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.”
Do nuclear weapons allow states to avoid costly conventional arms-races? Building on evidence from Pakistan and other nuclear-armed states, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow Ahsan Butt will argue that states will practice such "substitution" only under limited conditions: when they are satisfied with the territorial status-quo, and their primary security challenges can be deterred by nuclear weapons.