We at Synergia Foundation pride ourselves on our ability to look beyond the curve and dabble with the unknowns. Security today is developing into a multidimensional collage with conflict domains spilling over into new and existing conflict areas. Outer space, the deep oceans, including seabeds (as remote to mankind as the deep space) and, of course, cyberspace, are the emerging domains for international competition and, worse, military conflicts.
This is the lead story in this edition, where experts from India and abroad with varying backgrounds expound their theories. With this issue, we have barely scratched the surface of this vast subject, and we will persist with digging deeper into its intricacies in our future issues.
Technology is yet another of our focus areas, and in this issue, we have tried to understand where India stands in the Global Innovation Matrix. For a country our size, it is a pity that the number of patents issued to India globally is minuscule.
This has to change if India wishes to stand tall in the community of nations. In the same vein, we draw insights into DNA as a potential method of data storage in the future.
Our neighbourhood is important for India’s future prosperity. We examine Indo-Bangladesh relations as our neighbour completes its 50th year of liberation. On this occasion, we also see where democracy and freedom of expression are headed in that country through the experiences of its public with its Digital Security Act.
Internationally, we have looked at the political landscape of the UK with much interest, not the least because a person of Indian origin has created a record of sorts by occupying 10 Downing Street. We will be tracking his performance regularly in our future issues too.
Our partner in BRICS, Brazil, has undergone a wrenching Presidential election that has driven deep fractures into the national psyche, a phenomenon many other great countries are also undergoing; we examine the elections and their fallout.
We have examined fake news and disinformation on the social media scene, which have undermined people’s trust in social media and the internet. We hope our esteemed readers will continue supporting us as we strive to further evidence-based research on strategic issues with global resonance.
Sincerely yours
Maj. Gen. Ajay Sah Chief Information Officer
EXCLUSIVES
The 21st century is a globalised economic ecosystem in which future prosperity depends on safeguarding the ‘global commons’.
Mapping the path of potential conflicts in space is critical for the peaceful exploitation of the medium.
Future conflicts will occur in outer space, the deep ocean and the cyber world.
UNDERSTANDING
Without clearly defined rights, it is natural that the oceans are susceptible to competition, confrontation and conflict.
Space networks are vital for a nation’s economic growth and military potential.
Technology has enabled the control of the threedimensional battlespace in ways that were not possible, or even imaginable, a few years back.
The war in Ukraine has been a test bed for many new weapon systems and concepts.
Innovation takes place in almost every field, be it business models or how organisations are designed to be more efficient. However, innovation is ultimately technological.
When even the redoubtable Xi Jinping can be ‘toppled’ by malicious peddlers of fake news, it is time to sit up and take notice.
The photonics industry has the potential to drive technology in the post-law Moore’s era, making silicon photonics a critical technology.
As India prepares to roll out a comprehensive ‘Digital India Act,’ it would be best advised to study its implications as experienced in other countries.
With the era of technology at flank speed, AI is poised to permeate into decisionmaking at the political level
Wrong decisions at the highest level have cost nations dearly, with consequences faced by their citizens.
While the Indo-Bangladesh relationship has matured well over the last 50 years, there is still much to be done to make it lasting.
The so-called Russia-China axis is transforming in its shape and dimensions post the Ukraine war.
China considers linking the ‘East’ Sea and the ‘West’ sea under its maritime domination as the first step towards global primacy.
Guatemalan refugees find themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on being returned to a country that cannot sustain them.
With a mere 45 days in office, Ms Elizabeth Truss has the dubious distinction of being the UK’s shortest termed premier!
Data storage devices are changing every few years, rendering legacy systems outdated; this must change.
From near total political oblivion, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva crawled back into the Palácio do Planalto in an election tainted by untruth and manipulated polls.
author of ‘Intelligence over centuries’, spoke for the 138th Synergia Forum at Synergia Foundation.
GEOPOLITICS
THE THREAT TO GLOBAL COMMONS
The 21st century is a globalised economic ecosystem in which future prosperity depends on safeguarding the ‘global commons’, which are defined as ‘domains that no one state controls but on which all rely’.
TMaj. Gen. Ajay. Sah SM, VSM (Retd), is the CIO at Synergia Foundation, with experience in conflict resolution, peacekeeping and counterterrorism.
he face conflict is transformative and changes with technological advancementand changes with technological advancements, the need for greater resources and the unending avarice of great powers for economic and geopolitical primacy. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing are some realities that are redefining conflict landscapes and cyberspace has become the lifeblood of our civilisation.
The geostrategic environment too is undergoing changes, driven by increasing complexities of relationships between nation states and their individual military and economic capacities. Conflict arenas threaten to break out from their traditional domains to new ones—outer space, the deep ocean, the Arctic. All these are predicted to store immense resources that will extend significant strategic advantages to the first exploiters.
FUTURE PROSPERITY
The 21st century is a globalised economic ecosystem in which future prosperity depends on safeguarding the ‘global commons’ defined as ‘domains that no one state controls, but on which all rely’. Today, these comprise of the maritime, the aerospace and cyber domains. The maritime domain includes the surface and, yet unexplored ocean depths and resource- rich ocean beds, and undersea mountains.
Conflict arenas have the potential to break out from their traditional domains to new ones-outer space, the deep ocean, including the Arctic, as these are considered to have immense resources and will provide significant strategic advantages to the first exploiters.
Aerospace includes the skies and the infinite space above it, with outer space beginning above the earth’s surface from where objects can remain in orbit. Cyberspace is a digital world created by an interconnected global network of computers. Even if its physical infrastructure may be parked in individual countries, its global linkages make it a global common.
Every nation, rich or poor, has an unrelenting interest in protected access to the global commons. The international community must collaborate to secure the high seas for the fre flow of commerce and its depth for protecting the delicate marine ecosphere, the space for the free exploitation of satellite-based technology for fast communication and the cyber world for a free flow of ideas and as a seamless medium for the flow of e-commerce.
SHAPING THE GLOBAL SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
The international security environment may well become ever more unstable, uncertain and complex as new technologies usher in new economic and security impera-
tives and geopolitical compulsions. While ocean depths remain largely the last frontier on earth, with only a very small fraction explored/ exploited, outer space and cyberspace are fast emerging as the latest arenas of competition and conflict. Countries must be able to anticipate, deter, and, if required, fight threats in ocean depths, space and cyberspace.
Ocean surfaces have long been the most used global commons and have played a singular role in developing international trade. Since freedom of navigation in international waters is well- regulated, the focus now should be on the development and exploitation of ocean depths and the seabed.
The ocean seabeds are not within the jurisdiction of individual countries. Part XI of the UNCLOS denotes the seabed, ocean floor and subsoil thereof – called the Area – including its mineral resources as the common heritage of mankind (Art. 136 UNCLOS).
While the rich and powerful states wish to commence mining activities in the seabed, others are demanding a moratorium on any such activity till an international regulatory regime can be put in place. A first come, first serve; exploratory gold rush is bound to result in international tension and potential conflict situation.
Apart from the traditional use of space for communications and surveillance, commercial enterprises intend to invest huge resources in space mining. Moon, asteroids, and other space bodies are reported to be a source of rare metals like platinum. Ongoing research is looking at harvesting water from the Moon and Mars for use as rocket fuel by breaking it into constituent oxygen and hydrogen.
The immense challenges thrown by space’s working environment demands great efforts and huge expenses for countries to exploit it. We, therefore, do not need conflict and military competition to make it even more demanding by raising fresh barriers to its peaceful use. Without proper regulation and conventions, chaos in space can spell disaster, if not doom, for planet earth itself.
As more and more countries and an expanding list of commercial entities reach out to space for commercial exploitation, space debris becomes a real lethal danger.
Putting conventional/ laser/ nuclear weapons on orbiting platforms is even more worrying. Therefore, norms must be set for the use of space for all purposes. The role of small states and international law in the extraterritorial expansion of extraction cannot be ignored any longer, as all have a stake in the peaceful exploitation of space.
Cyberspace is an acknowledged theatre of conflict today, with cyber intrusions, attacks and cloning being the weapons of choice. The terminology of cyber warfare is becoming ever more a mirror image of traditional warfare, with trojans, malware and worms taking the shape of gunpowder and shot.
Rules must be set for cyber security and attribution. Some countries resent the dominance of the western alliance in the cyber domain and demand new definitions, management and regulation of the information-driven world with greater equality. Existing regulatory concepts must be critically examined to decide on the next generation of regulatory norms within globally accepted principles.
THE WAY AHEAD
Nations, big and small, will have to contribute their share of soft and hard power to ensure that there is a fair and measured use of public goods from these global commons.
What will each nation bring to the table based on its economic strength and military capability? How will the expenses for such a global effort be met? All these questions demand an answer. Multilateral organisations must cobble together regulations and conventions, like the UNCLOS, for both outer space and cyberspace.
These conventions must be enforceable and not remain confined to treaty papers only. The current rising global tensions between various global powers must be stabilised through the creation of other multi-polar architectures.
By analysing security precedents and adopting best practices, a structure that can voluntarily promote adherence to global norms, establish well- defined standards of conduct and create a system of legal coercion to deter those who disregard global regulations and norms, is the need of the hour.
Conventional forces must be adept at thriving in contradictions of geopolitics and geo economics. They will either be at the centre stage or at the edge in deterrent mode always!”
LT GEN (DR) SUBRATA SAHA
PVSM, UYSM, YSM, VSM** (Retd), Director, School of Military Affairs, Strategy and Logistics, Rashtriy Raksha University and former Dy Chief of the Army Staff.
FUTURE OF CONFLICT
The paradigm of Future conflicts will likely originate from four vectors, namely Counterterrorism, Grayzone conflicts, Asymmetric fights, and Unmanned combats.
CTobby Simon is the Founder and President of the Synergia Foundation and a member of the Trilateral Commission.
ritical Emerging technologies are changing the hieroglyphs of combat. Expeditious advances in unmanned systems, robotics, data processing, autonomy, networking, and other advanced technologies have the potential to give fresh impetus to an entirely new warfighting axiom. Both state and non-state actors will seek to profit from these new technologies, many of which are impelled by the market dictates of innovation in information technology.
The impending is replete with uncertainties, and any realisation of combat is an onerous task. Several vectors will shape conflicts, including geopolitical, societal, technological, economic, spatial, environmental and military trends.
In deliberating warfare, we often gravitate to prepare for the last war, think of using military concepts or technology that may be outdated or focus on previous battle-winning strategies, which are, or will soon be, outmoded. Both great and middle powers are investing not only in offensive capabilities but also in asymmetric warfare tools like cost-effective drones. It is possible to conceive that the military and civil societies might end up being the prime target in a future conflict.
A deeper understanding of the contours of future conflicts helps fundamentally align the interest of the buyer, the manufacturer, the strategist, and the vendor. It would not be in the interest of any of
The understanding of the future of conflict helps fundamentally align the interest of the buyer, the manufacturer, the strategy picker, and the vendor.
these stakeholders to plan or build inventories without visualising how the theatre of conflict will pan out in the coming years. When Synergia Foundation quizzed several vendors, buyers and policymakers on what they felt would be the future conflict in the region, few had good answers.
LOOKING BEYOND THE CURVE
A few fundamental features of conflict will remain unchanged in the future.
First, conflict is, and will remain, an unprecise science; it will remain unpredictable and uniquely human activity. Second, the qualitative advantage can no longer be assumed in the future. Third, RMA or revolution in military affairs focused on concepts of rapid effect, leading to a belief in the late 20th and 21st century that major powers could define wars; this, too, might not hold in the future.
Fourth, adversaries will be able to achieve tactical success because of their access to cheaper technology, whose rate of adoption will be faster even by non-state actors and low-income countries. Fifth, the motives for engaging in conflicts have been described as the concept of pure honour and national interest; In the future, countries are likely to use military instruments for reasons of fear.
Sixth, the centrality of influence could be essential in the coming years. If the character of a nation’s military prowess were defined by its ability to conduct precision strikes on
enabled platforms and command modes, conflict outcomes would likely focus more on the centrality of influence in the future.
Our adversaries have already recognised the importance of influencing public perception and will continue to develop this and use it increasingly in a battle of the narrative. This is not just a matter of improved public affairs or perception. This takes place in a decentralised network and free market full of ideas, opinions, and even a set of raw data, which will immediately weaken the influence of mainstream news media.
Breaking events will be increasingly transmitted to individuals at an ever-higher tempo, often without government or editorial filters or legal sanctions and safeguards. Although propaganda is well-established and frequently demonstrated, modern technology will amplify its shock. Future conflicts will be primarily determined by ‘whose narrative wins.’
Seventh, technology affects how a force can fight and the credibility of that force to deter. However, the vanguard of technological development is shifting towards the commercial sector, which, typically, is more agile than the military it supports, and it is moving to the East. Eighth, the prime driver of innovation is not technology but people.
Ninth, Procurement programs that take decades may be obsolesced in an afternoon by new technological innovations. Tenth, the most significant military danger here is unplanned escalation. If satellites fail to communicate and operational personnel sitting in their underground command bunkers can’t be certain of ground realities, it would be extremely hard to calibrate the next move.
CONCLUSION
The future of conflict will challenge military forces structured and prepared for an industrial age war between global powers.
Conflict is evolving but is not getting simpler: the range of threats is expanding. Some seemingly inferior adversaries will be able to achieve tactical success because their access to alternative sources of technology will improve, their rate of adaptation will be faster, and the cost will be significantly lower.
EXPERT VIEW
BRIG GEN R. MAZZOLIN (RETD)is the Chief Technology Strategist at the RHEA Group.
A TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Space and cyber domains have emerged as the new strategic enablers for any nation aspiring for great pow-
er status and remain the key to national security for military and economic reasons. In the globalized world, there is competition between commercial interests and national interests. The Cold War between the U.S. and China reflects the same. Within this spectrum, there is a wide array of actors, both state and non-state with a variety of interests- economic, military and ideological.
SPACE AND CYBER LINKAGES
Societal dependence on networks results in an increased number and sophistication of attacks targeting critical infrastructure and institutions. Especially worrying is the asymmetric capabilities that are within reach of non-state actors and the hybrid nature of modern warfare. Cyber threats manifest themselves against space systems through Kinetic-Physical, Non-Kinetic Physical, Electronic, and purely Cyber, making their counters extremely complex to design and apply. This increases the aperture of access to space systems from both state and non-state actors, especially since, unlike other critical infrastructures (CI), space systems are not as well a protected environment.
THREATS TO SPACE INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY
The nascent space industrial base is increasingly important to national and global economies. It is particularly vulnerable to malevolent actors since the overall efforts to protect national capacity are not sufficiently integrated. Potential adversaries recognize the importance of assured space capabilities and thus would attack such capabilities with cyber and other means. Controlling key supply chains feeding space capabilities is even more important since these are now distributed over a large geographical area. Since space research represents an important segment of national security innovation bases, this, too, is endangered by multifaceted threats.
The future of National Security shall be based on technological deterrence. The strength of the economy and military are both based on technological edge.
LT GEN PJS PANNU
PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd) is a former Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff responsible for Integrated Military Operations.
EXPERT VIEW
AIR MARSHAL ANIL KHOSLA, is PVSM, AVSM, VM, ADC who served as 42nd Vice Chief of the Air Staff
NEW DOMAINS: A REALITY
New Domains in the conduct of warfare have opened new vistas in the defence industry. Warfare being as old as mankind itself has evolved, just like the human race. This has been enabled by a regular dose of technological innovations. Being genetically a quarrelsome species, man has needed little cause or incentive to seek combat, be it for basic survival, for ego, or the greed for resources.
Man’s inquisitiveness has driven him to seek new domains to conduct the deadly game of war. It was a natural transition for warfighting to transcend from the terrestrial battlefield to air, to space, the oceans, and the depth of the oceans, and now even into ethereal cyberspace. AI, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and robotics, singly and in combination, are giving rise to unmanned platforms of various sizes and capabilities with the ability to operate in the air, surface, sea, and subsurface.
EMERGING DOMAINS
Space was seen as the new frontier for the betterment of mankind; a natural corollary being its militarisation by the few and the powerful ones.
Space is considered critical for communications, navigation, targeting, etc., and has tremendous potential for military applications. Space-based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a prerequisite for any military campaign, as is being showcased in Ukraine and other conflicts. Hypersonic weapons placed in orbiting platforms or transiting through space are the next-generation missiles coming online.
Not surprisingly, the counters to such space-based weapons are also being developed at a frenetic pace. The airpower of yesteryears is now upgrading itself to aerospace power.
Similarly, cyber, which influences every aspect of our lives, has been weaponized. Cyber warfare is conducted surreptitiously and continuously without the declaration of a state of war between nations. There are no frontiers nor recognizable combatants- a teenager with a powerful laptop can be an equally deadly adversary! Offensive cyber operations are characterized by ambiguity and deniability.
The lines are blurred in this kind of conflict, referred to as the grey zone operations. Their counter would require consistent monitoring of systems backed by AI, robust concepts, and standard operating procedures to safeguard assets.
The difficulties associated with operating at great depths of the oceans had kept man’s war outside this domain. But now, things are changing as technology has given us the capacity to go deeper and stay longer at ever-increasing depths.
The vast resources of untapped natural wealth hidden in the depths of our oceans invest in deep-sea exploration technology worth the cost. Ocean depths act as conduits for the carriage of marine cables carrying internet signals, and data, as also, increasingly, gas pipelines transferring energy from one continent to another.
New platforms are being developed, both manned and unmanned, which can reveal the depths of secrets and help colonize the ocean beds for exploitation and military applications.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE DEFENCE INDUSTRY
Unmanned platforms are needed to wage warfare in every domain- on land, air, sea, sub-surface, and space. In military aviation, the concept of a loyal wingman is gathering traction where the advantages of both manned and unmanned platforms are exploited.
Drones have established themselves as a dominating weapon system in all battle conditions, and the race is now on to find an effective antidote for them. Manned platforms are still relevant, and advanced nations are already looking at 6th and 7th -generation fighters that possess immense computing power and can operate in all the emerging domains.
In the modern networked battlefield, sensors play a vital role. Multi-domain sensors powered by AI to handle a large amount of data are now coming up for ISR. AI will have a role in almost all weapon systems, especially in network operations for data collection, analysis, planning, dissemination, and monitoring. Training is another area requiring integrated solutions of live, virtual, and simulated because physical on-ground training is becoming exorbitant.
Greater emphasis is being given to protective infrastructure for individual soldiers and the sophisticated systems and platforms from kinetic and hypersonic weapons and more lethal chemical, biological, and radiation weapons. All electronic systems must have military-grade hardening from EMP. Underlying all this development is the need to be self-reliant in the defence sector. R&D is important, and that too capable of continuous technology infusion as weapons systems become obsolete rapidly.
