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
Thomas Franco is a second-year Master in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School and an Allison Fellow at the Belfer Center. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, Thomas served as a Teach for America corps member in San Jose, CA. At HKS, he has co-led the U.S. Latinx Caucus, Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, and the CPL Latinx Leadership Initiative (LLI). In 2021, Thomas was elected to serve as an at-large representative on the Rutland City Board of Aldermen in Vermont. He is returning to HKS from a one-year leave of absence, during which he served as a Dukakis Fellow for Oregon Governor Kate Brown, an analyst at the Virginia Department of Education, and a broadband policy specialist at a rural development consulting firm.
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