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
Usha Sahay is a Belfer IGA fellow and a first-year MPP candidate at HKS. Prior to Harvard, she was the managing editor of War on the Rocks, where she remains editor-at-large. She has been an editor at the Wall Street Journal and HuffPost, and a Scoville Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Usha is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University. Her research interests include nuclear strategy, Cold War history, and leadership and decision-making in foreign policy.
Last Updated: Sep 7, 2021, 11:30am