In a country like India which lacks a private-run military-industrial complex, there must be a fusion between the defence industry and the civil segment. Dual-use technology must be processed on parallel tracks so that its application in military and civil domains is seamless. This will also ensure better interoperability between the two sets of equipment.
SHRINKING BATTLESPACES
Technology has enabled the control of the three-dimensional battlespace in ways that were not possible, or even imaginable, a few years back.
SYNERGIA FOUNDATION
RESEARCH TEAM
The outer space battlefield is no more science fiction and hypersonic anti-glide missile is harder to detect on radar than a ballistic missile. Today there is a clear connection between space and warfare. Watching the war unfold in Ukraine while sitting in your home on TV, beaming satellite/ drone imagery gives a clear sense of this linkage.
Space borne sensors make it impossible to hide. If the enemy is caught in the open, existing sensors can bring to bear long-range precision strikes at a moment’s notice. Technology has enabled the control of the three-dimensional battlespace in ways that were not possible, or even imaginable, a few years back. The implications of such a capability are clear in Ukraine, where fast-moving mechanized columns are being picked up and destroyed in detail as easily as in a video game. In terms of warfighting concepts, it has a profound impact, forcing warfare into ever- diminishing spaces..
One key implication is that if you can match long-range strikes and the ubiquitous sensors that can see everywhere, it forces opposing sides into close spaces. The best example of this was the operations jointly conducted by Iraq and its American allies to push ISIS out of northern Iraq. This was largely a battle for a series of cities and vast open spaces where western coalition airpower and, of course, space sensors could see and, with precision strike, pulverise anything in the open.
The only way that ISIS could equalise the battlefield was to withdraw into closed spaces. Only once in the closed spaces could they coalesce, form organised bodies, and then resist retaining control of the terrain.
Pundits of strategy tend to predict the dominance of long-range strikes coupled with ubiquitous sensors and supported by operations in the electro-magnetic spectrum, in space and in cyberspace. These systems are being projected as networks with the power to link the optimal sensor to the optimal available effector to attack the optimal target for the optimal effect- a kind of ‘battlefield of internet of things’.
IMPACT ON THE MARITIME DOMAIN
The other implication is if you translate the idea to maritime spaces and given the emerging range and precision of land base strike and anti-ship weapons, the outcome could be equally disruptive. There is a potential now for landbased systems to strike out to a thousand kilometres at sea; potentially, you can exercise not just a denial but sea control from the land.
That becomes important because if once naval forces had the luxury of disappearing into the vastness of the open ocean and then reappearing in unexpected places, this cannot happen anymore. The land-based attacker with missiles has the advantage. Also, land-based missiles can be dispersed while the same cannot be done on a floating platform like a missile destroyer. Thus, we may be witnessing an advantage of the land domain over the maritime domain. This has significant consequences for a primarily land-based power like China.
The principal problem is that if you want to restore some
manoeuvre to the sea and land battlefield, how do you get across these new ‘no man’s land’ or anti-access area denial bubbles? How do you move through those safely? If defence enjoys an edge over the offence, where does it place huge, expensive, and powerful platforms like nuclear-powered aircraft carrier groups that are the backbone of U.S. power projection capacity? Are their days over? Should we look for solutions to problems like the operational dilemma militaries faced along the Western Front in World War I to get over the frozen fronts and get through the crust of hardened defences into depth areas?
THE FUTURE OF CONVENTIONAL LAND FORCES
Pundits of strategy tend to predict the dominance of long-range strikes coupled with ubiquitous sensors and supported by operations in the electro-magnetic spectrum, in space, and cyberspace. These systems are being projected as networks with the power to link the optimal sensor to the optimally available effector to attack the optimal target for the optimal effect- a kind of ‘battlefield of internet of things’.
Defining the vision of future warfare as ‘neat, technical, distant and inhuman’ creates an impression that conventional warfare capability is made redundant. In some critics’ minds, there is little, or no role for forces designed for ground combat other than minor stabilization operations done in conjunction with the UN like the Solomon Islands and Timor, especially in the context of the Indo-Pacific. The question frequently being asked is why engage in close combat when you can simply destroy your enemy from a stand-off distance?
Five broad assumptions lead the experts to such a conclusion. These are first, the tendency to conflate battle and war. Second, the discussion about future wars is largely a context-free zone. The third is to overestimate the capacity of human imagination without giving credence to our inability to read the future accurately. Fourth, is to take a superficial view of the effect of new and emerging technologies on warfare. And fifth, making the geography of a particular area a restrictive factor for the development of conventional land forces, even if that force may at times be deployed in other geographies.
Let us not ignore the fact that technological advances in the 20th Century that were expected to diminish the importance or necessity of close combat did not do so. To that end, those like Julio Douhet and airpower theorists of the 20th Century who hoped that technology would preclude long and bloody wars in the future
One key implication is that if you can match long-range strikes and the ubiquitous sensors that can see everywhere, it forces opposing sides into close spaces. If you translate the idea to mari-
were proved wrong in World War II and the Cold War period.
Speedy and relatively bloodless victory in war through sophisticated targeting and long-range strikes is likely to prove just as elusive as all previous attempts at the same. New and emerging technologies might, like the technologies of the First World War, just as easily contribute to a new form of long and bloody wars of attrition.
As we have already discussed, missiles, sensors, and the other things we now call multi-domain capabilities - things like space, cyber and electronic warfare – dominate contemporary thinking about warfare, which is right, to a point. But it is not the whole picture. There has been too much focus worldwide on the systems themselves and their immediate and superficial consequences rather than how the combination of new technologies will affect warfare.
Long-range precision missiles, combined with advanced sensors, give the defender the potential to create killing zones with enormous depth encompassing the air, sea and land. We have seen in Eastern Ukraine and in Nagorno-Karabakh, how the density of modern sensors and strike systems might mean that in the future they could become resilient against long-range precision counter-strikes and other methods of neutralisation. Tactics that once allowed an attacker to maneuver in the face of fire and close with an enemy might become too expensive and uncertain to attempt.
There is a lot of discussion on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict where it is claimed that drones and precision munitions won the war for Azerbaijan. But there is another perspective to it; the precision strikes and real time intelligence from drones set the conditions for light infantry and special forces to physically clear the trench line and capture territories.
A lodgement on a shore protected by an enemy armed with a sophisticated ‘kill web’ might be all but impossible without incurring decisive losses of people and machines. So, if this new-age strike complexes do favor the defender so decisively, perhaps the most difficult and important challenge is working out how to manoeuvre in the face of an adversary’s anti-access envelope. How to restore the balance in warfare between the defender and the attacker back to a more neutral setting? One way, of course, is to seize the initiative and hold the key terrain from the outset. The future for manoeuvre forces looks a lot like small infantry/ tank teams operating in intimate cooperation.
time spaces and given the emerging range and precision of land base strike and anti-ship weapons, the outcome could be equally disruptive.
MAJOR GENERAL CHRIS SMITH
is the Deputy Commanding General in the U.S. Army Pacific Command located in Hawaii. He has earlier served as the Director General of Operations of the Australian army.
INDIA & NEW WARFARE DOMAINS
Future conflicts will occur in outer space, the deep ocean and the cyber world, with technology driving the change.
OAir Marshal Anil Chopra, PVSM, AVSM, VM, VSM is a retired Indian Air Force retired officer and former Administrative Member of the Regional Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal at Lucknow.
uter space holds out the promise of resources and vantage points, while hidden, uncharted natural resources lie in the depths of the ocean. The cyber-world is a parallel universe where all action takes place at the speed of light with near-instant effects on our world. Combined or standalone, all three domains have economic, geopolitical, and military linkages. Indian security calculus must consider the vast technological changes that are taking place almost daily in all these domains.
AEROSPACE & INDIA
Air and space will be the primary means of prosecuting wars in the 21st century. Space will support situational awareness, communication, navigation, and targeting, and the the dominance of aerospace will be a war-winning factor.
The Indian space programme is almost as old as modern India, having been established as a research institution soon after independence. Acknowledging its importance, the Department of Space was placed directly under the Prime Minister’s office.
Consequently, today, India is one of the only six countries in the world with full launch capability and the ability to deploy cryogenic engines, launch extra-terrestrial mis-
Air and space will be the primary means of prosecuting wars in the 21st century. For many decades, one who controls air and space controls this planet.
sions and operate large fleets of satellites. As an upcoming space-launching entity, India has launched 346 satellites for 36 countries, with 114 for domestic use alone. The GSLV Mark III using a cryogenic engine can put 4000 kg in geostationary orbit and 8000 kg in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Although this pales before the Chinese Long March rocket that can take nearly four times or more of payload, it is still a significant achievement. More powerful rockets are under development.
An advanced space research group has been formed to give direction to space research. There is a well-developed network for space operations, tracking, and analysis called NETRA. It will help the country track intercontinental ballistic missiles, anti-satellite weapons, and possible spacebased attacks. Meanwhile, we are excitedly waiting for India's first human spaceflight and the Indian Space Station by the end of this decade.
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (NAVIG) currently has eight of the eleven satellites in place, and it covers all of China, Pakistan, and most of the Indian Ocean. The Global Indian Navigation System (GINS) with 24 satellites is a work in progress. Indian military satellites provide a reasonably good day and night picture resolution to serve the security needs of the defence services. In 2019, India became the fourth nation to carry out a successful an-
ti-satellite weapons test.
Space is fast getting crowded with satellites with over 3500 nano or cubeSATs that have been launched for scientific data, radio relay, networking, ISR, and other military applications. A small satellite constellation can be launched rapidly using less powerful launch vehicles to build constellations of 1000-plus satellites or nanosatellites. India joined the race last month by ferrying 36 satellites of New Space Indian Ltd in its LVM3-M2, the most powerful launch vehicle in its stable.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN SPACE TECHNOLOGY
Electric and nuclear propulsion for satellites and spacecraft is evolving, and plasma thrusters would cut down the spacecraft’s weight. Radio isotropic, thermoelectric generators, and atomic batteries to power the spacecraft are new action areas
India now has a significant number of private players and start-ups. The Defence Innovation The unit will help facilitate interaction between the armed forces and private industry. The Defence Space Agency based in Delhi will ultimately mature into a Space Command.
India needs more satellite launches for continuous coverage, faster revisit, and redundancy in its surveillance. There is a need to enhance jam-proof ISR elements and EW capability
India is wary of the Chinese space programme that is making rapid progress. China has more annual or bital launches than the U.S. and all Asian coun tries combined.
They placed a rover on Mars in 2021 and their Yaogan satellite templates allow the Chinese military to maintain constant sur veillance across the South China Sea, Western Pacific, and Indian Ocean. The Chi nese Global Navigation Satellite System is operational, and their Tiangong space station is coming up very quickly. Eyeing the trillion-dollar industry, resource-hungry China is rapidly develop ing technology for asteroid hunting.
ARCTIC CONTESTA TIONS
The maritime domain includes the surface and yet un explored ocean depths, resource-rich ocean beds, and undersea mountains. The bulk of in ternational trade passes through the seas. Since the natural resources and manufac tured goods are available in geo clusters,
most sea lanes pass through well-known choke points, which must be secured.
Two areas are seeing increased international tension: the South China Sea, where China has usurped nearly 3 million sq. km of EEZ by creating or all claiming islands, and the Arctic region.
The Arctic covers over one-sixth of the earth’s land mass and is set to play an increasing role in shaping the course of world affairs. The still-less-explored region is rich in exploitable natural resources, especially gas, oil, and marine life. Global industrialization has raised the temperatures. Therefore, the glaciers are rapidly melting. The 2021 minimum sea ice extent was around4.7 to 4 million km², which is around a 1.6million km² lower than the long-term average.
The Arctic Sea ice reduction has been at a rate of around 13 percent per decade, which is very high. Some Arctic countries want to exploit the resources, especially oil and natural gas uncovered by the melting ice.
The melting ice is also creating more maritime routes. Normally they should be treated as natural waterways, but territorial claims may restrict open access. It could open a sea route in the northern parts of Canada, connecting the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean in the summer months.
It will certainly shorten some sea routes and reduce transportation costs. Both Russia and the United States have for long placed weapons, including nuclear weapons, in the Arctic region and have a significant
With the West and Russia drawing into a fresh showdown, the once cooperative approach is tending to break down. China has become a significant player in the Arctic and is reportedly spending more on its Arctic endeavors than even the U.S. It has been building military and other capabilities to defend its interest in the region and has an aggressive Arctic China plans a solar silk route through the Arctic to help expedite global shipping delivery. China considers itself a near-Arctic state and a major stakeholder. In 2018, Shanghai-based Cosco Shipping Corporation made eight transits through the Arctic between Europe
Through the Arctic shipping route, the maritime shipping distance from Shanghai to Hamburg is around 7000km shorter than the southern route, which passes through the Malacca Straits and the Suez Canal.
India has a permanent Arctic research station in Norway. Since July 2008, India’s ONGC Videsh has been interested in investing in Russia’s Arctic liquefied natural gas projects.
Though the Arctic Sea route does not significantly reduce the sailing time for Indian shipping, the deep sea around the Arctic is rich in silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc. The new robotics and AI solutions minimize environmental damage and improve the economics of extraction.
However, since deep-sea mining is a relatively new field, the complete consequences of full-scale mining operations on the ecosystems are still unknown. Some researchers claim that removing parts of the sea floor will result in disturbances to the benthic layer and increase the toxicity of the water column.
Assessment
Space, the open ocean, and the cyber are always considered global property for free usage. However, the militarization of space, arbitrary claims and control over open seas, serious offensive action, and cyber threats have muddied the water.
It requires coordinated rule-based international action to rectify the situation. Appropriate treaties need to be reworked and implemented based on natural justice and not on might is right. For this, the UN and the International Courts must be given greater power and teeth.
EXPERT VIEW
COLONEL BALJINDER SINGH, is director of Aerospace and Defence of the United States-India Strategic Partnership Board. He served for 29 years as a soldier-engineer in the Indian Army in various terrains.
Space and Cyber domains present opportunities to field formidable new instruments for attaining power parity among nations. Unfortunately, space is accessible to only very few countries. The space capabilities of countries vary; the U.S. and Japan have been into it for a considerably long period and have already gained a lead by creating National Space Forces; Russia, China and, lately, India has a demonstrated anti-satellite capacity in space.
In the 19th Century and the early part of the 20th Century, sea powers ruled not only the waves but also the continental world. Even today, deep oceans and air have become a strategically important combination for technology adoption. The availability of rare minerals in the deep oceans and rising demands for fish as a source of food have added stress in the maritime domain. The consumption of fish per capita in 1960 was 97 kg per head; today, it has dipped to 30 kg.
Manganese is available in pea plants off the coast of New Guinea. The reserves are said to be almost 8 per cent as compared to 0.6 per cent available on land. Gold’s availability on the seabed is reportedly three to five times higher than on land. Marine cables for intercontinental communications and data connection are highly susceptible to sabotage. In 2013, two divers on the Egyptian coastline had sheared off certain cables, which blacked out many Arab countries. Such periods of communication blackouts could be exploited to launch physical attacks.
UNDERSTANDING THE MARITIME DOMAIN
Without clearly defined rights, oceans are susceptible to competition, confrontation and conflict.
TVice Admiral Anil Chopra, PVSM, AVSM is a retired Indian Navy Flag officer, who served as Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Western Naval Command from 2014 to 2015.
he Seas have been a tangible medium for humanity since the dawn of man. Upon them have plied global trade and food and energy supplies sustaining the world, as also invading armadas and powerful carrier groups projecting military power to every corner of the planet.
COOPERATION & COMPETITION
Themaritime domain has been and always will be vital for the prosperity and security of all nations and for its ability to influence or even dominate others. The seas have always been a Global Commons, albeit a contested one. The acceptance of parts of the maritime domain, such as territorial waters and exclusive economic zones (EEZ), is now restrictive to some extent.
However, elsewhere, the freedom of navigation remains enshrined, both under international law and as an age-old custom amongst seafaring nations. There are no property rights at sea, and the ocean does not belong to any country, organisation, or company. In the absence of Rights, it is natural that the seas are susceptible to competition, confrontation, and conflict. And this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
The potential for maritime cooperation is regrettably always eclipsed by militaries pursuing their nations’ interests for access to resources, energy, and markets. Military
There are no property rights at sea, and the ocean does not belong to any country, organisation or company. In the absence of Rights, it is natural that the seas are susceptible to competition, confrontation and conflict. And this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
conflict leads to instability at sea and impacts the ongoing trade. Even those not party to the conflict are affected by rising shipping costs because of uneconomical routing, and increased insurance outlays on commercial shipping. It is, therefore, in the interest of all nations to strive for a peaceful oceanic environment and general maritime security.
AN EVOLVING DOMAIN
Over the past hundred years, the maritime domain has been transformed by two distinct developments.First is the replacement of customary and traditional international law by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force less than three decades ago in 1994. UNCLOS grants state legal rights to various zones adjacent to their coastline.
It lays down a comprehensive regime for governing maritime activities. However, this territory realization of the seas has given rise to many disputes, differences in interpretations, and transgressions, most visibly in the South China Sea.
The United Nations and the International Maritime Or-
ganization (IMO) have the authority but not the means to enforce the convention. Consensus between nations on contentious clauses is necessary for unanimous acceptance and ratification.
Secondly, and most tellingly, the humongous impact of exponentially accelerating technology; has completely revolutionized maritime battlespace and warfare as well as marine transportation and communications. Since the advent of the 20th century, starting with radio and then through radar and satellites, the maritime environment has become increasingly transparent. It has become easier to detect, identify and track ships, submarines, and aircraft operating at sea. Furthermore, weapons and ammunition have vastly increased in range, speed, accuracy, and lethality.
Seagoing platforms are now more accessible to kinetic action from the surface, subsurface, and airborne dimensions. Even from land-based weapon systems, the vulnerability of platforms has increased. But concurrently, sea platforms using a variety of hard weaponry and soft countermeasures, including stealth technology and damage control, have enhanced their survivability. The same, however, cannot be said of commercial shipping.
MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS
The immediate and near future at sea will undoubtedly be shaped more by multiple technological advancements than by treaties and conventions. Six technological developments have been the most impactful.
Firstly, the increasing overlay of the maritime domain by space and cyber mediums, which are being rapidly militarized. Modern surveillance, communication, disruption, and deception capabilities impact all aspects of the detection, identification, targeting,
Fourthly, the return of mass or quantity to warfare. Contemporary naval ships, submarines, and aircraft or enormously expensive and are manned by equally expensive, highly trained manpower. As the cost soars, it becomes unaffordable to field them in large numbers, even for superpowers. Autonomous uncrewed platforms are far cheaper and could be inducted literally in hundreds, operating in swarms to overwhelm enemy defenses. Fifthly, long-range precision weapons at hypersonic speeds, striking deep Inland from the sea, making almost every urban center targetable from the sea at short notice by platforms operating in international waters. Last but not least, directed energy weapons using high-power lasers to destroy targets at the near instantaneous speed of light.
