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
Nick Sinai is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center. Nick teaches Policy Design and Delivery II; prior, for five years, he taught the field course Tech and Innovation in Government. Nick joined HKS in 2014 as an inaugural recipient of the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellowship. Nick is an advisor to the Harvard Open Data Project, Harvard Computer Society's Tech For Social Good, Upsolve, and Coding It Forward.
Nick helped found the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.
Nick is also a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners and serves on the boards of Rebellion Defense, LeoLabs, and BrightBytes.
Nick joined Harvard in 2014 from the White House, where he was U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer. Nick led President Obama’s Open Data Initiatives, co-led the Open Government Initiative, and helped start the Presidential Innovation Fellow program. Prior, Nick played a key role in crafting the National Broadband Plan at the FCC.
Nick earned a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard.
Last Updated: Sep 17, 2021, 12:07pm