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
Dr. Seyed Ammar Nakhjavani is a former Associate of the Iran Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where he focused on Islamic political and intellectual thought as well as sectarian conflict and peace building in the Middle East.
Dr. Nakhjavani is a historian and specialist of Islamic intellectual history and was the Inaugural Imam Ali Chair in Shi’a Studies and Dialogue among Islamic Legal Schools at Hartford Seminary and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute. Prior to joining Hartford, Dr. Nakhjavani served as a Visiting Scholar of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Exeter and his MA from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Dr. Nakhjavani serves as a Special Representative to the United Nations where he promotes women's rights initiatives, social development, and religious tolerance and was listed as one the top 500 most influential Muslims.
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