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.”
South Korea attempted to acquire nuclear reprocessing facilities from France in the mid-1970s. U.S. and Canadian pressure led South Korea and France to abandon the negotiations. In this Project on Managing the Atom Seminar, ISP/MTA Research Fellow SeYoung Jang will discuss how the failure to acquire reprocessing technology was later a significant element in South Korea’s decision to suspend its nuclear weapons program in 1976.