Toomas Hendrik Ilves was president of Estonia for 10 years, but he’s decidedly unpresidential when I enter his compact office at Stanford University. He grapples grumpily with a pack of Nicorette, struggling to extract the gum that will soothe his addiction. “These packets are so childproof that a 63-year-old can barely open them,” he complains, before popping a piece into his mouth and chomping on it with almost audible relief.
Having retired from politics in 2016, Mr. Ilves is now a visiting fellow at Stanford, where he studies information technology and cybersecurity, subjects with which he developed a deep familiarity as president of his charming but vulnerable Baltic country. While in office he led an administrative revolution that made Estonia’s perhaps the world’s most high-tech government. He also contended with a massive 2007 cyberattack, believed to be from Russia, after the government decided to move a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, the capital.
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