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.”
The role of dual-use assistance to indigenous nuclear programs continues to be understudied while the historiography of post-1947 Indian foreign policymaking remains underdeveloped. In this MTA Seminar, MTA/ISP Research Fellow Jayita Sarkar will address these lacunae through an examination of French assistance to India’s nuclear program in the backdrop of U.S. nonproliferation efforts during the Cold War (1948-1978). Both countries — a difficult U.S. ally and a nonaligned country—posed significant political challenges to U.S. nonproliferation efforts, which encouraged their cooperation. The speaker concludes that technology transfers and joint R&D in emerging technologies constituted the unique character of French-Indian cooperation — a trend that continues till this day.