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.”
About Professor Tarek Masoud:
Tarek Masoud, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, teaches courses on comparative politics and the Middle East. His current research focuses on the politics of religion in the Islamic world, particularly the ways in which Islamist parties adapt to their political environments. He is the coeditor of Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge, 2004) and Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge, 2008). He is the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation. He holds an AB from Brown and a PhD in political science from Yale.