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.”
Henrik Selin is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Studies in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His research focus on international environmental cooperation and policy-making in a broader context of advancing sustainable development. He is the author of Mercury Stories: Understanding Sustainability through a Volatile Element (MIT Press, with Noelle Eckley Selin), European Union Environmental Governance (Routledge, with Stacy VanDeveer) and Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management (MIT Press). He is the co-editor of Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policy Making and Multilevel Governance (MIT Press, with Stacy VanDeveer) and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics: Comparative and International Perspectives (Ashgate, with Miranda Schreurs and Stacy VanDeveer). In addition, he is the author and co-author of over fifty peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters as well as numerous reports, reviews, and commentaries. He is also a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich (2018-2021).
Noelle Eckley Selin is Associate Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and Director of MIT's Technology and Policy Program. Her research uses modeling and analysis to inform sustainability decision-making, focusing on issues involving air pollution, climate change and hazardous substances such as mercury. She received her PhD and M.A. (Earth and Planetary Sciences) and B.A. (Environmental Science and Public Policy) from Harvard University. Her work has focused on atmospheric chemistry, air pollution, as well as interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations. Her articles were selected as the best environmental policy papers in 2015 and 2016 by the journal Environmental Science & Technology. She is the recipient of a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER award (2011), a Leopold Leadership fellow (2013-2014), Kavli fellow (2015), a member of the Global Young Academy (2014-2018), an American Association for the Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Institute Fellow (2016-2017), and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Technical University of Munich Institute for Advanced Study (2018-2021).
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