THE WAY AHEAD
Sinceinternational institutions, such as the United Nations, have neither the requisite authority nor the enforcement capability to maintain global security, the occurrence of military conflict will depend on nations; propensity to abide by the sanctity of borders. Respect for sovereignty, which has been fundamental to the Westphalia system of a nation- states since the 17th century must endure.
There’s a need to reform both the UN and the United Nations Security Council and legislate a convention that governs the imposition of automatic penalties, including economic sanctions upon states which do not adhere to the accepted rules of international law. However, in the real world, this is easier said than done. The only mechanism that works is a balance of power strong enough to deter rogue nations from resorting to the illegal use of force.
Due to the nature of the medium, it is impossible to create barriers between military and civilian domains at sea. Commercial shipping and other civilian assets for belligerents locked in combat un-demarcated battlespace will lead to collateral damage to the assets of neutral nations, includtrawlers and scisearch ships. As the Ukraine war has shown, offshore supply chains will be disrupted, bringing chaos to global commerce and
Peace on the waves needs a global and regional balance of power that will encourage deterrence through mutually assured destruction. Mutual economic interdependence could be another way to dissuade hostilities, as there are no winners in an all-out war. Lastly, a coalition of willing must take on the task of enforcement of the rule of law, as was seen when piracy
INDIA’S INDIAN OCEAN?
The Indian Ocean is increasingly becoming a potential zone of conflict as strategic competition spills over from the Pacific and the South China Sea.
As the economic balance of the global market shifts to the East, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has increasingly gained prominence and strategic importance. After all, the Indian The ocean is the most heavily used link between the West and the East, with around 80 percent of the global sea-borne trade transiting through its choke points. Many experts believe that being sandwiched between the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has generally been ignored. While the Freedom of Navigation has been emphasized in the IOR, especially by the U.S. Navy, from time to time, there have been areas that have lacked a strategic focus, like the increasing frequency of violent acts of piracy and pollution.
CHALLENGES IN THE IOR
The geography of the Indian Ocean presents two significant challenges for maritime enforcement of peace and freedom of navigation. Littoral countries have extended coastlines of over 200 nautical miles generating massive EEZs. Even small nations like Mauritius and Seychelles can stake claim to EEZs which are amongst the top 25 globally. This makes maritime security operations complex and difficult to coordinate with the littoral. The second challenge is maintaining a robust maritime domain awareness (MDA). Due to the massive size of the maritime domain of many of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) member coun-
tries, the very heavy density of traffic on its sea lanes of communications (SLOC), the blurred line between legal and illegal activities on international waters, and the small/ nil maritime capacity of many of the nations, MDA is difficult to achieve by any single power.
Therefore, the load for MDA would devolve upon a few nations; Australia, India, Iran, Malaysia, Thailand, and the UAE, which have capable maritime forces (naval and coast guard) in terms of quality and quantity.
INDIA’S CALL
The strategic vacuum in the IOR was not destined to last indefinitely. The rise of China, the increasing presence of the PLAN off the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy operations, growing Chinese maritime capabilities (like the development of carrier groups), and engagement with IOR countries started ringing alarm bells. The possibility of the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea spilling over into IOR is now a distinct possibility. India has a stake in its security as a major geographical constituent of the IOR. India is uniquely positioned to influence the Indian Ocean maritime domain from its bases on the West and East coast. Perhaps our greatest asset is the archipelago of the Andamans and Nicobar group standing like a fortress at the mouth of the choke point of the Malacca Straits, enabling surveillance and interdiction in an all-out conflict.
However, increased Chinese naval presence in Hambantota port on our southern extreme, at Djibouti and perhaps in Myanmar, means the Indian Ocean is not as we tend to believe. Last year while speaking at the United Nations Security Council’s high-level debate on maritime security, Prime Minister Modi very aptly described India’s challenges in this domain. “Oceans are our shared heritage, and our maritime routes are the lifelines of international trade.
RESEARCH TEAM
SYNERGIA FOUNDATION
LESSONS FROM UKRAINE
The war in Ukraine has been a test bed for many new weapon systems and concepts.
IMaj. Gen. Moni Chandi is the CSO at Synergia Foundation & a former Inspector General of the elite National Security Guard.
t is quite challenging to understand the ‘Future of Warfare‘ because while factors like International Relations, Geopolitics, and Geo-Economics build the environment for conflict, the actual prosecution of the war is dictated by National Security, Technology, and the Art of War. The Ukraine war has made this exercise much easier as many insights are available from the conflict zone..
At the war’s commencement, Ukraine and Russia had a similar inventory of Soviet-era weapons. However, as the war progressed, 31 nations of the Western Alliance, led by the The U.S. provided a wide range of weapons & equipment to Ukraine. From a technology- demonstration point of view, the Ukraine War provided a live test bed to arms manufacturers. Leading arms manufacturers from the Western Alliance have used the opportunity to demonstrate & field test a wide range of weapons, equipment, and technologies.
LESSONS AT THE GEOPOLITICAL LEVEL
Space for Conventional War under Nuclear Overhang After the bombing of Hiroshima Nagasaki in 1945, there was abundant caution for nuclear powers engaging in a conventional war that could trigger a nuclear exchange. However, in 1999, during the Kargil operations, India & Pakistan, both nuclear powers, engaged in an intense border skirmish. The Kargil War, as we refer to it, demonstrated there was geo-political space below the nuclear threshold for nuclear powers to engage in conventional wars. That lesson seems to have come home to roost in Ukraine. Seven months into the conflict, Russia, a superpower, is being bled
Nations must be prepared for the entire spectrum of conflict. No nation, however rich, has enough resources to create different kinds of forces to meet all threats; hence be adaptable and versatile in your force structures, equipping and training so that you can best adapt to what the fog of war throws at you ultimately.
into a conventional war by Ukraine, logistically supported by 31 Western nations. The lesson here is while aggressive superpowers may hope for quick, decisive victories, smaller nation-states can bleed them in prolonged conflict, provided they can absorb the initial shock & awe and continue to receive the backing of their citizens and war material from abroad.
Propaganda War. Propaganda is a legitimate tool of war. It is normally used to raise the morale of the home side and lower the morale of adversaries. In the Ukraine War, both Russians & Americans devoted considerable resources to building narratives and influencing public opinion. The U.S. did a much better job than the Russians in the propaganda war. The way European public opinion was molded to muster support for the economic sanctions against Russia despite the economic pain was impressive. In the Information Age and particularly in democratic societies, it is important to build control a public narrative that supports the war effort.
OPERATIONAL AND TACTICAL LESSONS
Cyber Warfare. At the war’s commencement, Russia successfully knocked out Ukraine’s internet & communications systems. Russia was also able to hack & disable the US
VIASAT, which provided commercial communications to Ukraine. Russia also carried out attacks on government websites utility services (banks & power). However, within weeks, with international support, Ukraine was able to restore Internet, communications, and services. More significantly, Space X’s Starlink restored full Internet coverage over the whole country. Internet coverage in Ukraine, in addition to civil communication, has also been used for military applications.
The lesson here is while offensive cyber operations could be initially successful, cyber systems will NOT only be restored but Internet-based military applications for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and artillery control can also be developed quickly. Drones. If Vietnam is remembered as the first televised war, the Russo-Ukraine war may be remembered as the first war where both adversaries avidly used drones. In 2016, during the annexation of Crimea, Russia used a wide range of drones to support their land invasion (Zala KYB, Eleron-35, Orlan-10, Kronshtadt Orion).
However, in 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces contested the Russian invasion with a range of homegrown drones to thwart Russian progress. Three drones have performed well: the Turkey-supplied BAYRAKTAR TB-2 medium-range long endurance (MALE), which carries four weapon pods, and Ukraine’s indigenous A-1 SM Furia and Leleka-100 drones, which were used for aerial reconnaissance and artillery fire adjustment.
Loiter or Kamikaze Ammunition. An important variation of drones is Loiter munitions, which fired over a target area to loiter over the space (30-60 minutes), to acquire a target, and then execute the kill by flying into the target. Both Russia and Ukraine used a variety of loitering munitions. While Ukraine had its own indigenously developed munitions (RAM II and
ST- 35 Silent Thunder), they were also beneficiaries of a variety of loitering munitions from other countries, including the U.S. produced, Switchblade (AeroVironment) and Phoenix Ghost (Aevex Aerospace). Loiter munitions will have a fundamental impact on the future battlefield. Firstly, by attacking the relatively vulnerable top of the vehicle, it questions the the primacy of the tank on the battlefield; secondly, mechanized advances, the primary component of offensive-maneuver will now have to find practical means to counter the new threat; and thirdly, loiter munitions will accentuate the non-linear threat of the future battle, by making assets otherwise distant from the front lines like AD weapons sites, logistic hubs, communications centers, and tactical HQs, increasingly vulnerable, to precision attacks.
MANPADS in the TBA. MANPADS (Man Portable AD Systems) are surface-to-air missiles designed to be carried and fired by a single soldier. STINGER MANPADS (produced by Raytheon, US) was used with effect by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and substantially dented the Soviet control of the airspace. Ukraine has received significant quantities of the more contemporary, US-manufactured FIM-92 STINGER, the Thales-manufactured STARStreak and the South Korean-manufactured CHIRON KP-SAM Shinguang. The proliferation of MANPADS in Ukraine severely impeded Russia’s helicopter operations in the Tactical Battle Area (TBA) as well as close air support operations by fixed-wing aircraft at altitudes below 4.5 Km.
Long Range Precision Fires. There has been much publicity about the M-142 HIMARS (Lockheed Martin) rocket-missile system, with a range of 80-300 Km. The qualitative improvement of this weapon system is that it is capable of firing either multiple (6) unguided rockets over limited ranges (80 Km) or a single guided missile over extended ranges (300 Km). With its precision
accuracy and enhanced range, this weapon system is believed to have been used for attacks inside the Crimean Peninsula, namely the Saki Air Base, the ammunition facility at Mayskoye and Kersh Bridge. Long-range precision fires further accentuate the non-linear nature of future battlefields. The tactical battle area in Ukraine extends 300 Km from the front lines, and all assets in the TBA are fair game.
SHOULD INDIA BE WORRIED?
India has always maintained that even when both adversaries are nuclear-armed, there is scope for the conduct of conventional war. This has been practised by both India and Pakistan in some form or other since the Kargil war of 1999. However, both sides have taken special measures to calibrate the escalatory ladder so as not to cross red lines.
This underscores the efforts of the Indian military to maintain a significant conventional deterrent for a two-front conflict, despite the high cost involved. However, the level of conventional weaponry needs to be constantly upgraded to match global standards, preferably through indigenous efforts.
Offensive cyber capacities are attractive, but their effects may only be transitory in a full-scale war. Also, with the advent of small & microsatellites, Internet capacities can be rebuilt even enhanced within days. Both these aspects need to be attended to urgently in the Indian context.
Drones are a game-changer in a conventional war. Loiter munitions will challenge 3rd Generation warfare, which advocates manoeuvring on the battlefield with mechanised forces. The Indian military is investing in upgrading its drone capability, including swarms and kamikaze drones, with the help of the private sector, especially startups. However, a great deal of ground has to be covered as the Indian armed forces have very little experience in the combat employment of drones in significant numbers offensively, whether conventionally or in counter-terror opera- tions.
The proliferation of MANPADS, which re quire low-level skills (and can be fired by a civilian), has trans formed the airspace over the TBA. Helicop ter operations and Close Air Support below 4.5 Km altitude need to be reworked the new hostile environment. the most modern air forces have answer to this threat except re sorting to stand-off attacks using precision ammunition. Indian military aviation is fully sensitive to this threat and would be evolving suit able tactics to combat them.
Precision long-range fires delivered by guided missiles will be a strong characteristic of future warfare. AGNI, PRITHVI, and BRAHMOS are commendable indigenous efforts, but more improvements are needed for adequate quantities and targeting qualities. Longrange fires are effective only if married to a sophisticated satellite-supported Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) system. We need to develop cyber capacities to creatively manipulate public opinion of domestic, international and target audiences so that our national interests receive the appreciation they deserve.
INDIA’S ATMANIRBHAR (SELF-RELIANT) FOCUS
India India has been placing great importance on developing indigenous capability in the Defence Sector. However, given lessons drawn from Ukraine, certain focus areas must be prioritised for the Atmanirbhar drive.
Counter-Drone Warfare. While drones continued to hold sway in the Ukrainian Battlefield, what was missing, was a viable counter to them. It does not make sense to use a high-cost surface-to-air missile, say the S-400 missile (costing millions of dollars), to neutralise a comparatively low-cost drone threat. Indian Armed forces need a reliable (accurate) shoulder-fired ‘drone-killer’ that can shoot down drones at ranges of up to 4 Km. Even better, a man-portable jammer, that can jam the drones’ command telemetry would be ideal.
Space-based SATA. SATA is a military acronym for Surveillance and Target Acquisition. The architecture of future defensive systems should be based on three parameters. Firstly, real- time monitoring threats to our land & maritime borders from space. Secondly, target analysis allocation of weapon systems is done from a secure location, well-removed from the battlefield. And thirdly, the target is engaged with a precision-guided munition at stand-off distances from the battlefield.
Counter to MANPADS. Unless we find a counter to MANPADS, the primacy of the tank on the battlefield the ability of mechanized formations to lead advanced operations will stand undermined. Even artillery assets deployed in the depth areas will remain highly exposed to drone attacks. Long Range Precision Fires. Long-range precision fires are key to the future of warfare. This is called the stand-off battle in military parlance, and precision fires from some weapon systems have reached precedented ranges.
EXPERT VIEW
LT. GEN. ASIT MISTRY PVSM, AVSM, SM, VSM (Retd) is that Director of School of Internal Security, Defence and Strategic Studies at the Rashtriya Raksha University.
DEBUNKING SOME MYTHS
We are still too close to the war in Ukraine to arrive at conclusive deductions about weapon systems and doctrines. TV imagery flashed on our home screens can be delusionary and make us draw lessons without authenticated objective data or unbiased analysis. To see tanks being blown up by precision strikes and deduce that the armoured fighting vehicle era is gone is perhaps a bit premature.
All military technology has an evolutionary cycle, which stands true for the tank. Right from the first world war, where the tanks first came onto the battlefield, there is a continuous competition between tanks and anti-tank. And when a particular technology to defeat the protection levels in the armour is found, tank protection is upgraded, mobility is enhanced, and thus, survival levels go up.
Going back to the 1973 Yom Kippur war, anti-tank guided missiles made their maiden appearance on the battlefield producing a devastating effect when used in swarms. Back then, the end of the tank had been predicted, but that didn’t happen.
Tank designers came up with compound armour, and the modern tank endured. When the side and the frontal armour became too strong, anti-tank munitions were designed for a top-attack profile. It can be assumed that some years down the line, tanks will adapt to the new battle environment. Work is already on hand.
The same theory can be applied to drones (now so much in the news as the ultimate weapon) and their counters. This cyclic process of the law, a new technology emerging and creating a disproportionate effect till something counter to it is discovered or invented, is a continuous process. So, while drones today may swarm targets in numbers too large to be neutralised or utilised in different configurations, from the ISR versions to command drones and the kamikazes, their counters will soon make appearances on the battlefields. These will not be million-dollar missiles but something far more affordable, matching the drones dollar to dollar.
This kind of race is a continuous evolution in warfare. Therefore, it would be premature to assume the extinction of a particular type of weapon system that has withstood the test of time and the rigours of the battlefield.
Information Warfare is another segment that merits closer attention, especially in the context of the Ukraine war, where there are two very stark examples. One side
is trying to dominate the information space with a massive bombardment of information through social media, Internet TV etc. The other side, in contrast, is hardly saying anything domestically or externally. Ukraine has certainly managed to sustain its national morale through its information warfare efforts and ensured that western support does not falter.
However, the West had predicted that an increasing number of body bags arriving in Russia would sap the national morale; the ground-level support for the ‘special military operation’ shows no sign of lagging after almost eight long months despite the sheer absence of a propaganda blitz by the Kremlin.
It almost appears that Mr Putin pays little importance to such modern gimmicks, despite being bombarded by slickly produced visual productions predicting the demise of the Russian army in the morass of Ukraine. So, what is the lesson that policymakers draw from these two examples?
Undoubtedly, there are some clear lessons. To support your propaganda war, you need to have a narrative, but you must also create something on the ground so that the narrative is credible. All sides, including the larger world, have means to get transparency, and fake news can be unmasked.
Dedicated portals make a living doing fact checks and can effectively separate the chaff from the wheat. Furthermore, the narrative must have an objective purpose to influence the behaviour or shape the perception, both internally and externally. In open democratic societies, blocking information is difficult, but this flood of information itself sometimes becomes a problem.
Therefore, the lesson is to build a credible narrative that is not built on silos but can relate to the actual ground situation.High-tech precision strikes and longrange weapons with immense destructive power have a place on the battlefield (and are most popular on YouTube).
Still, they cannot substitute for the physical closing in, and the ultimate capture of the objective done in a manner that has not changed for centuries. The Ukrainian counter-offensive shows that an army that cannot hold on to captured ground despite all its modern arsenal is hardly worth its salt.
We are still in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine, and it may be too premature to decide conclusively on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of certain weapons systems and warfighting principles. Ukraine may not necessarily be a template that can be applied globally to all conflicts.The conclusion could be to be prepared for the entire spectrum of conflict.
No nation, however rich, has enough resources to create different kinds of forces to meet all threats; hence be adaptable and versatile in your force structures, equipping and training so that you can best adapt to what the fog of war throws at you ultimately.
OUTER SPACE AS A KEY CONFLICT DOMAIN
Space networks are vital for a nation’s economic growth and military potential.
SAir Marshal Rajiv Dayal Mathur, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC is a former officer in the Indian Air Force. He was the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C), Eastern Air Command from 1 March 2019 to 30 September 2020.
pace, not surprisingly, is highly congested, with over 6,400 satellites in orbit. They’re almost 50,000 pieces of space debris of measurable size, i.e., ten cm plus. Space has become a part of our lives-GPS, weather bulletins, DTH TV and now satellite broadband being provided by market leader Starlink even in war-torn Ukraine. At present more than 80 countries have space launch programmes.
TRANSFORMATIONS IN SPACE
Communication satellites have evolved over the last decade. Earlier, they used to be primarily in geostationary earth orbit but now have been moved to low earth orbit because of the lower latency and better revisit frequency. Many positioning constellations beside the GPS are being deployed in space.
While the majority are operated by the U.S, Russia, China, the European Space Agency, Japan and India have also joined the club. The private sector has emerged as a major player, especially since 2009. SpaceEx is already a household brand and global private investment in space exceeds USD 25 million.
