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
Trevor Findlay is a Principal Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He was a Joint Fellow/Senior Fellow with the International Security Program (ISP) and Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Belfer Center from 2011–2015. From 2005–2015, he was a professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and holder of the William and Jeanie Barton Chair in International Affairs. He was also inaugural director the Canadian Centre for Treaty Compliance and held a concurrent appointment at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario, as head of its Nuclear Futures Project.
Dr. Findlay has a B.A. Honours degree from the University of Melbourne in political science and a Masters degree and Ph.D. in International Relations from the Australian National University (ANU). He spent thirteen years in the Australian diplomatic service, with postings in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Geneva. This was followed by academic appointments at the Peace Research Centre at the ANU, including acting directorship, and four years as a project leader at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Sweden, where he inaugurated the project on peacekeeping and international security. From 1998–2005, he was Executive Director of the London-based non-governmental organization, the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC). Professor Findlay was appointed to the United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters in 2013 and chaired the Board in 2017.
His current research focuses on global nuclear governance. His report on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog, was published by CIGI in 2012. Dr Findlay's most recent book, based on research conducted for the Project on Managing the Atom, is Transforming Nuclear Safeguards Culture: the IAEA, Iraq, and the Future of Non-Proliferation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022).
Last Updated: Jul 21, 2023, 9:40am