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
Colleen Larkin is a Research Fellow with the Managing the Atom Project and the International Security Program. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University specializing in International Relations. Her research interests include nuclear strategy, arms control, foreign policy, and strategic narratives. In her dissertation, she studies the politics of strategic change and the emergence of strategic narratives, focusing on the evolution of narratives about nuclear weapons and deterrence in U.S. foreign policy. Her work has been published in the European Journal of International Security. She previously served as a Hans J. Morgenthau fellow in Grand Strategy at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to Columbia, she graduated from Wellesley College with degrees in Political Science and Mathematics.
Last Updated: Sep 19, 2023, 11:30amAwards
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Email: clarkin@hks.harvard.edu
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