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
James Shires is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, University of
Leiden, and a non-resident research fellow with the Cyber Project at the Belfer Center for Science
and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, an MSc from Birkbeck College, University of London and a BA from the University of Cambridge. His research examines cybersecurity in the Middle East, focusing on the interaction between threats to individuals, states and organizations, new regional dynamics, and the development of cybersecurity expertise.