Miniaturisation of electronics gave birth to cuboid satellites which have revolutionised satellite-based communica-
Greater transparency in orbital activities would lead to more equitable utilisation of resources and fewer chances of a conflict.
tions. These are cheap to manufacture and launch and being power efficient, last longer in orbit. Space X is developing reusable launch vehicles which will further bring down cost per launch. Space tourism is growing despite the astronomical costs.
It’s expected that the space industry could become a trillion-dollar industry in the next two decades. There have been technological improvements as well, which have improved satellite communications. Satellite applications will become more secure because LASER technology enables higher data rates. Also, remote sensing solutions are improving daily for electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar. Today, it’s commonplace to see 40 cm resolution; soon it could come down to 10 cm.
CONFLICT POINTS IN SPACE
Satellite servicing vehicles are a concept already under consideration by the European Space Association, which would be used to refurbish, replenish, refuel and move satellites that have come down into a lower orbit and re-boost them into higher orbits. Counterpoint Transportation over the surface of the Earth over large distances is a concept that SpaceX is looking at.
Space mining of asteroids and the Moon for rare earth metals, as well as iron, nickel and cobalt, is being planned. This, too, would create possible friction points for future conflicts of interest.Active debris removal missions are al-
ready in the pipeline. Of course, this was being done by the space shuttle earlier but at a much smaller scale. Now the intent is the removal of excess debris in scale, through autonomous robotic removal in the lower orbits.
Space has always been considered the ultimate high ground and has been militarily active but perhaps more covertly. Space military activities now include proximity operations with space-based lasers as anti-ballistic missile weapons or against surface weapons/ targets. There are also military programmes that include kinetic anti-satellite weapons.
Most armed forces have reorganised their military formations to cater for space operations like the U.S. Space Forces and Unified Space Command. Russia and China are likely to follow suit soon. India has raised the Defence Space Agency which is predicted to turn into the Indian Space Command one day.
Space networks are vital for a nation’s economic growth and military potential. Satellites, as we’ve seen, have predictable orbits, and they work on congested channels and can be tracked. Therefore, they are vulnerable as targets. Space assets have long been used to support activities on Earth-remote sensing, ISR, ballistic missile tracking and for command and control of all operations in all domains.
Most space technologies are dual use; GPS is used for navigation on the ground, air and sea, and at the same time for precision weapon targeting. Space-derived services, be it telecommunications, navigation, or weather forecasting, could be interrupted, and this interruption could, even if unintentional, lead to conflict. Spacebased systems have become a major target because they affect a nation’s economic and military potential. There are also certain key orbital slots in space.
These are called LaGrange points which are points of relative stability where satellites can be parked for prolonged periods. But these are limited in number, and, therefore, a potential cause for conflict between nations vying for them.
REGULATING THE SPACE
Space dominance requires space situational awareness, a field in which the U.S dominates. There is a general sense that if there was greater transparency in orbital activities, it would lead to more equitable utilisation of resources and fewer chances of a conflict.
However, while technology has grown exponentially, regulations have not been able to keep pace. Therefore, there is a need for new regulations where we have many more private sectors as part of the agreement process so that agreements reached are universally adhered to. A ban on the intentional destruction of satellites and other objects in orbit is an essential prerequisite to reduce space debris in orbit. Again, all nations need to get together to get through the congestion that is taking place right now, especially in low earth orbit, by facilitating active debris removal mechanisms.
The existing system has become outdated. There is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Liability Convention, the Restriction Convention, and the Moon Treaty. All these date back to the Cold War era and do not address today’s problems in space. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) is tasked to review and foster international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space and to consider legal issues arising from exploring outer space. It currently has 95 members and convenes annually in Vienna and has legal and scientific departments. All that is agreed upon by this body is through consensus, which makes it almost impossible to address real hardcore issues.
What is needed is an organisation that perhaps addresses all the existing problems and caters to the future participation of private players on a much larger scale in all space operations, including space situational awareness, space travel management and space congestion and space debris. The competition in space is inexorably leaning towards conflict. And therefore, it’s essential to follow the rules of the road formulated through a new foundational space treaty. Achievement of global prosperity through space commerce could be the greatest incentive for nations to jointly keep outer space secure and peaceful.
INDIA - AN INNOVATION POWERHOUSE?
Innovation takes place in almost every field, be it business models or how organisations are designed to be more efficient. However, innovation is ultimately technological.
WRishikesha Krishnan, is Director and Professor of Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB).
hy is innovation important? The most obvious reason is, of course, strategic reasons. No one wants to depend on others and, in a sense, wish to chart their destiny. With globalisation, it was assumed that it was prudent to integrate components procured from across the globe without manufacturing them indigenously to produce the final product. Then came the supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the shortage of chips etc.; it has increasingly become clear that domestically, a minimum capability is required across the entire value chain.
In the case of India, vaccine production is another good example when the Indian External Affairs Minister had to intervene at a point to get critical components that were essential for vaccine manufacture from the U.S.
DEVELOPING AN INNOVATION ECOSPHERE
Historically, as nations traverse the typical trajectory of their growth and development, in the beginning, the emphasis is on how to kick start the economy, the manufacturing etc., to figure out how to commence production. In the 1950s, when India set up its basic industries-steel, petrochemicals, fertilisers and so on, it needed technical know-how to start production. This was done by importing technology from other countries, mainly the USSR and the
First, understand what are the kinds of inputs you require. You require people, money, basic knowledge resources, and good infrastructure. Those are very basic inputs which go into the Innovation process. Next, you need the incentive to innovate.
eastern bloc. Once the production has started and you gain a degree of expertise, you realise that your peculiar climatic conditions, raw materials, and skill profile are quite different from the originator of the imported technology. So, you start fixing the technology to make the product better and more profitable. As the industry grows, you desire to be among the market leaders and through innovation, you try to gain the edge over your competitors.
To reach the same level of production or quality as your competitors on a global scale, you must improve your input materials and processes. However, a plateau is reached wherein there is no further improvement, and more fundamental innovation is required in various products and designs. In India, this phenomenon was visible post-economic liberalisation in the 1990s.
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE
The innovation process was much slower in India compared to a country like South Korea, which went through all the steps of innovation in 10 to 15 years, while India took 25 to 30 years. Innovation and product improvement is a continuous process, not a start-and-stop one. An example is a company founded in the early 1970s to recondition black
INNOVATION IN EMERGING MARKETS:FIRM STRATEGIES & PROCESSES
and white picture tubes for TVs from Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, when colour TV arrived in India, the company was forced to set up a colour picture tube plant in collaboration with Japan. Yet they could never replicate the same productivity or yield as the Japanese company despite their previous experience producing black and white picture tubes. The Japanese company was not willing to transfer the entire technology. It was found that the same technology had been sold to a South Korean company, which, over time, figured out how to improve the yield through trial and error. So, the Indian company contracted South Korean technicians to resolve productivity issues. Innovation is not entirely in R&D and core knowledge creation; sometimes, it is just figuring out how to make your processes and your production more efficient.
Sometimes, some products rely entirely on brand value rather than developing the technology behind them. Micromax was a leading Indian brand of smartphones with a significant market presence. Sadly, the entire handset was just assembled from fully imported kits from China. Seeing the popularity of Micromax, the Chinese suppliers pulled the plug and decided to enter the Indian market themselves. We saw the entry of big Chinese brands like Vivo, Oppo, One Plus etc. Micromax is now history. This leads us to believe that unless you have mastery over the core technology and can grow the supply chain, you can easily be displaced by anyone who controls the technology.
There are many challenges in the Indian market, especially in the health sector. We need low-cost solutions to meet the demand across the entire strata of society. A good example is the rotavirus vaccine developed by Dr Bhan at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. The rotavirus strain was isolated in 1986, but the vaccine came into production only in 2015. Bharat Biotech (producer of Covaxin) learnt the vaccine development
process through this experience. In this case, indigenous knowhow and development helped produce a successful vaccine with global usage. Innovation capabilities are not created overnight but are built over time.
Another Indian success story is that of a tractor designed by the Central Mechanical and Engineering Research Institute in Durgapur, purchased by Punjab Tractors and later acquired by Mahindra & Mahindra to become the largest tractor manufacturer in the world.
Innovation gives the potential to achieve global leadership. Pharmaceuticals is one field in which India is considered a front-runner. The three pillars of the drug industry are Dr Reddy’s Labs, Ranbaxy and Cipla. The last was the world’s main supplier of low-cost anti-HIV drugs that put a brake on the HIV epidemic in Africa. A similar story exists in the motorcycle industry, where India produces 40 per cent of the world’s motorcycles by volume. Three Indian brands-Bajaj, Hero and TVS dominate the Indian market despite stiff competition from international brands like Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki etc. This was achieved as these companies were able to develop capabilities in manufacturing and technology development along with a deep understanding of Indian consumer behaviour. Bajaj was able to design the unique DTSi fuel-saving technology which made its Pulsar bikes a bestseller not only in India but also in overseas markets.
Domestic technologies in critical industries like semiconductors are gaining importance due to geopolitical contestations. Today Taiwan dominates the global market, while all big and small countries are reliant on the supply chain emanating from that island nation. If China disrupts that chain, a host of industries will collapse, as we witnessed recently when the white goods and automobile manufacturing industries were disrupted due to a shortage of chips.
CREATING AN INNOVATION INDUSTRY
Can India become an Innovation Powerhouse? To answer this question, three things must be kept in mind. First, understand what are the kinds of inputs you require. You require people, money, basic knowledge resources, and good infrastructure. Those are very basic inputs which go into the Innovation process.
Next, you need the incentive to innovate. Ever wonder why the Indian Ambassador car remained on the road for so many decades with minimum design changes? With so little competition in a closed market, there was little incentive to innovate, and no benefits were accrued from costly innovation. Therefore, there must be competition in the market, or the product will stagnate.
There must be a strong market for investors who value innovation and are willing to bet their money on it.
These were the input and output sides of the problem. There are others in the middle, which include the capacity to do it, organisations with the right skills, the leadership and innovative people like Elon Musk who can take risks. Organisational structures play a vital role. Structures conducive to sharing ideas, putting them into practice, and going through the entire innovation cycle succeed. Hierarchical top-down organisations rarely take to innovation. Finally, the innovation cycle has to be completed by taking it to the market, for which someone has to pay for the innovation.
INDIA AS AN INNOVATION POWERHOUSE?
So, where does India stand in this entire Innovation Cycle? The environment for innovation and the incentive to innovate has improved in India with time, but many challenges remain. We still have a long way to go. What is the balance sheet for Indian innovation?
The strengths-a good network of government commodities, expertise, CSIR, DRDO and a diversified industrial base, recognition of the importance of industry, including tax breaks etc. Scientists have played a prominent role in policy-making changes related to science and technology. Patent laws have encouraged foreign investment in R&D and Global Technology Centres.
However, there are several red flags; we have a large education capacity, but the quality is a concern. The top 10 universities in China are ranked 17, 18 and 21 worldwide, and the top three in India are 177 and further down the list. The absence of a vibrant high-tech manufacturing base and limited impact of government support programmes whose scale remains low, looking at the size and complexity of the country. Many of our top scientists are from basic sciences and do not have an interest in technology and application. There is a little spillover of foreign R&D, which does not interact with the local ecosystem. Our talent development efforts are falling short of contributing to innovation. Lastly, there are broader societal challenges. In the Global Innovation Index (GII), over the last seven years, India moved
from rank 81 to 40.
The Chinese strengths are different when you compare China with India in the GII. Their top universities rank very high globally, and there is significant output in terms of patents, industrial design etc. China scores high in basic literacy skills, especially in mathematics and sciences. Their weaknesses lie in the environment and inefficient use of energy resources.
India’s spending on R&D has been static and could also be declining as a per cent of the GDP. Our gross expenditure on R&D is about 0.7 per cent of the GDP, which is quite low by global standards. On the other hand, China spends close to 2.5 per cent of its GDP. The top two industries for India in terms of R&D spent are transportation and pharmaceuticals. Globally the trend is different -in electronics, Information Technology, and semiconductors.
Another important difference is, of course, who’s spending the money. In India, it’s largely being spent by the government even today. Whereas, in most advanced economies, R&D spending is happening in private industry; in the US, 73 per cent is by business enterprises, and in India, it is only about 41 per cent. Tata Motors (or its subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Ltd) spends around 2 billion Euros on R&D. Huawei dispenses more than 17 billion Euros on its R&D alone!
Indian high-tech exports amount to over $21 million, not including IT services; for China, the figure stands at around $ 750 billion! In certain areas, like market sophistication, India compares favourably with China in the GII.
CHALLENGES FOR INNOVATION IN INDIA
Traditionally, Indians are reasonably okay at doing things in the lab but struggle to take things out of the lateral schedule. The problem is translating a prototype into production in a more physical context. This is true in the defence sector, where the challenges are to scale production numbers to make them profitable. A few successful examples exist, like the National Chemical Lab (NCL), which worked very closely with the public sector to profitably commercialise their processes. NCL developed a micro-encapsulated technology years ago, they got the patents, but they didn’t know how to use it or who to sell it to. Finally, Dr Senthil Kumar struck a deal with Procter & Gamble in the U.S., who came up with its application as a fabric softener. After another decade of application experiments, the technology was marketed as the Downy Fabric Softener, releasing a pleasant fragrance even when the clothes are stored in cupboards for a long period.
In the 1980s, India focused on its telecom sector and tried to create indigenous telecom switching equipment through the public sector. Some state-of-art developments did take place in the telecom switching sector, but the momentum could not be sustained. The Indian telecom switching industry would have rivalled Huawei if these efforts had been maintained. India fac-
es the challenge of not having the entire value chain presence for any large-scale production.
INDIA’S TOP INNOVATIONS
The first one was Vaccines which have already been discussed. The second one is Aadhaar which triggered a whole new set of innovations, including the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), today perhaps the world’s largest integrated digital cable system with open access, and interoperability.
Innovation is also taking place on the government side, especially in its procurement processes, including an electronic marketplace like Amazon for government purchases. The Niti Aayog is running an ‘Aspirational Districts Programme’. The idea is to take the most backward districts out of 700 or so and focus on them using data compilation and digital technology. India’s Mars mission could also rank high as an innovation due to its efficiency and low cost.
The big change in India is the approximate 75,000 start-ups, many of which are emerging as major innovators. But even there, deep ‘technovation’, where we are going into a significant technological shift, is missing.
THE WAY AHEAD
To develop an innovation ecosystem, India must focus on four entities-the government, established companies, start-ups and academia. A good example in the government is the Department of Biotechnology, which has been running under the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) umbrella. It is perhaps the only end-to-end innovation support program existing in India. The BIRAC programme addresses all
issues through grants and loans, and this programme needs to be replicated across all industries.
Structural programmes for technology development would also help. Capability building is a long-term process with time frames of up to 15 years for new technology, and it requires patent capital for investment in the new technology. In 2004, the government launched the Collaborative Automotive Research group, which has begun to show results. Organisations like the National Biomedical Resources Indigenisation Consortium are needed as cross-cutting coordination mechanisms, which will help pool resources better to drive innovation.
Also, there is the need of regulators who are more tuned to the importance of innovation. For example, the Reserve Bank of India has been helping with fintech innovation by creating regulatory sandboxes, controlled environments where you can try out some of these new ideas because, without that, regulatory hurdles will just be too high to get into the space.
The biggest challenge for start-ups in India is working on the right problems. Many times, Indian start-ups work on problems that are not relevant or financially viable. Start-ups can also be successful by collaborating with giants. The success of MyLab, which was the first company to be certified for RT-PCR covid test kits, is well known. Similarly, academia and research institutions also need to choose the right projects. They must constantly be asking themselves whether they are working on projects which have the potential to change the world. Challenges are there for the Indian innovation scene, but there is also a lot of promise and opportunity. And a lot of hard work must be done to get anywhere close to that.
NEW MODELS FOR SCALE-UP? FRAUNHOFER MODEL
A TALE OF PARADOXES
While the Indo-Bangladesh relationship has matured over the last 50 years, there is still much to be done to make it lasting.
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An old Danish proverb says, “no one is rich enough to do without a neighbour.” India and Bangladesh could do well to live by this wisdom as, historically, and geographically, their destinies are entwined.
Their relationship is defined not merely by shared borders but by a blood bond established during the war of liberation of Bangladesh and still valued by the large veteran community in both countries. Therefore, one would assume that the connection between the two neighbours would naturally transcend beyond governments to a vibrant people-to-people relationship, and sadly, that is not so.
Certain factors unconsciously control bilateral relations; first, the relations are majorly regime sensitive; second, there exists a deep mistrust among governments; and third, a visible difference in the perception of the benefits drawn from the bilateral equation. Also, the shadow of the Dragon is increasingly falling over it, although Dhaka has adroitly kept the two Asian rivals apart regarding its national interests.
REGIME SENSITIVITY
As Dr Ashikur Rahman, a Senior Economist at the Policy Research Institute [PRI] of Bangladesh says, the India-Bangladesh relationship is still regime sensitive. Soon after the creation of Bangladesh, the personal friendship between the then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, set the tone for the evolving relationship. Unfortunately, the tragic killing of almost the entire family of Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman on the fateful early morning of August 15th, 1975,
The Sino-Pak strategic partnership provides a good model wherein, irrespective of the government in power in Islamabad, the relationship remains on an even keel. Of course, the fact that regime changes in Beijing take place after decades helps matters.
changed the entire dynamic.
Fortunately, Sheikh Hasina survived as she was in Germany then, where her husband was completing his PhD and provided political asylum in India for the next six years, living incognito in New Delhi. Successive governments that came to power in Dhaka, including a brief stint of martial law, used an anti-India narrative as a political platform with some success.
However, since 1996 when Sheikh Hasina first came to power, the bilateral relationship has grown, albeit with a few hiccups now and then.
The fact that Sheikh Hasina holds the record of the world’s longest-serving female head of government has enabled the relationship to endure despite the challenges. Both countries have successfully negotiated their maritime boundaries and exchange of conclaves and, more recently, are cooperating on the development of Infrastructure, connectivity, and power.
The way forward is that the Indo-Bangladesh partnership must mature beyond a reflection of personal relationships between the heads of state. The Sino-Pak strategic partnership provides a good model wherein, irrespective of the government in power in Islamabad, the relationship remains on an even keel. Of course, the fact that regime changes in
Beijing take place after decades helps matters.
India-Bangladesh relations have matured over the last half a century, so they should not remain hostage to a regime-sensitive affliction. The current dispensation in Dhaka has cultivated excellent working relations with New Delhi on several accounts. This should not be allowed to stagnate, especially considering the general elections scheduled next December.
REDUCING THE TRUST DEFICIT
Unchecked illegal migration from Bangladesh into India through the over 4000 km long porous border, despite the fencing, remains a major irritant. At various times, insurgent groups plaguing restive north-eastern provinces of India have found succour and shelter across the border in Bangladesh territory. The Mizo National Front had established a self-styled government in the Chakma Hill Tracts adjoining Mizoram with the full knowledge of Dhaka till as late as 1986 when it came overground and successfully won the electoral battle in Aizawl. On its part, Bangladesh accused India of aiding and abetting the Chakma rebels (Shanti Bahini) in its operations against the Bangladesh Army.
