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
Nadezhda Filimonova is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative. She received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Boston and is an affiliated scholar at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies. Mrs. Filimonova also holds two Master’s degrees: one in Political Science and International Studies from Uppsala University and the other in International Relations from St. Petersburg State University. She has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards and an author of several peer-reviewed publications. She has taught courses on international relations, Arctic studies, and daily life in Soviet Russia. Her research explores urban climate change governance in the Arctic.
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