cross-partisan group of more than 50 experts whose mission is to prevent and mitigate a range of election crises by calling for critical preventative reforms to our election systems. Pam developed and shepherded an extensive trusted information resource on election equipment and the regulations governing its use at the federal level and across the 50 states. She provides information and public testimony on election security issues at federal and state levels throughout the U.S., including to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on House Administration. Pam is the author of and contributor to numerous key reports and issue briefs on protection of secret ballots, principles of post-election audits, state voting readiness, voting system testing and certification, accessible ballot marking principles, and other matters relating to election administration and verification. Prior to her work in elections, she was a nonprofit executive for a Hispanic educational organization working on first language literacy and adult learning, and a small business and marketing consultant.
