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
Evan Sankey is a Research Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
His research and writing focuses on America's role in Asia, US-Japan relations, and great power rivalry. He was previously a junior fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a research analyst at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies. He holds a B.S. in economics from Northeastern University and an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
His writing has been published in The National Interest, The Hill, Responsible Statecraft, and the peer-reviewed journal Survival.
Last Updated: Dec 2, 2021, 4:15pm