The security apparatus in India still suspects a degree of collusion between the establishment in Bangladesh and insurgent groups in Northeast India, including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), and National Democratic Front of Bodoland, where several of their top leaders have long maintained covert command and control facilities. The statements made by Julius Dorphang, the leader of the banned Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), which fought the Indian state for an independent Khasi land in Meghalaya, further cemented Indian suspicions.
There are several reasons for such continuous infiltration, rooted in geography, history, and various socioeconomic factors. Around 30,000 people enter India illegally annually, greatly destabilising the country’s demographics. Large-scale illegal immigration occurs due to the border regions’ dense population—roughly 700–800 people per square km on the Indian side and 1,000 people on the Bangladesh side—which makes it simpler
On the issue of geopolitics, geoeconomics and geostrategies,I must highlight four things from my understanding of these concepts.One, humans create geostrategies, geopolitics, geoeconomics. Strategies don’t create humans, they can only influence humans. So the same position can be
for anyone, especially criminals, to cross into the other country. The similarity in culture and language makes it difficult to distinguish among the population.
Ms Sheikh Hasina’s administration claims zero tolerance towards terrorism. Indian intelligence agencies contest this and accuse the Directorate General of Field Intelligence (DGFI) and other Bangladeshi authorities of turning a blind eye, if not open assistance, to Pakistani intelligence operatives using Bangladesh to foment trouble or conduct anti-India activities across the border. Several radical organisations with extremist underpinnings are known to be active in Bangladesh, including an offshoot of Al Qaeda and the Harkat-ulJehadi-e-Islam. Additionally, these organisations are closely aligned with Pakistan-based terrorist organisations like Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
BENEFIT DISPARITY
There is an existence of underlining disparity in the benefits drawn from the India- Bangladesh bilateral relationship. According to Dr Lailufar Yasmin from Dhaka University, India is at a better receiving end. Further, Bangladesh is landlocked by India on the three sides, leaving the south open to the Bay of Bengal, making its regional trade dependent on transit through India. For trade and better connectivity with the Indian North –Eastern states via Bangladesh, India and Bangladesh identified several transit routes that include-Chattogram/Mongla Port to Agartala (Tripura) via Akhura, Chattogram/Mongla Port to Dwaki (Meghalaya) via Tamabil, Chattogram/Mongla Port to Sutarkandi (Assam) via Sheola and Chattogram/Mongla Port to Srimantapur (Tripura) via Bibir Bazar.
According to Dr Yasmin, while Dhaka has granted transit routes from within its territory, Delhi has not responded in kind. Bangladesh still does not have access to trade via India’s Siliguri Corridor. Also, Bangladeshi goods receive differential treatment at Indian transit points and restricted entry even though goods are 100 per cent duty-free. However, on the Indian side, there are security concerns and fears of misuse of the facility to smuggle contraband goods into India’s sensitive border regions.
Commenting on trade and business between Ban-
geopolitically important and the same place can be geopolitical unimportant.Only humans make the difference. The second important thing we must understand is that the world is moving from unipolarity to multipolarity and there is no way to stop that multipolar world from emerging. Two factors contributed to this transformation from unipolarity multipolarity - decolonization and globalization.
PROF. IMTIAZ AHMED Professor of International Relations and Director, Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka.
gladesh and India, Bangladesh foreign minister AK Abdul Momen, during his recent visit to India, said that trade is “ becoming a one-sided trade, so we need to balance it, and we need India to give us more flexibility because India has put anti-dumping [duty] on our jute goods... This duty should be lifted since Bangladeshi exports are not a threat to domestic after producers.
According to Dr Yasmin, in the present age of capitalism, a visible and countable profit for both parties must exist to determine growth in bilateral trade. Presently India has a comparative advantage for most goods exported to Bangladesh while the latter has it for only some goods. India’s exports to Bangladesh amounted to USD14.09 billion in 2021, while Dhaka’s exports to Delhi were valued at USD 2 billion. Both countries must look for new avenues for business and trade, not just in goods but in the services sector, with a special focus on facilitating more private investment into Bangladesh.
THE CHINA SHADOW
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Bangladesh is an enigma. China had committed to investing USD 40 Billion in Bangladesh when the MoU was signed in 2016, knowing India would not be a part of the BRI. This is the second largest commitment in South Asia after Pakistan (USD 62 Billion). Without connectivity through India, the project is a lame duck since the initiative’s objectives are based on seamless connectivity.
The continuation of Xi Jinping in power for the third term will see the renewed impetus to his brainchild, the BRI. China and Bangladesh have gone too far ahead to let the ambitious BRI projects fail, irrespective of what is happening in neighbouring Sri Lanka, where Chinese exposure is much smaller; for President Xi Jinping, a failure would be politically disastrous. On the other hand, post the pandemic, and a desperate global economic situation, Bangladesh is financially vulnerable, dependent upon Chinese investments and Indian and American goodwill. So far, Bangladesh has avoided the so-called ‘China Debt Trap.’
Tensions between India and China have remained high despite some progress on the northern Himalayan frontiers, where both sides have claimed to be de-escalating and lowering troop levels. This has a spillover effect on any trade connectivity that China and Bangla-
desh may contemplate through Indian territory.
China and Bangladesh look at the strategic Chumbi Valley, a narrow Tibetan enclave into the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ or the Siliguri Corridor joining mainland India to its seven eastern states, as a potential conduit for their overland trade. Under existing circumstances, India is unlikely to concur with any such proposal.
THE WAY AHEAD
While India may continue to deny transit facilities to Bangladesh for its regional land trade, there are other ways it can improve Bangladesh’s external trade. As per media reports, discussions on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) are also underway. The significance of the CEPA with India is that Bangladesh does not have a trade pact with any country, despite China and Japan pressing them. This regional economic integration is a strong incentive for Bangladesh (especially the robust anti-India lobby within its polity) to maintain good relations with India.
While Bangladesh has been showing remarkable growth figures in its GDP, year to year, its future must look beyond its current dependence upon garment manufacturing. The future generation of Bangladeshis aspires to the sunrise fields of high technology, where India has much to offer, with the added advantages of proximity, lower living cost and cultural similarities. The youth, especially, are excited by India’s flourishing start-up ecosystem and wish to collaborate with Indian start-ups. Ambassador Veena Sikri, former high commissioner of India in Bangladesh, suggests that India and Bangladesh must strengthen cooperation on technology, such as collaborating on Bangladesh’s dream project, Digital Bangladesh. She also encourages greater cooperation in the Power Sector.
Dr. Yasmin suggests collaborating to increase connectivity and trade. In the age of climate change and demanding energy & environmental standards, Dr. Yasmin proposes to work towards securing the future, which will primarily include climate & water security. Further, India and Bangladesh, as a subregion, has the potential to become global garment production hubs. To this effect and as an incentive to connect the younger generations from both countries who are into fashion technology and design, the countries must collaborate
Both countries should have interest not only in the India-Bangladesh bilateral, but must also think in terms of ‘IndiaBangladesh Regional’ and ‘India-Bangladesh Sub-regional.’ Then there is also the security situation between India and Bangladesh and economic / trade relations. However, overall it is the connectivity that is particularly important for spurring growth of both the countries.
AMB. PROF. VEENA SIKRI
is the Founder and Convener of SWAN (South Asia Women’s Network). She served as India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh from December 2003 to November 2006.
A STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT IN THE EAST?
The so-called Russia-China axis is transforming in its shape and dimensions post the Ukraine war.
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RESEARCH TEAM
It may be recalled that as President Vladimir Putin geared up for his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, he assiduously tried to win allies that would be useful once the uproar over his military adventure spilled into the international fora. On the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February, much was made of the “no limits” strategic partnership between Russia and China. Both powers had been under pressure from the West and appeared as ‘natural allies’ against a common threat.
Now that Ukraine has become a sad fact of life, and fighting continues with destruction and death on both sides, the situation seems to have changed dramatically. Russia no longer seems to be on the winning side, with the surprisingly stubborn Ukrainians going into the offensive.
Clearly, Western sanctions on Russia have seriously impacted the Russian economy, and Moscow has become more dependent on Beijing financially than ever before. So, President Putin does not have the same leverage with China that he had before. The Chinese, too, have been witnessing an economic downturn with its critics, internal and external, blaming President Xi’s unrelenting “Zero Covid” lockdowns.
To be fair, it has been quite evident from the beginning of the war that China was not entirely comfortable with Russia’s blatant invasion of a sovereign nation defying near-unanimous international calls for a negotiated settlement with Ukraine.
The recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit
Today China, is more than just a strategic partner for Russia as it is the only significant global power that continues to support the Russians. Some would call it a comedown for the Kremlin, having been downgraded to the status of a ‘junior partner.’
in Uzbekistan was closely watched to detect the trajectory of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership under the shadow of a war that seems to be reaching nowhere.
WHY DOES RUSSIA NEED CHINA?
Today, China is more than just a strategic partner for Russia as it is the only significant global power that continues to support the Russians. Some would call it a comedown for the Kremlin, having been downgraded to the status of a ‘junior partner.’
Despite denials from Moscow, international sanctions have taken their toll on the Russian economy, severely reducing Russian access to the international market. The number of countries willing to take in Russian exports defying Western sanctions has fallen drastically. This is where the Chinese market has come into the picture to rescue the Russian market from complete collapse. Chinese imports from Russia have risen by 80 per cent in May this year from the same time the previous year. The major imports in this regard have been oil and natural resources, which Russia has plenty to offer. In return, the Russian market is swamped with Chinese goods as no international competition exists.
Under prevailing conditions, Russian dependence upon
China is growing with every passing day. China has exploited the vacuum created by the Russian isolation by replacing the latter in many regions where earlier Russia was the main trading partner. The only post-Soviet country where Russian influence remains strong is Belarus.
STUDYING THE UKRAINE WAR
The Chinese have closely analysed the war from a strategic, as well as a military perspective. Aspiring to unite Taiwan by force, if need be, Ukraine is an ideal test bed for Beijing to wargame its theories on how to keep the U.S. and its allies out of any Chinese military move into Taiwan. The most obvious question that must be troubling the Chinese is how a militarily and economically third-rate nation can humble a major power like Russia. The geography, demographics and comparative military balance just do not match, yet the ground situation tells a different story.
Taiwan is a much harder nut to crack; surrounded by a formidable ‘defensive ditch’, manned by a nation of inspired people who have been expecting (and preparing for) an invasion since their inception, and a rugged mountainous terrain just off the landing beaches which will have to be wrested from the defender inch by bloody inch! Russia has had a launching pad into Ukraine since 2014, having de facto control over Donetsk and Luhansk.
As regards the biggest intangible, which is the fighting spirit of a nation, Ukraine has demonstrated this in ample measure. Will their stoic defence inspire the Taiwanese, and will they fight equally hard and long? These are questions that only time can tell. Ukraine has demonstrated that even if the Western allies demur from putting boots on the ground to save a neighbour, they can open their purses rather generously and pour in the best weaponry that money can buy to fight a proxy war.
All these aspects will need to be factored into any grandiose plan that surely rests in locked cupboards of the PLA in preparation for the ‘reunification.’
THE INDIAN VIEW
Mr Narendra Modi’s statement that “This is not the time for war”, during an interaction with Mr Putin during the SCO summit went viral. This was picked up globally as a slight yet definite change in the Indian stance that so far had doggedly refrained from making any criticism of the Kremlin. However, the shift in the Indian perspective got stronger as the war was prolonged. India voted against the Russian proposal to deny Ukraine’s President the opportunity to address the UN Security Council. This is not surprising as, thanks to this unnecessary war, India has been facing unprecedentedly high inflationary pressures, and its post-COVID recovery is being seriously stymied.
The SCO Summit turned out to be a damp squib. Its conduct was further sullied by the spike in the border skirmishes between two of its members -Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. No significant developments emerged from the summit.
However, in the absence of any concrete declarations, it can be assumed that serious deliberations must have taken place behind locked doors to convince Mr Putin of the futility of continuing with the war.
To astute observers, a subtle realignment between Russia and China is discernible. However, where this realignment will eventually lead to remains to be seen.
Assessment
CHINA’S LONG MARCH TO HISTORIC GLORY
China considers linking the ‘East’ Sea and the ‘West’ sea under its maritime domination as the first step towards global primacy.
WDr Patrick Mendis is a former American diplomat, a military professor in the NATO and Indo-Pacific Commands of the US Department of Defence , and a non-resident senior fellow of the Synergia Foundation.
ith its assertive foreign policy, China has been striving to become a maritime superpower to replace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. It started with Beijing’s historical claims to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands—called Diaoyu Islands by China—in the East China Sea. Then China began claiming the South China Sea and building artificial islands and military bases in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands region.
Similarly, over the last 15 years, China has shrewdly been sending submarines and surveillance ships to the Indian Ocean. In Chinese literature and poetry, this body of water has historically been called the “Western Ocean” or the “West Sea” since the Ming Dynasty (1429–1644).
Notwithstanding that the Chinese government has not deliberately expressed it, Beijing might eventually rename the Indian Ocean the “Western Ocean” to impose its lexicon, as the historic pattern seems to suggest.
With his vision of national rejuvenation, Xi has a clear policy “connectivity” mission in the East, South, and West Sea regions that is interwoven with the thriving civilizational state returning to its old glory. Beijing’s covert strategy towards the CCP’s centennial goal is continuous but gradually
With his vision of national rejuvenation, Xi has a clear policy “connectivity” mission in the East, South, and West Sea regions that is interwoven with the thriving civilizational state returning to its old glory. Beijing’s covert strategy towards the CCP’s centennial goal is continuous but gradually “phased” to advance the critically integral components of the East China Sea, the “reunification” of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and eventually the Indian Ocean.
“phased” to advance the critically integral components of the East China Sea, the “reunification” of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and eventually the Indian Ocean.
THE GRAB OF ‘EAST’ SEA
Beijing started claiming the Tokyo-administered five uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea nearly 50 years ago. Xi intensified China’s claims since Japan purchased the islands from a private owner in 2012. Ever since, Chinese coast guard vessels and military aircrafts have regularly entered the territorial waters of the disputed Senkakus.
For China, the strategically valuable “unsinkable” Taiwan and Senkaku islands would also make a difference in its historical claims and economic relations. All these islands are of significance to China amid emerging Sino—American tensions, especially in a potential military conflict with
Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province. President Xi has repeatedly claimed that “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Beijing has also claimed the portrayal of the dotted U-shaped line engulfing the greater part of the South China Sea as its own. It was originally an “eleven-dashed line” claimed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1946. The People’s Republic of China revised it to a “ninedashed line,” which was used by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to officially declare Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea in 1958.
Since President Xi came into power, China has intensified the artificial island building in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands region. China has now fully militarized at least three of several islands—arming them with “anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems” as well as “laser and jamming equipment and fight er jets” while threatening all nations operating in the South China Sea.
During Xi’s first state visit to Washington in September 2015, Xi claimed that the “islands in the South China Sea since ancient times are Chinese territory” and China has “the right to uphold [its] own territorial sovereignty and lawful, le gitimate maritime rights and interests.”
In July 2020, the Trump administration announced China’s claims and coercions are “completely unlaw ful.” Following Presi dent Donald Trump’s China policy initiative, the Biden administration is sued a detailed report on China’s “Maritime Claims in the South China Sea” in January 2022. It outlined Beijing’s “unlawful” claims that have put China on a “collision course with the Philippines, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian nations.” It also rejected “the geographic and historic bases for its vast, divisive map” of the dashed lines.
Lanka. The ancient legacy has now been elevated to a new height with President Xi’s “China Dream” and his means of achieving it through BRI.
For China, the rejuvenation of ancient culture and the renaming of the Indian Ocean into the “Western Ocean” would hardly be completed without Sri Lanka. In 2015, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi branded Sri Lanka as a “dazzling pearl on the Maritime Silk Road” in the southern strategy of BRI, reviving the Ming legacy of maritime superiority. The northern strategy associated with the cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty has become the Terrestrial Belt that expanded throughout Southeast and Central Asia to Europe. The Belt is connected to the Indian Ocean by the economic corridors of oil and gas pipelines in Pakistan and Myanmar. The “unsinkable” Sri Lanka is central to connecting these peripheral land-based economic corridors to China while encircling India.
The Ming history of the “Western Ocean” has ostensibly been veiled but discreetly revived when President Xi inaugurated the China-backed $14 billion Colombo Port City during his historic visit to Sri Lanka in September 2014. The Chinese company that invested $1.4 billion has been given 43 per cent of the 269-hectare (665 acres) of land reclaimed from the Indian Ocean on a 99-year lease. It is noteworthy to disclose that a Chinese submarine and a warship was not docked at the Sri Lankan government-controlled port facility in the Colombo Harbor in October 2014; instead, China purposefully chose to berth them at the Colombo South Container Terminal, a facility controlled by a Chinese developer.
The entire episode has a subtle historical precedent with the Ming-Kotte war of 1411. In his third voyage, when Admiral Zheng He’s massive citylike flotilla arrived on the island, the unexpected conflict led to the capture of the defeated King Alakeshvara and the taking of him, his family, and the inner circle back to the Imperial Ming Court in Nanjing as “prisoners.”Likewise, the fear of Chinese reprisal may have prompted the Rajapaksa administration to welcome the ships; however, the deliberate incident raised geopolitical concerns in India, the United States, and beyond.
THE PASSAGE TO THE “WESTERN OCEAN”
Beijing has similarly launched its most ambitious maritime phase in the historically claimed “Western Ocean.” It is the last frontier of the great rejuvenation for China’s naval strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.
Sri Lanka is pivotal to the master plan of the 2049 centennial goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the completion of its great rejuvenation. Throughout two millennia, the Han, Tang, Ming, and other dynasties have enjoyed a long line of cultural, diplomatic, military, and commercial interactions with Sri
THE LAST FRONTIER WITH YUAN WANG 5
In its annual report to Congress in 2021, the United States Department of Defense stated that China was “pursuing additional military facilities to support naval, air, ground, cyber, and space power projection” and had “likely considered a number of countries as locations” for People’s Liberation Army facilities, including Sri Lanka.
With the signing of the joint communiqué for closer maritime security and defence cooperation in 2013,
Sri Lanka has elevated its bilateral “strategic partnership” with Beijing to enhance China’s involvement in the island’s infrastructure projects. When Yuan Wang 5 docked at the Chinese-built port at Hambantota, Sri Lanka also allowed the Chinese-built Pakistani warship to berth at Colombo Port. New Delhi quietly viewed the coincidence of a Chinese surveillance ship and a Pakistani warship permitted in Sri Lanka as double diplomatic and military strikes on India.
