Dean Vali Nasr, the Foreign Policy Institute and the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies hosted A Conversation with Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist and senior vice-president at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Lucas discussed his new book Cyberphobia and ways in which cyberspace is not the secure zone we may hope, how passwords provide no significant obstacle to anyone intent on getting past them, and how anonymity is easily accessible to anyone – malign or benign – willing to take a little time covering their tracks.
Edward Lucas is a senior editor at The Economist, the world’s foremost newsweekly. His expertise includes energy, cyber-security, espionage, Russian foreign and security policy and the politics and economics of Eastern Europe.
He is also a senior vice-president at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
In 2008 he wrote The New Cold War, a prescient account of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In 2011 he wrote Deception, an investigative account of east-west espionage. He is a strong critic of the fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and author of an e-book>The Snowden Operation. His latest book is Cyberphobia. He has also contributed to books on religion and media ethics.
An experienced broadcaster, public speaker, moderator and panelist, Edward Lucas has given public lectures at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other leading universities. He is a regular contributor to the BBC’s Today and Newsnight programmes, and to NPR, CNN and Sky News. He is regularly cited by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 Twitterati.
For many years a foreign correspondent, he was based in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Moscow and the Baltic states. He is currently in London, as a senior editor at The Economist, responsible for the daily news app Espresso. He also writes obituaries. His weekly syndicated column has appeared since 2005; he also writes for the Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Foreign Policy and Standpoint.
As well as working for the Independent, the BBC and the Sunday Times, he also co-founded an English-language weekly in Tallinn, Estonia: the Baltic Independent. His undergraduate degree is from the London School of Economics and he speaks five languages — German, Russian, Polish, Czech and Lithuanian.
He is married to the writer Cristina Odone and has three children. His father is the Oxford philosopher JR Lucas.