Cybersecurity expert to discuss “Hacked World Order”

How can we understand how states both large and small attack, surveil, influence, steal from and trade with each other in the digital age? Cybersecurity expert Adam Segal will explore this topic during “The Hacked World Order and Geopolitics of Cyberspace,” an upcoming lecture sponsored by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.

Segal’s lecture will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17 in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall. To reserve a seat, visit the Pell Center’s Eventbrite page.

For more than 300 years, nation-states dominated international conflict and shaped world order, using all the instruments they had to make rules that best served their interests. Two decades ago, digital technologies started to shake up that long-standing system. In 2012, the U.S. government acknowledged that it had used these technologies to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, and Russia and China conducted massive cyber-espionage operations. Cyberspace became a primary battlefield.

To make matters worse, cyber attackers often hide behind proxies. Many of the latest technologies are now in the hands of big companies who have interests that differ from those in government. Almost all our critical infrastructure is vulnerable to attack.

Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national security and director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book “The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver and Manipulate in the Digital Age” describes the increasingly contentious geopolitics of cyberspace. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, among others. He currently writes for the blog Net Politics.