In August 2022, both the United States and India asked the Sri Lankan government that it not allow the Yuan Wang 5 ship to dock in Sri Lanka. With its struggle to pay the mounting debts to China, the Colombo ad-
ministration conceded to Beijing’s pressure and allowed the “spy ship” to berth at the China-built Hambantota Port, which is similar to the Colombo Port City and has had a 99-year lease to a Chinese company since 2017.
THE WARFARE OF THE MINDS
In his article in August 2022, the Chinese ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong wrote about the “great history of the island” and highlighted the history of aggression from its “northern neighbour 17 times” and “colonization by the west for 450 years.”
The Yuan Wang 5 crisis sent a chilling message to New Delhi at the time of a long-standing military standoff between India and China along their shared Himalayan border that has claimed many lives on both sides. Since Sri Lanka defaulted on international debts earlier this year, India has provided $4 billion in credit lines to ameliorate the island’s food, fuel, and medicine shortages. With the multi-billion dollars invested in the Chinese projects in Sri Lanka, China has increasingly larger stakes on the island for reaching its long-march strategic goal by 2049.
Overall, China’s expansion has been successfully phased and strategically gradual from the East and South China Seas to the Indian Ocean. As the military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu (545–470 BC) counselled in his Art of War, Beijing has thus far effectively used its ancient wisdom that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Suppose a triumphant China dominates the Indian Ocean. In that case, Beijing might then rename it the Western Ocean for posterity to seal the success of its “great rejuvenation” and restore historical glory.
FAKE NEWS: MAKING NO DISTINCTION!
When even the redoubtable Xi Jinping can be ‘toppled’ by malicious peddlers of fake news, it is time to sit up and take notice.
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Fake news can generate its own momentum, spinning around the globe at the speed of light, convincing many and leaving a trail of panicked confusion in its wake. This was amply demonstrated recently when social media was set ablaze by news of a ‘coup’ in China with President Xi Jinping, at the cusp of his historic third term, under ‘arrest’. While the Chinese public must have been terrified at the prospect of uncertainty and violence marring their peaceful existence, many of China’s vast legion of enemies were sorely disappointed when the news turned out to be fake!
HASHTAG STRESS!
The #ChinaCoup story first started trending on Twitter as a hashtag. This quickly led to sharing funny memes and messages against President Jinping. It was even reported that the Chinese Army General Li Qiaoming had taken over as the new president! The story evolved over three stages-beginning in domestic circles before being translated into English by influencers opposed to the Chinese government. Unsurprisingly, India’s large user base on Twitter soon made the story viral! Social media later reported that as an aftermath of #ChinaCoup, 60 per cent of domestic flights in China were grounded! This, too, could have been fake news as there was no independent confirmation and the Chinese government refrained from giving further credence by issuing an official statement.
The ability of an unsubstantiated rumour to fool the
Fake news must be countered instantly by developing counter-narratives and disseminated ideally through the same channel through which it originated. The protagonist of such news always remains dubious.
world (at least momentarily) demonstrates the power of social media. In the mass of information available on the net, an average surfer may find it difficult to separate the chaff from the wheat. Social media giant Twitter has been claiming that it is robustly fighting fake news. It claims to have suspended over 20,000 pro-Beijing accounts and an additional 150,000 handles that helped further spread the pro-Chinese government messages. Predictably, Chinese spokespersons condemned Twitter’s action and denied official patronage of such accounts. In fact, it demanded Twitter come down heavily on accounts smearing Chinese reputation on social media. Twitter has taken similar action in Russia by suspending over 1000 accounts linked to a Russian media website engaging in state-backed political propaganda. Turkey, too, was under a cloud, with some 7000 accounts being dealt with as fake/compromised for ``cheerleading’’ the ruling party.
China has a complex relationship with mega social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube; all are blocked in China but are used by the Chinese government / Communist party to spread their narrative. Fergus Hanson, Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, claims that social media is extensively used by the Chinese Communist Party to “sow
propaganda and disinformation internationally.”
SCAMS GALORE!
Social media is called, rather justifiably, ‘a gold mine for scammers;’ reportedly, one in four persons who have lost money in a cyber fraud did so on social media. The scams are not restricted to money alone. Twitter accounts have a minefield of old photos, videos, tweets, and personal messages linked to your account. Your account also links to other friends and family who could fall victim to these frauds.Crypto-related scams have come about as the topmost twitter scam. Scammers steal people’s crypto or use crypto as an allure to get people to part with their sensitive data. A close second to crypto-related scams are phishing scams which steal your Twitter username and password. This enables the fraudster to post inappropriate Tweets under your name, message friends and family posing as you, gain access to your messages, and delete pictures, videos, or even your Twitter account itself!
Social media accounts of celebrities and public figures are prime targets for hackers, including those of Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Elon Musk, and Kim Kardashian. Scammers can host fake crypto and NFT giveaways and raffles after gaining control over a famous personality’s account.The data breach has assumed significant proportions. In July, the data of over 5.4 million Twitter users were put up for sale on an underground internet forum for $30,000. The data contained email addresses and phone numbers irrespective of whether they had configured their privacy settings to hide this information. Twitter has since then taken care to manage this data breach, but a Twitter account makes you vulnerable to hackers and scammers will use leaked data to conduct wide-scale scam campaigns.
THE “BOTS” ANGLE
A new facilitator of misinformation has appeared in the form of bots which are automated systems that can share information online. A research study found that bots seem to have an equal impact on propagating true and false news, so they might not be skewing the headlines entirely.
New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge by a data scientist tried to uncover the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The lead researcher Soroush Vosoughi found that a great deal of the material on social media regarding the incident was false and even implicated totally innocent persons. Vosoughi found this tantalising and researched deeper into the subject of fake news on Twitter that can significantly impact people’s lives. The researchers uncovered 12 years of data from Twitter since 2006 which was then correlated with factual news from six independent fact-checking organisations—websites like PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org. The comparison threw up alarming facts; the truth rarely reached more than 1000 Twitter users, while false news stories reached well over 10,000 people. The spread of false news was most vicious in the case of political matters. However, bots
were not primarily responsible for the flare-up of false news. False news spread at an alarming rate even when bots were eliminated from social media shares. By default, this left only human beings responsible for the proliferation of fake news. This led to the assumption that spreaders of fake news had cultivated more followers, but this also led to a dead end. These accounts had fewer followers, not more.
The tweets themselves turned up as the deciding factor. Tweets containing false information were apparently more novel as they contained new information which a Twitter user hadn’t read before. This naturally meant they evoked greater response and stronger emotion. “If something sounds crazy stupid, you wouldn’t think it would get that much traction,” says Alex Kasprak, a fact-checking journalist at Snopes in Pasadena, California. “But those are the ones that go massively viral.” There is clearly a viral trend which supports untruths, as research reveals that Tweets containing falsehoods reach 1500 people on Twitter six times faster than truthful tweets.
COMBATING FAKE NEWS
Science, which has enabled the rapid spread of fake news, must now be harnessed to eliminate its scrouge. At the receiving end of maximum criticism for being the harbinger of fake news, Twitter has taken several steps to stop this malaise. Now users in the U.S., South Korea, and Australia will have the option to flag a Tweet as ’It’s misleading’ after clicking on Report Tweet.” The company expects that this experiment will “identify trends’’ that can help to scale and speed up its broader anti- misinformation work. There is clearly a future for algorithms to flag fake news in social media.
Writing in the Indian Express, Mr Tobby Simon, President of Synergia Foundation, says, “Fake news must be countered instantly by developing counter-narratives and disseminated ideally through the same channel through which it originated. The protagonist of such news always remains dubious. Fake news has both a human and technical side, and so does any potential solution. Solutions to misinformation need to involve the users themselves.”
Assessment
Social media platforms must police their content in imaginative ways. Twitter’s attempt at introducing a mechanism for users to flag such posts is an example which should be given wide traction.
We are potentially witnessing a trend of policing content which lies contrary to the overall momentum for free speech. Under the garb of killing fake news, platforms (and governments) should not be allowed carte blanche to control the dissemination of news and opinions on social media. An independent regulatory body must be created, nationally and internationally, to enable public participation in such an overwatch mechanism.
SILICON PHOTONICS: THE NEXT TECH REVOLUTION?
The photonics industry has the potential to drive technology in the post-law Moore’s era, making silicon photonics a critical technology.
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The world’s thirst for data is rising exponentially. This is being driven by applications ranging from social networks and streaming video to genomics-driven medicine and the proliferation of linked devices under the “Internet of Things.”
The expansion of mobile computing is particularly pronounced with the UN’s telecommunications agency findings that mobile phone subscribers had surpassed the total number of people on Earth by 2013. Photonic Integrated Circuits, better known as PICs, could soon replace electronic integrated circuits (ICs) as the favoured technology for a wide range of applications as ICs reach the limit of their integration capacity.
A PIC is a chip containing photonic components which work with light; an integrated circuit contains electronic components to form a functional circuit, like those embedded inside your smartphone, computer, and other electronic devices. In an electronic chip, electron flux travels through resistors, transistors, capacitors and inductors. In contrast, photons travel through optical components like polarizers, phase shifters, and waveguides, which are analogous to resistors or electrical wires.
THE FUTURE
People will continue to discover new methods to use data to connect, entertain, inform, and assist due to the
Silicon Photonics technology uses optical signals via single-mode optical fibres that have the built-in capability to use multiple light colours to travel in the same optical fibre. This, in turn, boosts the overall data capacity. Besides apparent advantages like expanded storage and bandwidth per fibre, silicon photonics technology holds precedence over existing technology.
abundance of options afforded by these technologies and services and anything that comes after them. However, this increasing data utilization has a price. Google stated in 2009 that a single Internet search uses approximately one kJ of energy. Data rates are beginning to outpace the capacity of traditional interconnect technology, which presents another difficulty for our data-intensive environment. For instance, the latest high-definition televisions’ exceptional pixel density and fast frame rates make standard copper HDMI cables almost useless in transmitting the required data quality.
Silicon Photonics technology uses optical signals via single-mode optical fibres that have the built-in capability to use multiple light colours to travel in the same optical fibre. This, in turn, boosts the overall data capacity. Besides apparent advantages like expanded storage and bandwidth per fibre, silicon photonics technology holds precedence over existing technology.
Mostly, the manufacturing process utilizes conventional silicon microelectronics foundry processes, i.e., volume pro-
duction can be done at a much lower cost. In addition, a hardware-verified process design kit enables the entire chip design flow using tools of the highest industry standard.
WIDE APPLICATIONS
Delivering free-space emissions to sense or manipulate external objects is a recent extension of the uses of silicon photonics. The silicon optical phased array is the most known example, which can direct a free-space beam to produce a chip-scale solid-state LiDAR (Laser Detection and Ranging). Other examples include optogenetic probes, quantum photonics, imaging systems, and free-space optical communication. Using silicon photonics, an optical system is miniatured into a photonic chip with numerous functional waveguiding components, unlike the traditional optical system, which consists of bulk optics.
MARKET POTENTIAL
According to a recent Fortune Business Insights report, the Silicon Photonics market is expected to show significant growth. This is due to its ability to produce at a lower cost using standard semiconductor fabrication techniques. According to the third edition of a study on Photonics conducted by the European Union, the global photonics market is predicted to cross US$900 Bn in 2024 from around US$600 Bn in 2018. North America is projected to be the leader in the Silicon Photonics market owing to the early adoption of technological advancements, government support, and a greater demand for higher data transfer rates. The market is further expected to propel the growth of the silicon photonics market during 2019-2026.
MORE THAN MOORE’S LAW
On-chip optical transceivers are suitable substitutes for power-hungry electronic transceiver circuits for low-energy budget interconnections. These will also enhance the data movement among the processors, memory, and peripheral hardware, indicating clearly that the advancement in the technologies required to make optoelectronic chips a workable reality is already here.
The photonic core is excellent at drastically enhancing computing performance by utilizing the benefits of light in linear matrix calculations. At the same time, electronic circuits are required to carry out non-linear operations like driver circuits, arithmetic and logic, data storage, and activation function. “We believe that silicon-based optoelectronics is a promising and comprehensive platform for general-purpose matrix computation in the post-Moore’s law era,” claimed Pengfei Xu and Zhiping Zhou, two academics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, showcasing the advancements made by China in this emerging field.
Silicon photonics could trigger the birth of “disaggregated” data centres built on optical interconnects partly enabled by it. Such architectures could provide more power and efficiency for highperformance computing and data communications. With its lightning-fast data transport between and within microchips, silicon photonics will play a key role in determining how quickly computers will advance in the future and whether Moore’s law will persist.
Assessment
LEARNING FROM THE NEIGHBOURS
As India prepares to roll out a comprehensive ‘Digital India Act,’ it would be best advised to study its implications as experienced in other countries.
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India considers technology the biggest enabler to expanding the economy to the targeted $ 5 trillion mark. By 2026, it is hoped that the technology-driven industry will comprise 25 per cent of the GDP. However, India needs robust and effective regulations to govern the digital space to achieve these ambitious targets. The Indian government is on the threshold of introducing new rules to regulate the expanding digital ecosphere in the country.
Mr Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Government of India, told the media last month that it was proposed to replace the IT Act with a Digital India Act, which will comprise a modern framework of rules and laws acting as catalysts for innovation and protecting citizens’ rights.
As per UNCTAD data, while 156 countries (80 per cent of UN members) have enacted legislation to regulate the digital space, it is not evenly spread across the globe. Expectantly, Europe leads the adoption rate (a whopping 91 per cent), with Africa at the bottom (a dismal 72 per cent).
A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD?
The digital frontier opens new vistas for individuals to venture into; information is power, and billions on this planet can be empowered to express their views through the internet. In the past, the freedom to express was restricted to those possessing wealth and a place on the social ladder. While this harsh fact remains equally valid even today, a
After over a decade of status quo, India is once again on the threshold of hammering out comprehensive information technology and data protection laws. All stakeholders should welcome this as it will assist in realising the country’s true potential as one of the most important data-centric economies in the world.
common citizen armed with a cheap smartphone and affordable data plan has far greater access to information and platforms to express his/ her opinion than our predecessors.
This fact is acknowledged (and perhaps feared) by authoritarian regimes. As per Amnesty International, states are increasingly trying to build ‘firewalls’ around digital communications. This has been witnessed in Egypt, Sudan and Zimbabwe, where the government shut down the internet in response to mass protests.
China has a sophisticated system in place to police its cyberspace. Governments are purchasing complex software to read private emails and messages, especially of activists and journalists, with the Israeli Pegasus being the most notorious. In fact, in 2014, Amenity International and a coalition of human rights and technology organisations, came together to create ‘Detekt’, which enabled the scanning of devices to detect surreptitiously embedded surveillance apps.
To date, Indian experience with digital protection legislation has been rather shaky. A case in point is Section 66A
of the Information Act of 2000, which made sending ‘offensive information using a computer or any other electronic device’ a punishable offence.
The section also made it a crime to send information that was believed to be false. Three-year imprisonment was prescribed for social media messages that caused “annoyance” or was found “grossly offensive.”
Even emails that caused “annoyance, inconvenience or to deceive or mislead” were punishable under Section 66A. Unsurprisingly, in 2015, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India struck down Section 66 A of the IT Act 2000 in its entirety, ruling that it violated Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution. Shockingly, some state governments continue to use provisions of Section 66A to prosecute individuals despite a recent judgement by the Apex court on an application filed by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) asking them to refrain from such illegal activities.
Even the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill introduced in draft form in 2019 has been shelved for the time being after the Parliamentary Joint Committee recommended a staggering 81 amendments in 99 sections.
THE BANGLADESH STORY
Bangladesh is an interesting case study to analyse the implications of digital regulations since it has had such a law in place for more than two years.
In 2021, a well-known social activist Mustaq Ahmed died in a jail in Bangladesh while in detention for social media posts allegedly critical of the government. Later in the year, Shafiqu Islam Kajol faced charges for circulating ‘objectionable’ details about political leaders. Most surprising, a poor peasant who did not even possess a smartphone landed in jail for posting fake news on Facebook! Even minors have not escaped prosecution for “illegal” social media posts and have been confined in juvenile correctional centres.
All these people share one attribute- they were all facing charges under the Digital Security Act (DSA) of 2018. The Bangladesh Editor’s Council demanded the scrapping of the most controversial sections of the law in 2020, calling the DSA, “ a nightmare reality for the mass media.” But then, the COVID pandemic overtook all other events and matters faded into the background.
The DSA was the successor to the ICT Act, a much-maligned law allegedly allowing for wide-ranging suppression of dissent due to vague or absent definitions of online activities that could be labelled criminal in the eyes of the law.
However, its progeny has turned out to be the worst oppressor, with Section 21 being the most fearful. The section’s first clause states, “If any person, by means of the digital medium, makes or instigates to make any propaganda or campaign against the liberation war of Bangladesh, spirit of the liberation war, father of the na-
tion, the national anthem or national flag, then such act of the person shall be an offence.” However, the phrases like “spirit of liberation war” have been deliberately left ambiguous, giving the law enforcement agencies the leverage to use it at will and on the bidding of their political masters.
Under the Act, anyone can be arrested, premises searched and material seized on the mere suspicion of a ‘crime’ committed on social media. It also gives the state the power to remove/ block information on the internet. Under fourteen provisions of the law, there is no bail permitting suspects to be kept in detention indefinitely by delaying their legal process on one pretext or another.
An unusual provision permits even unrelated persons, who are not aggrieved parties, to file cases under the DSA if the plaintiff ‘feels that someone else has been defamed or abused!”
Unsurprisingly, when the DSA was unveiled in 2018, the then-director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, Brad Adm, remarked, “The new Digital Security Act is a tool ripe for abuse and a clear violation of the country’s obligations under international law to protect free speech.”
CHOICES FOR INDIA
It was encouraging that when Mr Chandrasekha was announcing the proposed Digital India Act, he assured the press and citizens that their concerns would be taken into account. Mr Chandrasekhar said, “We will have new rules, regulations, and laws rolled out in the next 3-4 months, and this will be done with consideration to all the involved stakeholders and countries. Our focus is to build good legislation, rules and framework and an enabling ecosystem to ensure India’s success in the coming decade.”
The fact that India’s apex court intervened to set aside the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act of 2000 in 2015 added to Indian democratic values. It has also strengthened the global view that in India’s thriving democracy, a vigilant judiciary would step in whenever the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution are jeopardised.
After over a decade of status quo, India is once again on the threshold of hammering out comprehensive information technology and data protection laws. All stakeholders should welcome this as it will assist in realising the country’s true potential as one of the most important data-centric economies in the world.
The Bill should be scrutinised and debated in great detail before being finally put up for the legislature’s approval. When so much time has already been lost in promulgating such an important legislature, further delay of a few months can be condoned, especially if other countries’ experiences with similar laws are studied and best practices adopted to the Indian milieu.
