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
Victoria Ontiveros is an MPP candidate at Harvard Kennedy School, concentrating in International and Global Affairs. Originally from Boston, she graduated in 2020 from Johns Hopkins University, where she majored in International Studies, East Asian Studies, and Economics. Victoria has studied Mandarin Chinese for eight years and spent a year studying abroad in Shanghai, China with support from the Boren Scholarship. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the role of the South China Sea Museum, located in Hainan, in the crafting of the national narrative of China’s historic sovereignty over the contested South China Sea islands.
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