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
Dr. Hassan Ahmadian was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Iran Project, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dr. Ahmadian is an Assistant Professor of Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Tehran, and is also a Middle East security and politics fellow at the Center for Strategic Research, Tehran. He received his PhD in Area Studies from the University of Tehran. His research and teaching work is mainly focused on Iran’s foreign policy and relations, political change, civil-military relations and Islamist movements in the Middle East. His research and analyses have appeared in peer-reviewed journals as well as prestigious Persian, English and Arabic outlets.
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