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
Jessica "Zhanna" Malekos Smith is a former post-doctoral fellow at the Cyber Security Project, and a M.A. candidate at King’s College London, Department of War Studies. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, where she was a fellow of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, and a J.D. from the University of California, Davis School of Law. Her research has appeared in the Small Wars Journal, The National Interest, Strife, RealClearDefense, and the Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property.
Last Updated: Jan 16, 2017, 11:48am