India's Preparedness in the Age of Information Warfare

 India's Preparedness in the Age of Information Warfare

Thank you for the very warm introduction, Prof Pramod Kumar,

Prof Sanjay Dwivedi, DG, IIMC, members of the IIMC faculty, friends.

Namaskar

I am very happy to be here this afternoon to share my thoughts on this very interesting subject. I will give you my perspective on the challenges which we face today as far as information warfare is concerned and how best we can deal with those challenges.

But let me begin with greeting all of you on the occasion of Vijay Divas. On this day, 51 years ago, the Indian Armed Forces and the Indian nation won for itself the biggest victory in the last one thousand years when, in a swift 13 day operation, the Liberation War was brought to a successful conclusion, culminating with the surrender of 93,000 soldiers from the Pakistan military - the largest military surrender after the second world war.

The war was necessitated due to the brutal repression of the Bengali population by the Pakistan army in a crackdown called Operation Searchlight, which began on 25 March 1971. Innocent men, women and children were taken out of their homes and shot, the orgy of killing, rape and loot continuing for months on end till the Indian Armed Forces, along with the Mukti Bahini intervened militarily on 3 December and in a swift 13-day war, forced the Pakistani military to unconditionally surrender. 16 December is commemorated as Vijay Divas since then, to pay homage to the gallant soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces and the Mukti Bahini who fought for freedom, and for all those who laid down their lives for the cause. On this auspicious occasion, I join all people from both India and Bangladesh, in paying homage to all those who fought for freedom and who laid down their lives for the cause. Such commemoration is also important to keep alive the memory of what brutal regimes can do and to ensure that such history is never repeated again.

Why do genocides happen? Why is it that in some conflicts, there is a failure to account for the crimes of sexual violence against women? A look into recent history in South Asia is revealing. There is little mention made of genocides and sexual abuse of women in war, which is why there is so little knowledge available in the public domain of this dark side of history. it is precisely because of a lack of accountability that genocides have occurred in the past and will continue to occur in the future too. Denial of information and putting forth an alternative narrative has much to do with the way events are perceived across the world. That is why, all those who profess to be the staunchest defenders of democracy across the world, remained chillingly silent on the genocide that took place in Bangladesh in 1971. It suited their national interest to do so. Post the Liberation war, Pakistani military officers were not tried for genocide. This gave an impression to Pakistan that India is a soft state. Perhaps, that was the reason that the Genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus took place in 1989-90. And as the perpetrators of the Kashmiri genocide are still at large, are we looking at another genocide taking place in India, at some time in the not too distant future? That is something we need to ponder about.

Now, coming down to the subject proper. 

Information has always been used as a tool of war since ancient times. Here, the story in the Mahabharata of how the great sage warrior Drona was killed is instructive. When informed that Aswatthama is dead, Drona thought that it was his son who had been killed in battle, though in reality it was an elephant by that name. Drona became despondent and in that moment of weakness he was killed. This brings out two important aspects of Information Warfare. One, the art of deception and two, the psychological impact of information on the mind. 

Protecting own information means and attacking those of the enemy are part of standard military operations. The third prong is deception. In modern times, the rapid growth of information technology has led to the empowerment of the individual as never before, with information being available at the click of button. The advent of the social media is truly empowering but comes with a lot of negative fallouts also. This has led now to the fourth pillar of information warfare, wherein we can shape the perceptions and attitudes of a large body of people using information as a tool. 

How do we protect our information systems? In the cyber domain, information travels from satellites to ground stations and thence to servers across the country and across the world. Satellites provide geo-mapping of the world, information about the weather and terrain, enable long distance communication and impact on every aspect of our life today, from education to entertainment to business and any thing else we can presently conceive. Disrupting these links can be very damaging for a country and can bring down a country's banking sector, or the rail and air networks, water supply and a host of other facilities. Recently, we had the servers of the AIIMS being hacked and the hackers demanded a ransom to restore the system. A few years ago we have seen how Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm, damaged the centrifuges that Iran  was using to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear programme. Both in peace and war, the enemy will use all means at its disposal to gain information about us and these are not necessarily military targets but civilian targets as well. War then, is no longer confined to the front lines. Information operations hence will take place over our land territory, water ways, Islands and sea coasts, and space and outer space. The first attack by an enemy will most likely be in the cyber domain where we could see an attack taking place on a civilian target. It could be the Mumbai stock exchange! Or on any of our vital economic assets. Off course military assets too will be targeted, especially communication nodes, but future war will be all encompassing and will include both civilian and military targets, in which the enemy will use both hard kill and soft kill options. As an example, the physical destruction of a satellite or earth stations would be part of the hard kill, whereas making systems unusable through non-kinetic means would form part of the soft kill options.

Protection obviously involves hardening our systems and creating adequate redundancies. It also includes deterrence. Towards that end, India successfully conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) test on March 27, 2019, which was announced to the world by Prime Minister Modi in a televised address. In this test, a ballistic missile defense interceptor, the Prithvi Delivery Vehicle Mark-II (PDV MK-II), developed by the DRDO struck and destroyed an Indian Microsat-R satellite in a flight that lasted just over half a minute. This test, called Mission Shakti, was a counter to China's ASAT test conducted in 2007. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, ISRO’s chairman from 1994 to 2003, summarized New Delhi’s concerns succinctly in September 2009, “India has spent a huge sum to develop its capabilities and place assets in space. Hence, it becomes necessary to protect them from adversaries. There is a need to look at means of securing these.” Mission Shakti was a step in that direction. 

