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 the Intelligence Project for a talk by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, on their latest book The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019).
In the book, Soldatov and Borogan examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy.
Since the late 19th century, Russians have been leaving the country in large numbers, creating the 2nd largest diaspora in the world – and a rare opportunity for the Kremlin and Moscow’s spymasters to foster a mass network of spies.
From a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017, the history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, and Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem.
Today, some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, this is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Russian investigative journalists, the co-founders of Agentura.ru, and the authors of The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2011).
