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.”
MEI Faculty Director Tarek Masoud, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations and MEI Visiting Fellow Karim Haggag, Professor of Practice at The American University in Cairo in conversation with leading Emirati intellectual, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, Professor of Political Science and author of The Gulf Moment.
This event is part of "USA 2020: The View from the Arab World," a series of conversations co-hosted by MEI Faculty Director Tarek Masoud and MEI Visiting Fellow Karim Haggag and featuring several of the world’s leading Arab policymakers, scholars, and intellectuals on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, America’s current social and political upheavals, and America’s changing role in the Middle East.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla is a retired professor of Political Science, was a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, and served as Chairman of the Arab Council for Social Science. He was the director of Gulf Research Unit, Sharjah for 10 years. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Georgetown University and an MA from American University. Professor Abdulla was a Fulbright Scholar and a visiting professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. His research interests include issues of political changes in the Gulf and the Arab World. He has published more than 50 articles, and he is the author of several books, including The Gulf Moment.