SNAGS TO SOLUTIONS
With the era of technology at flank speed, AI is poised to permeate into decision-making at the political level
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With the increasing blurring of boundaries between human and machine sentience, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is inveigling its way into almost every aspect of human activity.
Humans must utilize AI for the greater good, maintaining a reasonable balance between simple and complex tasks where AI can work best with minimal human intervention. It would be prudent to form rules on AI as we develop a theoretical taxonomy of decisions and their settings. At every stage we must query their variations and parallels that would reflect on our societal norms.
HUMAN VS ALGORITHMIC DECISION MAKING
Big data enables a much higher level of intelligence and knowledge that can produce previously impractical insights. However, if AI is used both in authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies, will the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy generated be identical or will there be disparities?
In a study by Carnegie Mellon researchers, the decision-making process differed, with the decision output being the same for all three experimental situations. However, the ‘real legitimacy’—as in the actual quality of policies and their outcomes—and ‘perceived legitimacy’ appear to be at odds with the current debate over data-driven or algorithmic policymaking. As a result, they lead to divergent judgments of the validity of the output given.
One school of thought is that AI will likely reduce the influence of democratically elected institutions, undermining a fundamental tenet of representative democracies if some (Hybrid Decision Making) or all (Automated Decision Mak-
However, using automated decision-making systems as the only decision-making process does not appear to improve citizens’ evaluations of the decision-making process or results.
ing) are transferred to algorithms.
No doubt, AI has a positive impact too. Beyond decision-making, data-driven applications can assist in a much more extensive range of tasks, such as foresight, agenda framing, and policy evaluation, which can help to solve input legitimacy gaps. For instance, several current apps use data from opinion polls and public conversations to forecast situations that will need political action.
With enormous information available today, politicians and their teams are overloaded with data and feedback. AI-powered tools such as machine learning can enhance the accuracy of decision-making processes compared to traditional ones.
With the power of AI, leaders could analyse data efficiently and quickly, provide in-depth analysis of significant issues that affect society and appropriately design policies to mitigate further escalation of issues.
However, using automated decision-making systems as the only decision-making process does not appear to improve citizens’ evaluations of the decision-making process or results. But, when such systems function under the supervision of democratically elected institutions (as in the hybrid situation), they are regarded as being just as legal as the current policy making procedure. This shows that involving humans in the process before introducing algorithmic decision-making is a critical prerequisite.
LEGAL HURDLES AHEAD
AI usage trends are likely to follow the so-called “Collingridge Dilemma”, which states that two competing concerns accompany every new technology. First, in the early technological state, rules are difficult to frame because it is difficult to predict the consequences of the innovation. Second, if we delay regulations until we get a measure of the new technology, it has advanced so much and become so widely used that it is difficult to bring it within the framework of rules.
Let us not face such a situation in the case of AI. The co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, well-known for popularising the idea of friendly artificial intelligence, Eliezer Yudkowsky, once said that the most significant risk to AI is that people assume they understand it too early.
The conflict between value-based and instrumental assessments of service and quality cuts to the core of public decision-making discussion. Proponents of the expanded use of AI in government operations contend that it may enhance public services by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
Researchers, decision-makers, and citizens have expressed concerns about potential adverse effects for citizens when AI is used in decision making without adequate safeguards in place for accountability, impartiality, and traceability.
According to this theory, AI based public decision-making could have several unfavourable effects, such as an increase in the digitisation gap and the introduction of systematic bias. Therefore, delivering practical benefits while avoiding issues that negatively impact public trust in government is the ultimate challenge for AI applications in decision-making.
The widely held idea in Silicon Valley that the government shouldn’t interfere with the development of new technologies is directly contradicted by other laws, such as the Data4 Policy and the proposed artificial intelligence (AI) rule of the European Union.
In the United States, legislation like Assembly Bill 13 (under debate in California) and Senate Bill 6280 (enacted in Washington State in 2020) demand that agencies or suppliers evaluate the fairness and accuracy of algorithms before allowing public agencies to use them.
Similar evaluations of the precision of high-risk AI system providers’ systems are required by the Artificial Intelligence Act, which the European Commission proposed in April. The EU General Data Protection Regulation promises EU citizens a universal “right to explanation” when they are affected by automated decision-making systems.
The approach establishes a complicated regulatory framework that de-regulates less hazardous applications of AI while carefully regulating high-risk ones. Policymakers can address the data gaps that obstruct efficient and data-driven decision-making by leveraging AI technologies.
Assessment
We must provide political decision-makers with the correct knowledge so they can utilize it to create the most comprehensive and inclusive sets of rules for a better functioning world. However, using AI in political decision-making must strike a precise balance between the straightforward and more challenging tasks that the AI will have to complete, coupled with minimal human intervention.
It is imperative to have laws and rules about automation to build a theoretical taxonomy of decisions and their surroundings and question how their variations and parallels should be reflected in a society’s norms.
The race for AI supremacy in politics is just beginning. We must have more dialogue on data privacy and ethical codes and develop a culture of techno-democratic awareness among citizens to hold everybody accountable as consumers of political information.
LEARNING FROM NATURE
Data storage devices are changing every few years, rendering legacy systems outdated; this must change.
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Finding places and methods for storing data effectively and affordably in a world where it is abundant gets more complex every day. Archiving information in DNA molecules is one of the most novel solutions, and it may also be the best.
Data written to reels of magnetic tape using the standard long-term cold storage technique dates to the 1950s. In contrast, DNA storage may be more affordable, energy-efficient, and long-lasting. Studies have shown that correctly encapsulated DNA can withstand changes in temperature for decades and should live even longer in the controlled environment of a data centre. DNA does not require upkeep, and copies of the files it contains can be made quickly and cheaply. Even better, DNA can store incredible data in a very tiny volume. Consider this: by 2025, humans will produce 33 zettabytes of data, or 3.3 followed by 22 zeros. Thanks to DNA storage, all that data can fit comfortably inside a pingpong ball.
Technology exists for storing DNA, but scientists must overcome specific challenging technological barriers to make it practical. Scientists have created many vital techniques that make molecular storage possible. The Adaptive DNA Storage Codex (ADS Codex) converts data files from the four-letter code biology known to the binary language of zeros and ones that computers comprehend.
Because DNA’s density and endurance are greater than those of current silicon-based storage media, it has attracted much interest as a digital information storage medium. For instance, DNA has at least 1000 times the density of the smallest solid-state hard drive and 300 times the durability of the most stable magnetic tapes. The four-letter nucleotide code of DNA creates an appropriate coding space that
DNA storage may be more affordable, energy-efficient, and long-lasting. Studies have shown that correctly encapsulated DNA can withstand changes in temperature for decades and should live even longer in the controlled environment of a data centre. DNA does not require upkeep, and copies of the files it contains can be made quickly and cheaply. Even better, DNA can store incredible data in a very tiny volume.
may be used to encode any letter, digit, or other characters, like the binary digital code used by computers and other electronic devices.
MOLECULAR CODE TO BINARY CODE
DNA synthesis is a relatively well-known technology that has been extensively applied in the fields of medicine, pharmacology, and the production of biofuels, to name a few. The method arranges the bases into different configurations, denoted by particular A, C, G, and T sequences. The molecule is made up of these bases wrapping in a double helix pattern around one another. These letters are arranged into series to establish a code that instructs an organism on how to form. The genome—the detailed blueprint of your body—is made up of all of the DNA molecules.
Researchers have discovered that they can define or write lengthy sequences of the letters A, C, G, and T in DNA molecules and then read those sequences back. The following conceptual step was translating a binary computer file into a molecule. Although the approach has been successfully tested, it currently takes considerable time to read and write DNA-encoded information. It takes roughly
one second to add one nucleotide to DNA. At this rate, writing an archive file could take decades, but research produces quicker techniques, such as massively parallel processes that correspond to many molecules simultaneously.
However, writing to molecular storage with DNA synthesis has far higher error rates than conventional digital systems. These problems are more difficult to fix because they come from a different source than they do in the digital age.
Binary mistakes happen when zero turns into a one or vice versa on a digital hard drive. The insertion and deletion mistakes in DNA cause issues. As an illustration, you might be writing A-C-G-T, but occasionally, when you attempt to write A, nothing happens, and the letter sequence changes to the left, or it types AAA.
DNA files are currently often recovered via PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Each DNA data file includes a sequence that binds to a particular PCR primer. That primer is introduced to the sample to locate and amplify the target sequence to extract a specific file. A disadvantage is the risk of undesired files being extracted due to crosstalk between the primer and off-target DNA sequences. Additionally, the PCR retrieval procedure uses enzymes and consumes most of the pooled DNA.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
Scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University are creating an integrated DNA information storage device. This device will enable highly multiplexed programmable enzymatic DNA synthesis to scale up their method. DNA polymerases copy an existing template strand to create a new strand of DNA. However, the Wyss Institute’s method uses a template-independent DNA polymerase. It electronically regulates its activity to determine which of the four nucleotide letters to add at each stage of DNA strand synthesis. This storage system will produce a highly parallelized synthesis process that can store the constantly increasing amount of digital information in DNA when used at scale.
The Molecular Information Storage (MIST) programme from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) includes ADS Codex as a core component. With a short-term objective of writing one terabyte—a trillion bytes—and retrieving ten terabytes within 24 hours for $1,000, MIST aims to deliver more affordable, more significant, longer-lasting storage to big-data operations in the public and private sectors. With such kinds of issues, standard error correction codes are ineffective. Hence ADS Codex includes error detection codes that verify the data. The software checks to confirm that the codes match before converting the data to binary. If they don’t, the verification process eliminates or adds bases—letters—until it is successful.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology created a new retrieval method as an alternative that includes encasing each DNA file inside a tiny silica particle. Single-stranded DNA “barcodes” that correspond to the file’s contents are used to identify each capsule. The scientists encoded 20 different images into DNA fragments that were roughly 3,000 nucleotides long, or around 100 bytes, to show how this method may be used economically. (They also demonstrated that DNA files up to a gigabyte size could fit inside the capsules.) Each file was given a barcode label that matched a title, such as “cat” or “aeroplane.” When scientists want to extract an image, they take a DNA sample and add primers that match the labels they’re looking for. The primers have fluorescent or magnetic labels that make it simple to extract and recognize any matches from the sample. This enables the removal of the required file while maintaining the integrity of the remaining DNA, which can then be put back into storage. Similar to what is received from a Google picture search, their retrieval process enables Boolean logic phrases like “president 2022 AND China” to produce Xi Jinping.
Assessment
The urgent need for low-cost, vast storage solutions for pre-existing DNA and RNA samples from human genetic sequencing and other areas of genomics exists now, even if it may be some time before DNA is a suitable data storage medium.
There is enormous potential for technologies like DNA reading apparatuses that outperform the greatest DNA sequencers currently available, random access retrieval techniques that scan DNA sequences using innovative molecular mechanisms, and software designed explicitly with DNA storage apparatuses.
DNA data storage will integrate into a larger ecosystem of new computing technology as these technologies advance and are built on the fusion of bioengineering and the semiconductor industry.
THE HUMAN FACE OF POLICY BLUNDERS
Wrong decisions at the highest level have cost nations dearly, with consequences faced by their citizens.
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This is the information age where every citizen is privy to the decisions made by his political masters, enabling stringent questioning and even criticism at every level down to the man on the street. Such openness has, in many democracies, led to the fall of governments. Look at Prime Minister Liz Truss’s poor judgement on her taxation policies to spur economic growth, which saw her exit from 10 Downing Street after only 45 days, a record for the shortest tenure as the Prime Minister of UK!
MINEFIELD OF POLITICAL DECISION MAKING
Political errors have made headlines globally as they often have far-reaching implications. A potent reminder of this is the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a decision for which the Bush administration was put through the wringer! The decision was flawed on many accounts as it resulted in a prolonged conflict, countless lives lost on both sides and resulted in insurgencies that destabilised the entire Middle East. In the end, Iran emerged with greater regional influence and inimical to American interests.
China’s “zero-COVID” policy has severely disturbed supply chains across the world. Driven personally by President Xi Jinping, the draconian “zero-COVID” diktat has isolated major manufacturing/ business hubs for weeks, strangling supply chains and seriously damaging China’s reputation as a reliable trading partner. Refusing to acknowledge the failure of Chinese Covid vaccines and their inability to create an effective mRNA vaccine, China stubbornly refrained from obtaining more effective vaccines from the West or
Analysts blame vanity, wishful thinking, domestic political compulsions, lack of certainty about certain diffused domains and even delusion or megalomania. However, without doubt, the biggest culprit is usually a closed-loop consultative system that feeds off a small coterie of advisors who seldom disagree with their leader out of fear or favour.
even India (whose vaccination programme has exceeded all expectations).
Ukraine could be another ‘Afghanistan’ for Mr Putin, who had ample time in power to learn from the pitfalls of an aggressive military operation in another sovereign nation. As the West has rallied behind a stubbornly stoic Ukraine and piled it with the pick of their latest arsenal backed by billions of dollars in financial aid, the Russian offensive has petered out and seems to have run out of steam and manpower. Having cruelly exposed the huge deficiencies in his conventional military capability, President Putin must repeatedly threaten with his nuclear deterrent to keep NATO at bay.
So, what drives leaders to err so greatly in their decision-making, especially when these involve critical national issues? Analysts blame vanity, wishful thinking, domestic political compulsions, lack of certainty about certain diffused domains and even delusion or megalomania. However, without doubt, the biggest culprit is usually a closed-loop consultative system that feeds off a small coterie of advisors
who seldom disagree with their leader out of fear or favour. As Walter Lippmann, the famous American writer, reporter and political commentator credited with coining the concept of the Cold War, once quipped, “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
The Iraq war has been cited as a prominent example where dissenting voices were ignored or denigrated both within and outside the government. As a well-funded public relations campaign gathered pace, it swept along the public, venerable think tanks, the fourth estate and even Congress! The outcome is too well known to be repeated here.
It is tough to ascertain Putin’s decision-making process because so little is known about him or his governance style. It seems that COVID-19 resulted in increasing isolation for Putin, relying on a shrinking circle of like-minded advisors. It is believed that his limited military successes in Syria, Georgia, and Crimea (against insignificant opposition) bolstered his misplaced sense of invincibility in the military rejuvenated by him and reinforced his belief in Russia’s economic dominance. Bureaucratic hurdles and fear of punishment have closed the exchange of information within the Russian military. This is layered with Putin’s inability to react in time to battlefield realities. His exaggeration of what the Russian military could achieve has been exposed many times over, but he doesn’t seem to make any effort to amend his error.
AN ECONOMIC COST
Economics has also gone awry in more ways than one due to policy bungling. The example of British Prime Minister Liz Truss was cited earlier in this article. Truss and Kwarteng rolled out a trickle-down economic program which did not conform to the realities of Britain’s current economic situation. They did not take the mainstream economic institutions along and failed to publish budget scores with their plan for tax cuts for
the wealthy and big new spending proposals. It was a disaster waiting to take place, and it did.
The Bank of England was forced to intervene to avert the collapse of the bond market, which undercut the Truss – Kwarteng initiative. This everted a revolt within the ruling Conservative Party supported by polls showing a dramatic surge of support for Labour. Truss backed down, and Kwarteng’s head was the first to roll. The home secretary resigned soon after over a rift over immigration policy, followed in quick succession by the Prime Minister herself. A repeated charge levelled on Liz Truss has, in fact, been her draconian style of governance which did not allow room for deliberation on the economic policy before rollout.
Assessment
It is difficult to suggest solutions to political and economic blunders as they are very case-specific. However, a clear lesson that can be extracted is that good decision-making is based on inclusive consultations encouraging contrasting and even dissenting views.
Both democratic and authoritarian forms of governments are equally susceptible to policy blunders if they allow their leaders to take a call without a 360 degree assessment of the outcome of their decision. At top political levels, while it is good to have decisive leaders, it is even better to have decisive leaders who make a well-thought-out plan with a beyond-the-curve perspective. This reduces the risk of the decision going awry and caters for corrective action to bring things back on track when faced with challenges.
Political systems that encourage the free flow of information and are open to new ideas are more likely to identify when a blunder has been made and are better equipped to formulate an alternative solution.
SETTING A NEW RECORD!
With a mere 45 days in office, Ms Elizabeth Truss has the dubious distinction of being the UK’s shortest termed premier!
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Political volatility is not generally associated with the UK, but this tumultuous year might be an exception. With the demise of Queen Elizabeth II and the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the nation has experienced a chain of events that has left its friends and foes alike gaping.
A CHOICE GONE WRONG?
Liz Truss is no novice to the UK’s political minefield or governance. She performed creditably as Boris Johnson’s Secretary of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and earlier as the Minister for Women and Equalities in 2019.
Her ministerial portfolios include Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education and Childcare (2014-16), the Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (2016-17) and the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. A trained management accountant with ten years of experience working as a commercial manager and economics director in the energy and telecom industries, she has proved her competence as she climbed the ladder in the executive. So, what went wrong?
Truss won the Tory elections at a precarious time. On the one hand, the UK has been experiencing long-term economic stagnation, while on the other, the war in Ukraine has resulted in double-digit inflation.
The hasty Brexit did not help matters either. Truss’ downfall was primarily because of her inability to portray her vision to her stakeholders. However, the consequence of her actions left her with no option but to go.
Truss won the Tory elections at a precarious time. On the one hand, the UK has been experiencing long-term economic stagnation, while on the other, the war in Ukraine has resulted in double-digit inflation. The hasty Brexit did not help matters either help matters either. Truss’ downfall was primarily because of her inability to portray her vision to her stakeholders.
MONEY MATTERS
To begin with, the mini-budget was the root of all causes. After assuming office on September 6, 2022, Liz Truss wanted to boost the economy through extensive tax cuts and secure energy prices against escalating inflation.
Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng announced two policies to attain her vision for a low-tax, small-government state; the first was to eliminate the 45 per cent top income tax rate for individuals with incomes of £1,50,000 or more. The second step was to abandon a proposed company tax rise from 19 per cent to 25 per cent beginning in April of next year. The combined effect of the two policies was an unfunded tax decrease of £45 billion.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, also her main rival, warned her repeatedly of this “fantasy island economics” of reducing revenue sources while failing to cover the significant budgetary hole that this would cause appropriately. Irrespective of that, Mr Kwasi Kwarteng presented the mini-budget on September 23, 2022. This budget was set to spiral the government’s borrowings. This was the worst thing that could have happened to the UK, especially
when facing historically high inflation.
This spike in government borrowings implied that it would be unable to repay the debts. Panicked, the investors began trading gilts (government bonds), liquidating all attainable UK assets. Consequently, the pound sank to historic lows versus the dollar, aggravating inflation by raising the price of imports.
This further created a crisis in pension funds and mortgage rates and impacted people with home loans as their go-to options were either to refinance or lose their homes. And all of this occurred during the ongoing energy crisis in the UK, causing a rise in living costs and worry about how they will stay warm this winter due to high energy prices.
