Cyber War and Cyber Peace

Mike Sexton is a Fellow and Director of the Cybersecurity Initiative at the Middle East Institute, USA. He previously served as Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Qatar-America Institute, as Senior Analyst at the Chertoff Group, and as Data Manager at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. He has published articles and reports on cyber attacks, cryptography, and their implications for national security, human security, and international norms.Eliza Campbell is the Associate Director for Impact and Innovation at the Middle East Institute Policy Center, and a fellow with the Middle East Institute Cyber Program. She was previously a researcher in technology and human rights at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, USA, a 2017-18 Fulbright researcher in Bulgaria, and has worked in the humanitarian field in Jordan.

• 1. Conduct of Code: A Historical Overview of Cyberspace in MENA, Paul Kurtz, TruSTAR Technology, USA; & Aaron Ach, Good Harbor Security Risk Management, USA2. Cyber Insurance as Cyber Diplomacy, Asaf Lubin, Indiana University Bloomington, USA3. Industrial Cyber Attacks in the Middle East and International Consequences, Selena Larson, Dragos, USA & Sergio Caltagirone, Dragos, USA4. Influence Operations in the Middle East and the Prohibition on Intervention, Ido Kilovaty, Yale Law School, USA5. State-Sanctioned Hacktivism: The Syrian Electronic Army, Evan Kohlmann, Flashpoint, USA & Alex Kobray, Flashpoint, USA6. Disinformation in the Gulf, James Shires, Leiden University, The Netherlands7. Operation Glowing Symphony: The Missing Piece in the U.S. Online Counter-ISIS Campaign, Michael Martelle, National Security Archive, USA & Audrey Alexander, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, USA8. The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East, Mohammed Soliman, Middle East Institute, USA9. A Battle of Two Pandemics: Coronavirus and Digital Authoritarianism in the Arab World, Sahar Khamis, University of Maryland, College Park & Middle East Institute, USA10. Toward a Safer Regional Cyberspace, Mike Sexton, Middle East Institute, USA & Eliza Campbell, Middle East Institute, USA

Cyber War and Cyber Peace in the Middle East tackles the history of a new and complex domain in a richly historic and notoriously complicated region. Assembling a diversity of perspectives from the Middle East and around the world, it captures a snapshot of the region's cyber flashpoints, delineates their underlying drivers, and begins to chart a path forward. With finesse, it distills a rapidly developing universe of conflict that thornily defies distillation.