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
David Arceneaux is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and a former postdoctoral fellow with the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. David holds a Ph.D. in political science from Syracuse University. He is currently developing a book project on the origins of command and control systems in regional nuclear powers. David was previously a predoctoral fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program. His research is supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, and he has previously received support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and Tobin Project, among others.
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