The test carried out yesterday of  the long-range “Agni-5” intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missile, was also expected to strengthen India's deterrence capability against China. All this signals capability and is part of information warfare to promote deterrence. It only works when there is real capability and not just empty threats. India's information systems are thus reasonably well protected, though off course protection involves being constantly on the watch out, checking and improving on own systems to ensure that they are safe from hostile attacks. Eternal vigilance is the price we have to continue to pay to remain secure.

The other aspect of information warfare is attacking enemy information systems. Such capabilities are kept under wraps and are seldom discussed in the open domain. It is hoped that India has the capability to monitor enemy systems and to bring them down if necessary. That would add to deterrence capability.

At this stage I would like to address the fourth prong of information warfare - shaping attitudes and perceptions of target populations, both of the home audience and abroad. India's performance here has been a mixed bag, but that is true for all countries, even those having huge resources such as the US and China. 

A rough audit check of India's success or otherwise in shaping the information environment indicates that we have been reasonably successful in having a broad acceptance of India's concerns to the international audience especially on issues related to terrorism. The performance as far as the domestic audience is more nuanced. The challenge really lies in the fact that individuals today are really empowered, even those living at the lower end of the economic spectrum carry. They carry out digital financial transactions with consummate ease, converse in social groups such as FaceBook and WhatsApp and are reasonably well informed of current happenings in their immediate neighbourhood as well as on issues which impact the country. 

The benefits of digitisation are immense especially in the field of governance. However, just as the smart phone and the internet have empowered the individual, the ubiquitous nature of information technology has also thrown up a range of opportunities for their misuse through disinformation, distortion of the truth, false flag operations, spoofing, spam mail, and the like, to create divisions and turmoil within society. 

The Information Environment (IE) is truly global in nature, with information flows cutting across physical and artificial boundaries and impacting all segments of society. This is both enabling as well as has potential for misuse. The wide range and diversity of actors in the global IE has great aggregate influence, much akin to that of a state and more often, even far in excess of what the modern state exercises. Non-state actors have also made their presence felt and seek to create influence in furtherance of their objectives. Towards this end, influencers are used, who unwittingly or otherwise lend their name to a social cause or movement, sometimes unknowing of the real intent of the provocateurs and at others, because of monetary inducement or being ideologically aligned to the cause. Non-state actors also use the media and exploit advances made in information communication technology to undermine governments and exert influence in furtherance of their aims.

An example of the above is the efforts made by interested groups to undermine the BJP led NDA government ever since it won the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. A concerted campaign was launched by motivated groups in the months following the 2014 elections to showcase India as an intolerant nation. Here, an attempt was made to create religious discord by highlighting certain isolated incidences of vandalism that had taken places in churches as deliberate targeted attacks, when in fact they were nothing more than cases of petty theft, the likes of which were routine and had taken place in earlier years too. When viewed holistically with data analysis over the past ten years, there was no upward spiral of such cases, as alleged. Such incidents had also happened with Hindu places of worship but that fact was glossed over. By the time the truth finally came out, India's image stood tarnished, with even the then US President, Mr Barack Obama, who had come to India as the Chief Guest for the 2015 Republic Day Parade, making remarks on 'religious intolerance' and repeating the same on his return to Washington. The vicious attacks against India were motivated and designed to pressure India on its foreign policy and domestic policy options, with religious intolerance being used as a tool to make India conform to Western dictates.

The subsequent years saw protests on various issues, fanned by interested groups exploiting the social, audio-visual and print media. The year 2016 witnessed a series of agitations by student groups, who shouted slogans in support of a terrorist who was convicted for his role in the attack on India's Parliament in 2001 and who was executed in 2013! The agitating students, supported by left wing and islamist groups, raised slogans seeking the break up of India and calling the act of execution of the convicted terrorist an act of murder. Similar agitations continued on various pretexts over the next two years. Then in 2019 there were huge protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which brought parts of the nation's capital to a standstill, peaking in February 2020, to tarnish the nation's image when US President Donald Trump was visiting India. And in September 2020, massive protests broke out against the three farm laws passed by Parliament, which peaked during the Republic Day celebrations in 2021. In all these protests there was a hidden agenda of undermining the elected Indian government, India's democratic framework as well as India's composite cultural ethos. Information was weaponised and used to draw crowds to disrupt normal life. This remains part of the agenda of external forces to exacerbate internal issues and fault lines. In this, segments of the opposition parties within India lend a helping hand in their bid to get back to power. In the end, it is the people of India who suffer.

The desire to shape opinions remains the key motivator for organising mass movements against the elected government. This suits the agenda of foreign powers who view India's rise as a potential threat to their economic interests. It is therefore incumbent on the state to preempt hostile agendas by anticipating what disruptors might do and taking preventive action well in time. This can be done by shaping public perceptions through a long-term vision and with strategic patience.

We need to look into potential future flashpoints and have systems in place to address the concerns of the public. Narrative building and propagation with thus be essential to avoid social upheaval which can negatively impact India. Suitable narratives which are gender neutral and religion and caste neutral need to be propagated to get wide acceptance from all segments of society and to change behaviour patterns. A proactive stance in shaping perceptions will go a long way in reducing friction and in addressing societal fault lines to prevent internal and external hostile forces from creating disruptions in society. This assumes importance as the spotlight will be on India for the coming year, when it takes on the Presidency of the G20 this December.

Talk - Virtual- 16 Dec 2022