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.”
Biography
Ali Ahmad is a former Research Fellow who studied energy policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. His research interests include energy security and resilience and the political economy of nuclear energy in newcomer markets, with focus on the Middle East. Prior to joining MTA, Ali served as Director of the Energy Policy and Security Program at the American University of Beirut. From 2013 to 2016, Ali was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security where he worked on informing nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Outside academia, Ali is a senior consultant at the World Bank advising the Energy and Extractive Industries Global Practice. Ali holds a first degree in Physics from the Lebanese University and a PhD in Engineering from Cambridge University.
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