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
Leyatt Betre was an Associate with the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and a Ph.D. candidate in Security Studies at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs. She was previously a predoctoral research fellow with Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. She received her S.B. degree in Physics and Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she conducted research in both the Security Studies Program and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. Her current research examines the history and politics of nuclear weapons R&D in the United States and the Soviet Union during the early to mid-Cold War, with a particular focus on the ways in which technical communities defined the parameters and possibilities characterizing contemporary arms control efforts.
Last Updated: Sep 18, 2023, 11:47pm