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
Conrad Kramer is an engineer who builds products for people that improve their everyday lives. Most recently, Conrad worked on the Shortcuts app by Apple. Built into every iPhone and iPad, it helps you get complex tasks done with a single tap. Its visual, block-based interface acts as a low-code programming environment that is accessible to everyone. The app started out as Workflow, a company that Conrad co-founded in 2014 and ultimately sold to Apple in 2017.
Before Apple, Conrad got his start programming in the iPhone jailbreaking community, where he built software that innovated beyond what was allowed by the Apple platform. He remains a strong advocate for free software and the ability to run whatever software you like on the devices that you own. Conrad is also passionate about privacy, and contributed to being able to run Tor, a traffic anonymizer, on iPhone. He also worked for the non-profit VotePlz in 2016, where he built software to help people register to vote and to find their polling place.
Conrad left Apple last year and has been building his own open-source products, starting with a private cryptocurrency wallet. He is also doing research into green technologies, and has focused on solar energy. Photovoltaics have played and will continue to play an important role in decarbonizing the US economy. Conrad is interested in how to build out more solar capacity, faster, in the US.
Last Updated: May 16, 2022, 3:33pm