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.”
Seth Johnston
Dr. Seth A. Johnston is a Fellow of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is an international security practitioner and scholar with expertise in defense cooperation, military intelligence, and transatlantic affairs.
He was most recently a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and previously a Task Force Commander in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan.
Johnston served extensively in multinational missions overseas as a military officer. He was chief of international security cooperation for intelligence at the U.S. Army Europe Headquarters, and he planned and oversaw specialized intelligence support to allied forces during the most significant NATO command structure growth in three decades while at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). Earlier, Johnston was: senior intelligence officer for the first Romanian-led multinational infantry battalion task force in the United Nations-authorized International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; and a commander of U.S. Army troops in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. His interagency experience further includes brief service as an arms control policy official at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC.
As Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Johnston designed and taught undergraduate courses in political science. He has spoken and published widely on European and international politics. His book How NATO Adapts was the 2017 volume of the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science and became the most requested book among practitioners at the NATO Headquarters library in Brussels.
Johnston earned his doctorate in international relations from Oxford University where he also earned a masters degree in comparative politics as a Marshall Scholar. He earned a B.S. in political science with a nuclear engineering minor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Johnston’s military awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Korea Defense Service Medal, NATO Medal, German Armed Forces Badge (Leistungsabzeichen der Bundeswehr), Parachutist Badge, and Combat Action Badge.
Originally from Falls Church, Virginia, Johnston rowed for the Trinity College Boat Club at Oxford and holds a Diploma from the Ritz Escoffier School of French Gastronomy in Paris.
Torrey Taussig
Dr. Torrey Taussig is a research director in the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where she manages “Transatlantic Relations 2021,” a joint project with the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). She is also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and the head of strategy and operations of the North American Group of the Trilateral Commission.
In 2018-19, Taussig was a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow based in Berlin, Germany, where she served as a foreign policy advisor in the German Bundestag and in the Transatlantic Division of the German Foreign Office. During that time, she researched and published on German foreign policy and transatlantic cooperation on China.
Taussig works on US-EU relations, great power competition, and authoritarian challenges to democratic states and institutions. Her doctoral research assessed the implications of authoritarian political dynamics on Russian and Chinese foreign policy.
Previously, Taussig held pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships at the Brookings Institution. In this capacity, she led the Brookings Foreign Policy Program's Democracy Working Group and the “Democracy and Disorder” publication series launched in 2018. She also held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. Taussig received a master’s and a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a bachelor’s in political science and economics from Williams College.