- One of the most profound digital technological advancements brought out by the dynamically evolving modern-day scenario is the increasingly dominating presence of cyber-attacks as an effective tool where conventional warfare superiority is on the wane. As the supremely endowed advanced and developed countries focus on positioning themselves as the pioneers in the cyber world dominated by mind-boggling digital innovations, where does India stands to counter the growing threats emanating from the wired but boundary-less world rather than across the demarcated boundaries. For the last couple of decades, possessing the traditional fire-power is being adequately compensated by the reliance on digital supremacy too.
PC: Annie Zhang
- Coming years will witness more and more dependence on technology-driven digital warfare to engage the known and unknown enemies. As such, many advanced nations are fully committed to strengthen, improve, and improvise on this aspect as any let-up would entail a severe loss of face not only in terms of ceding precious ground to the unknown enemy working surreptitiously through the digital medium to wreak havoc on sensitive installations but also usurp control over these critical territories at will. In this context, a recent occurrence in Iran over a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility is an eye-opener for the entire world. Aptly, Iran called the intrusion has an act of nuclear terrorism.
- Unprecedented ramifications courtesy such acts of cyber terrorism portends potential harm on bilateral as also multilateral relationships severely disturbing the harmonious global order. People following closely on the evolving geopolitical developments between the US and Iran, who were beginning to engage in indirect talks over revitalizing the Iran nuclear deal after a turbulent four years during the Trump regime, find themselves in an extremely awkward situation. The instant blackout is being attributed to a cyberattack, with the needle of suspicion pointing to Israel who makes no bones about wishing to derail any progress in talks between the US and Iran to stay relevant and as a force to reckon with.
PC: James Mcfarlin
- Make no mistake, the reality of cyber-warfare firmly getting established as a sound strategy cannot be brushed aside as conventional weapons of mass destruction having reached frightening proportions will be a mere tool of deterrence. Quite contrastingly, cyber-warfare requires fewer resources as compared to the conventional methods thereby hugely incentivizing to adopt the medium. Most importantly, cyberattacks or asymmetric attacks can be carried out discreetly leaving virtually no trail whatsoever to trace the origin. India faces both these classes of threats from the China-Pakistan axis as was experienced when our power infrastructure in Mumbai was recently targeted resulting in the outage.
- It is dreadful to even imagine how much chaos could be caused by a Chinese or Pakistani Cyber strike on an Indian nuclear facility. Therefore, it is incumbent that New Delhi develops defensive and offensive cyberwarfare capabilities without any further delay. Most hearteningly, the Chief of Defence Staff has revealed that the country is taking steps to counter China’s discreet efforts through risk mitigation strategies, building firewalls, and recovery systems by integrating the three services’ resources. Of course, India has to do lots of catch-up vis-à-vis China and here, involving the Quad partners to cultivate an effective countermeasure should be diligently pursued.
