Lucas Kello gives evidence to House of Lords Committee on IR

Lucas Kello has appeared before the House of Lords International Relations Committee to give evidence to its inquiry into 'UK Foreign Policy in Changed World Conditions'.  

In responding to questions about significant changes in the international landscape to which UK Foreign Policy should respond, Dr Kello set the context of current technological changes, arguing that traditional analytical approaches and specifically the binary notions of war and peace are no longer sufficient to understand the threats of the 'cyber revolution'.  He argued that, as Russia's conventional military prowess has declined, it has prioritised information warfare. It is the response to this activity, he believes, that many countries struggle to define, as its consequences are not overtly violent or destructive, like an act of war.  

Lucas Kello appeared alongside Dr Neville Bolt, Director of the Centre for Strategic Communications, King's College London, Professor Michael Clarke, Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and Mr Paul Maidment, Director of Analysis, Oxford Analytica.  You can listen to the committee session on parliamentlive.tv.

The Committee Chairman Lord Howell of Guildford invited Dr Kello to draw evidence from the findings of his book The Virtual Weapon and the International Order (Yale University Press).  The book's assertion that the transformation in security affairs produced by cyberspace is greater than the change brought by nuclear arms was recently challenged by Harvard professor Graham T. Allison, in a recent review, 'An Uneasy Unpeace', in the Wall Street Journal.