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
Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is a visiting scholar at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service. He is also a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. His research areas include international security and Middle East politics.
He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018). His articles have appeared in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Global Security Studies, Political Science Quarterly, and International Studies Review among others. Mohammad has also written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has taught courses on U.S. foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, Middle East politics, and religion and politics in Iran. He is the recipient of the 2019 Faculty Excellence Award at the Bush School. Mohammad has a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Tehran, an M.A. in sociology from the New School for Social Research, an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.
Last Updated: Sep 14, 2023, 10:47pmAwards
Contact
Email: matabaar@hks.harvard.edu
Mailing Address:
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Mailbox 134
Cambridge 02138, Massachusetts