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.”
Elizabeth Arnold is Chair and Professor of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is a former U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) political correspondent and the Producer of arcticprofiles.com. Arnold’s public radio career spans more than 20 years. She was a familiar voice on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and a regular presence on PBS Washington Week, covering Congress, the White House and the American West. Over the last decade, she has reported on the ecological and human impacts of global warming from some of the most remote areas of the Arctic. In 2018, she completed a fellowship at HKS’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where she researched the role of the press in effectively communicating climate change, specifically in the Arctic. Arnold has received numerous awards, including a DuPont Columbia Silver Baton and the Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress. Follow her on Twitter @EArnoldNPR.