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.”
Please join Professor Romain Murenzi, Executive Director of TWAS, for a public lecture.
Moderators: Calestous Juma and Venky Narayanamurti
Science, technology, and innovation (STI) are crucial for poverty alleviation and long-term economic development. Generally, countries can be classified in four STI categories: highly advanced, advanced, middle-advanced and least advanced. This last category comprises most of Africa – South Africa and Egypt are exceptions – and it is this category that is the main focus of TWAS.
The following questions will be considered: What will this decade and the next be like in the developing world and in Africa in particular? How will these countries cope with challenges such as climate change, energy security, food security, diseases, drinking water and population growth?
Professor Murenzi was born in Rwanda and raised in Burundi. Between 2001 and 2009, he served as the minister of science and technology in Rwanda. He returned to the United States in 2009 to assume a joint appointment as director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Sustainable Development at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, DC, and visiting professor at the University of Maryland's Institute of Advanced Computer Studies in College Park, Maryland. He was appointed executive director of TWAS in April 2011.
Please join us! This event is free and open to the public. It will also be streamed live: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/live. This link will be available 20 minutes prior to the start of the event. Follow #cjuma on Twitter for live updates as well.