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
Fang Zhang is Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Project on Energy Innovation and Decarbonization Project. She holds a PhD in international affairs from Tufts University. She also holds another PhD in public administration from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China). Her research topics include clean energy innovation, green finance, and technology transfer.
Last Updated: May 4, 2021, 10:18am