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.”
Jennie C. Stephens is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government studying the strategic use of scientific and technical information in government-industry interactions during the development of environmental regulations. Dr. Stephens is also conducting a combine technical and regulatory feasibility assessment of several geochemical carbon sequestration proposals. She earned her PhD (2002) and MS (1998) in Environmental Science and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, where she studied the effects of elevated C02 concentrations on soil processes. She received a BA (Magna Cum Laude) in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard in 1997.