Finding herself trapped in her own hastily knit web, Truss tried to undo the damage, but it was too late. She started by reducing the tax on the super-rich. But the next step was a big blow to everyone - firing her chancellor, Mr Kwarteng, who was just voicing Truss’ economic plans.
And to top it all, she appointed Jeremy Hunt as the chancellor, who was incidentally a leading supporter of Ms Truss’s rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak. As soon as he assumed charge, he dismantled what was left of Truss’ plan. It was soon evident that Hunt held power while in government. It was only a matter of time before Truss went.
There was no definite front-runner to succeed Truss.
The only choices were Rishi Suna, who finished as the final runner-up to Truss in the previous Conservative leadership election. There were rumours that Boris Johnson would also throw in his hat in the ring. Of course Penny Mordaunt, the former defence secretary, was very much in the contest. Ultimately, Rishi Sunak made the cut and it will be his lot to rescue the UK from the mess.
Assessment
The inability of the Conservative Party to find a suitable candidate to govern the country shows a lack of talent within the party. Due to its lacklustre ratings, it will avoid going into general elections now. The Labour Party, meanwhile, will try to force the government to go for general elections due to its popularity. We can expect more political fireworks to erupt at Westminster.
Truss was an economic disaster for the UK by any standards. Not that the next incumbent will be able to mend matters overnight, but he may have more realistic policies in place, even if they are politically a bitter pill to swallow.
Many in the UK may be rueing the decision to implement BREXIT at the most inopportune moment amidst the pandemic and downturn in the global economy.
EXPERT VIEW
WILLIAM JOHN EMMOTT is an English journalist, author, and consultant, best known as the editorin-chief of The Economist newspaper from 1993 to 2006.
ON REVOLVING DOOR BRITAIN
“Ahi serva Britannia, di dolore ostello, nave senza nocchiere in gran tempesta, non donna di province ma bordello!” Is it fair to say that Dante’s words should now be applied to my native country, Great Britain? Well, with the resignation of Liz Truss as prime minister, the country now knows that by the end of next week, when the Conservatives say they will choose her successor, Britain will during 2022 alone have seen three prime ministers, perhaps five chancellors of the exchequer and, sadly, two monarchs.
NAVE SENZA NOCHHIERE AFTER BREXIT
I will leave to one side the question of whether we should include the bordello, although the notoriously drunken parties in Number Ten Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s tenure might well have caused Dante to consider that word. But we can be sure that in political terms, Britain has been a “nave senza nocchiere” (without a helmsman) ever since the Brexit referendum on that fateful June day, just over six years ago.
Britain’s current political turmoil can clearly be traced back to that decision. This is not, at least not directly, due to the economic consequences of Brexit, which have not yet truly become clear to most of the British public, thanks to the much more dramatic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and now the war in Ukraine.
The connection to the Brexit vote is that the decision to leave the European Union was made without any agreed, or even publicly debated, plan about what to do next. It was a strictly negative decision, not one made with any alternative strategy in mind.
INSTABILITY OF THE POLITICAL MIND
The result is that in the succeeding years, British political life, especially political life in the Conservative Party, has been a mixture of Stalin-like purges of the disloyal and the dissident, long periods of policy paralysis that can be likened to a political nervous breakdown, and a search for simple solutions and slogans.
Britain’s current instability is an instability of the political mind, not one of feuding personalities as has often been the case in Italy. Going through changes of government, as Italy often does, is quite different from going through frequent changes of mind and strategic direction.Boris Johnson, during his three years as prime minister from 2019 until July 2022, was a ruthless user of purges but also a walking display of confusion and
incoherence. Was he in favour of cutting taxes and exploiting Brexit through deregulation so as to turn Britain into what came to be called a “Singapore on Thames”? Or in favour of intervening with industrial support in ways membership of the EU made difficult while spending generously on public pensions and dealing with regional inequality?
The answer was that he was in favour of all of this and more, without wishing to confront the trade-offs and contradictions that this involved.
Most of all, however, he was in favour of finding simple, easy-to-understand slogans.So the Brexit referendum was won with “Take Back Control”, and Johnson then triumphed in the 2019 general election by shouting, “Get Brexit Done”.
Except that neither he nor any of his ministers knew how they wanted to use that regained “control” and that even now, in 2022, Brexit remains incomplete. Britain is still arguing with the European Union over the status of its region of Northern Ireland and over the implications of Johnson’s own agreement that Northern Ireland would stay part of the EU single market for goods.
A RECORD OF SORTS!
Now that she has resigned, Liz Truss at least can boast that she has a place in the political history books: having survived in office for just 45 days, she now holds the record as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister ever.
And 10 of those days consisted of the official mourning period for Queen Elizabeth.More profoundly, what her ill-fated period in office showed was how the ruling Brexit class has reacted to the lack of a coherent or agreed strategy by searching for an ideological substitute. To critics like me, the Truss episode can be likened to a group of religious zealots, the Tory Taliban, who talk only to each other and come to believe only their chosen scriptures.
It has still been a surprise. Truss had done six ministerial jobs in her ten years in Parliament, so she should have had some understanding of the process, institutional requirements, and the value of expert advice. Instead, she acted as if she thought she was a Silicon Valley start-up which worships the idea of “moving fast and breaking things”.
What comes next? Britain’s hope must be for a general election so as to have a more open debate about our national direction and to elect a government with some sort of coherent idea of what it wants to do. Until we get there, however, we can expect more instability and more factional battles inside the Conservative Party.If you want proof, just look at the fact that some Tory MPs are seriously proposing Boris Johnson as a potential candidate to replace Truss, barely four months since half his government resigned in protest at his scandals and incompetence. Hopefully, they will see the bordello in time and change their minds. Ahi serva Britannica…
A RETURNING PROBLEM
Guatemalan refugees find themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on being returned to a country that cannot sustain them.
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Guatemala is symptomatic of the rest of Central America, with the majority of its population concentrated in impoverished rural areas dominated by the indigenous people, the descendants of a once proud Mayan race. What is being experienced by Guatemalans could be taken as a template for other developing countries of Central America.
The country has experienced a tumultuous past dominated by dictatorial rule and genocidal massacres of the Maya population by the military. These unsettling conditions have led to locals fleeing to Mexico on their way to the United States.
Even today, violence, impunity, corruption, poverty, lack of security and services, uneven development, drought, and hurricanes dominate the chequered landscape of Guatemala.
Guatemala remains one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, and the pandemic has only served as a multiplier of the country’s concerns. Migration is the only economic alternative for most to sustain their families back home through remittances. In 2021, remittances amounted to nearly $135 billion, according to the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.
The social structures are dominated by a complex criminal ecosystem, including gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Eighteenth Street Gang (M-18). U.S. interventions during the Cold War have been criticised for further destabilising the region. Climate change is another strain on the region, pushing more people to migrate.
Government policies over the past decade have failed to address factors that push people to migrate due to inadequate funding, lack of political will, and little continuity with subsequent governments.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE!
Illegal migrations from Guatemala have increased over the past two years, with the majority bouncing back en route. On their return, they find that their economic and social conditions have further deteriorated, if that was possible, considering that these were a little better initially.
There is a great deal of talk of money being invested by more affluent countries in developing economies from where the bulk of illegal migration originates. This is aimed at improving local economies to discourage such exoduses. But on the ground, truly little is being done by their parent country to help them reintegrate into society once they return. The National Council of Attention to Migrants of Guatemala is the stated authority which is supposed to respond to migrants’ needs. The organisation has been accused of corruption by migrants, rights advocates, and government regulators. The agency needs reform, including expanding its budget, but in 2021, it used less than one-third of its budget! The state’s absence is symptomatic of a broader breakdown of social services in the country.
Government policies over the past decade have failed to address factors that push people to migrate due to inadequate funding, lack of political will, and little continuity with subsequent governments. It now seems more of an effort on the part of civil society rather than politicians, who work to promote laws that could address these issues.Even the few existing programmes don’t seem to impact significantly.
There are a few job placement programmes run by the Guatemalan Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare and the Ministry of Social Development. These direct a small minority of deportees with specific skills, such as speaking English, to jobs at private companies. These programmes are extremely limited in scale and do not address the vast majority of non-English speaking population and those from an indigenous background.
Nongovernmental organisations, such as Pop No’j and El Refugio de la Niñez, have stepped up to support deportees in rural areas. These organisations offer a more comprehensive approach covering mental health needs and support for minors to help reintegrate them and get them back in school. These efforts remain limited in scale due to a lack of substantial funding despite support from USAID and UNICEF.
The government sees foreign remittances as the backbone of its finances and is hesitant to discourage migration, even illegal ones. It has been estimated that remittances account for an estimated 18.4 per cent of the country’s GDP. More than $15 billion was sent back home to families in 2021 and is expected to increase in 2022.
THE TURBULENT NORTHERN TRIANGLE
The northern triangle comprises regions of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. It is estimated that more than two million people have left the area since 2014. Governments of these countries have tried to address issues of poverty, violence, and corruption, but they have met with little success.
Since the U.S. is the ‘dream destination’ for most migrants, successive U.S. Administrations have tried to tackle the challenge posed by these mass migrations with limited success. Policy responses have included changes to foreign aid and immigration policies. The U.S.-backed Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity (A4P) aims to reduce regional economic instability. It addresses the drivers of illegal migration and commits to increasing production, strengthening institutions, expanding opportunities, and improving public safety. The Biden administration has recently proposed a $4 billion plan to address migration’s root causes in Central America. Analysts have criticised U.S. policies for being reactive primarily to the upturns in migration to the U.S.-Mexico border.
On the part of Latin America, successive governments have tried various development-centric, toughon-crime interventions to tackle the region’s enduring problems, but these have yielded limited gains.
The informal sector, which kept the regional economy going, was paralysed due to lockdowns during the pandemic. In the heightened insecurity of the pandemic, institutional weaknesses further impeded the delivery of aid and public services. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the region is estimated to have suffered economic contractions between 1.5 per cent and 8.6 per cent in 2020.
CASCADING IMPACTS
Amidst the barrage of problems afflicting the region, corruption remains one of the biggest drags on the region’s economy. Guatemala has partnered with the United Nations to create an International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). The body is an independent investigatory body that helped convict more than four hundred people, including a sitting president, and significantly reduced Guatemala’s homicide rate.
Other countries soon followed suit. El Salvador announced an anti-corruption panel in 2019, backed by the Organization of American States (OAS). Honduras also jumped on the bandwagon with an anti-corruption committee as part of the OAS, known as the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH). However, early enthusiasm waned fairly quickly, and all three countries have since not made much progress.
Another sweeping problem across the region has been violence. In the early 2000s, governments in the Northern Triangle region implemented a series of controversial anti-crime policies. These new laws significantly expanded police powers and enacted harsher punishments for gang members. While the move was greeted with enthusiasm among the crime-weary population, the policies failed to reduce crime and may have even led to an increase in gang membership. Human rights groups and the U.S. State Department have raised concerns about the harsh nature of these policies, poor conditions in overcrowded jails and violence meted out by the police against civilians.
While COVID-19 restrictions temporarily curtailed revenue for criminal groups, these groups quickly adapted to the crisis and found newer ways of exploiting the situation. The countries comprising the Northern Triangle have not been able to make significant progress in checking migration. Aside from policies to tackle drivers for migration, Guatemala has tried to halt migrants on the move physically. In 2021, Guatemalan authorities used force to break up a so-called caravan of migrants bound for the United States.
Assessment
There are no quick fixes to stem the tide of migrants from the Northern Triangle. The causative factors are endemic to the political and socio-economic fabric of the region and require a multi-pronged approach and a total overhaul of its governance.
Theoretically, professional degrees/ education, employment opportunities, a better social safety net and living conditions that are safe, healthy, and pleasant can stop illegal migration. Sadly, the Northern Triangle is empty of all these preconditions, making departing a natural outcome. Once climate change takes a total impact on the planet, there will be many more like Guatemala.
A NAIL-BITING FINISH
From near total political oblivion, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva crawled back into the Palácio do Planalto in an election tainted by untruth and manipulated polls.
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Brazil’s right wing and left wing fought a battle royale culminating on the last day of October when the new incumbent was voted back to power with a razor-thin majority. Tensions have risen in this most influential South American nation as the presidential elections went into an unprecedented second round of voting. The final tally was- Lula at 50.9 percent against Jair Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent.
To date, Mr Bolsonaro has failed to concede defeat and his son ominously tweeted, “Papa, we are with you whatever is coming next!” The drama in Brasilia is far from over yet!
The future of one of the world’s largest democracies is at stake as two opposite political, social, and economic approaches battle it out. There are many larger questions; including will the new President reconcile economic development and environmental preservation? And how are Brazil’s international relations going to change after this election? In the runup to the second round of voting, Mr Bolsonaro had made it clear that he would not accept a possible defeat as “nothing abnormal” occurs during the vote. Sounds familiar...? Making comparisons almost a year back, the New York Times had predicted, “The Trump name is a rallying cry for Brazil’s new right and his efforts to undermine the U.S. electoral system appear to have inspired and emboldened Mr Bolsonaro and his supporters.”
Lula’s campaign had tried to convince Brazilians that they were better off when he was President, and that Mr Bolsonaro was a threat to democracy. Mr Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has tried to cast Lula as a radical socialist and himself as Brazil’s saviour. Branding Lula a thief for his corruption charges conviction, Bolsonaro never tired of de-
Disinformation must be viewed in the larger context of the ‘trust deficit’ that most politicians face from the public.
manding that his opponent’s rightful place is in federal prison. Brazil has the largest African-origin population outside Africa, which remains marginalised and shut off from politics. Lula’s earlier tenure saw them being offered university education as part of his affirmative drive, which may have influenced them to vote en masse for him.
POLLSTERS IN THE CROSS HAIRS
The elections have thrown up some surprises. President Jair Bolsonaro did better than most expected, and the polls significantly underestimated his support and other conservative candidates across the country.
The results have emboldened Bolsonaro’s supporters to attempt bringing forth legislation that makes it a crime to incorrectly forecast an election. They accuse the leftist political establishment of sabotaging the electoral process by manipulating public opinion in collaboration with pollsters. Efforts have been on to fast-track legislation criminalising polls that prove to fall outside a defined margin of error. Ricardo Barros, a conservative congressman, claims that such legislation would force polling companies to be more careful with their findings. “If you’re not sure of the outcome, then place a margin of error of 10 per cent,” he said. “It loses credibility, but it doesn’t misinform voters. The problem is that today it’s always presented as absolute truth.” The bill’s final shape and fate are unclear now that Mr Lula is in power.
Polling firms have blamed a variety of factors for their inaccurate forecasts, including outdated census data and last-minute voter swings. Many conservative voters were
unwilling to answer surveys that did not help assess poll results. Under public pressure, the Justice Department ordered the Federal Police to investigate the conduct of election polls before the first round. In addition, Brazil’s federal antitrust agency has initiated its inquiry into some of the nation’s top polling institutions for possible collusion.
However, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s elections chief, quickly ordered both investigations to be halted because they appeared to be politically motivated and doing the President’s political bidding. He has initiated an investigation by Brazil’s election agency to examine if Mr Bolsonaro was trying to use his power over federal agencies inappropriately.
Clearly, the Judiciary and the Executive were at loggerheads as the Supreme Court took upon itself the mantle of restricting the President’s powers over the last tumultuous year. This is new to Brazilian politics and could damage the reputation of an independent judiciary. Brazil is not the only country where polls have failed to provide an accurate picture of the electorate, particularly the strength of conservative support. In the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, polling companies botched up their predictions by claiming that Ms Clinton would win with ease and invoking accusations of a manipulative polling establishment from the conservative lobby.
DISINFORMATION AS A POLITICAL WEAPON
Like an increasing number of democracies worldwide, Brazil too is witnessing a widening divide between the right and the left in which fake news and disinformation is a principal weapon. Electoral campaigns globally are now being fought on a wave of disinformation and mistrust. The question remains how significant such falsehood plays in influencing the voters. Undoubtedly, the flood of fake news has given rise to hardening partisan views and, in some cases, even political violence.
Disinformation must be viewed in the larger context of the ‘trust deficit’ that most politicians face from the public. Opposing parties try their utmost to fan this distrust and suspicion through misinformation/ selectively
chosen information using influencers and coordinated networks is even worrying.
This has occurred alongside a shift in media consumption wherein local journalism has been overtaken by prominent social media platforms. A deluge of ‘news’ often one-sided, emotive communication, is disseminated by content creators who could be on the payroll of a particular political interest group.
Distorted news gets filtered and reinforced by actors who try to build a story based on people’s pre-existing beliefs. Incorrect information is harnessed through people’s resentments and doubts to build and drive wedges within a community. Economic disparities deepen the distrust in established systems and institutions. In the case of Brazil, the pandemic, widespread corruption, a rise in violent crime and rampant inequality has played a part. Brazil has worked hard to minimize falsehoods in the recent past. Several professional fact-checkers, and the electoral courts have partnered with social media companies to share verified information through Facebook and WhatsApp.
Assessment
Distrust and false claims of electoral fraud appear to have impacted Brazil, with the deeply polarising campaign further vitiating the election climate. The way forward requires investment in building trust with communities through two-way communication by political parties and grassroots organisations with voters to fill in information gaps. The Presidentelect has promised to ‘bridge the divide’ in his first response to his victory, and how far he is prepared to go on this account is something the world will wait and watch.
Fighting election by planting fake narratives is a phenomenon that has risen through social media. This has global implications and must be countered through collaboration. This would need a concerted effort in communication by grassroots organisations, political organisations, and political parties with voters by filling information voids with factual contextualised messaging people can identify with.
VAPPALA BALACHANDRAN INTELLIGENCE OVER CENTURIES
author of ‘Intelligence over centuries’, spoke for the 138th Synergia Forum at Synergia Foundation.
Q. What is the book about?
VB. This is a global history of the growth of intelligence, a form of statecraft, which rulers used from ‘Puranic’ or pre-biblical times to the modern age to achieve tighter control in the areas of governance, national security, and foreign conquests. As decreed by the rulers, its appearance was sometimes open but at times very stealthily without even casting a shadow like the mythical Equinox.
Q. What is new about the book?
VB. This is the first time such a book has been written on the different facets of this often imperceiv-
Vappala Balachandran a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, was an intelligence practitioner for 19 years
agencies in India, Pakistan, Britain, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Israel, and former “hegemonic” systems like Soviet-dominated East German Stasi and Chinese agencies and how they broke free of Moscow’s tutelage. Also narrated is the churning of normal collection methodology when terrorism appeared with a bang and how agencies had to re-orient their existing tactics to deal with the new threats. Finally, it makes a critical examination of the successes and failures of intelligence through centuries and assesses whether it has helped or impaired the governance and the lives of citizens in different countries.
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