Cyber: The Future of Warfare

As the world is celebrating the advancement of technology, leveraging it for every small and big tasks, the usage of technology is so enormous in today’s world that every country’s critical infrastructure is depended on technology like- Banking, Stock market, Power station, nuclear plants and Air and Rail transport etc. This also making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks and poses a threat to country’s national security.

If a country wants to do something like build a nuclear missiles, that’s actually quite difficult but when you talk about something like cyber warfare, it’s actually quite cheap and quite easy for a country to develop a cyber-weapon, and that cyber weapon can have equivalent effects. It has the potential to create a civil war like situation in a country. A person or state has a cyber-weapon which could potentially shut down power grid, black out the country’s major cities, crash the stock market, shut down the banking system and cease the working of system like water waste and treatment plants so no clean water.

They can also blind the military by shutting down GPS and computer networks, and the military is now unable to function. It could take days or weeks to get those systems back up and running. They can easily defeat the armies, fleets, air forces, by simply blinding them or by taking down the system.

Evolution of Cyber warfare:-

Since the inception of internet, the cyber arena has been changed at a massive level and showed the world its capability to create destruction without revealing one’s identity like “The Logic Bomb” in 1982 blows up a Siberian Gas pipeline without the use of a bomb or a missile by inserting a code into the network and the computer system in control of the gas pipeline.

“The Stuxnet Worm” in 2010 — A malicious computer virus called the world’s first digital weapon is able to target control systems used to monitor industrial facilities. It is discovered in nuclear power plants in Iran, where it knocks out approximately one-fifth of the enrichment centrifuges used in the country’s nuclear program.

We have seen the evolution that how the cyber threat is lingering on the head of every country and these cyber-attacks show us the potential of cyber warfare in the coming future and also encourages the countries like China, Russia and North Korea to use hybrid or information warfare tactics to counter other countries. Like in May, 2021 a ransom ware attack forced Colonial Pipeline, a U.S. energy company to shut down its entire fuel distribution pipeline, and recently in Russia-Ukraine crisis where Russia is using cyber and information warfare to create internal conflict in Ukraine.

Cyber Attacks on India:-

As we all know that recently cyber-attacks has been increased in India, and more than 11.5 lakh incidents of cyber-attacks were tracked and reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in 2021. One of the major cyber-attack on October 12, 2020, Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, was hit by a massive power outage. According to National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), this was a cyber-attack by the Chinese state-sponsored group, Red Echo.

China has a proper dedicated unit for cyber-attack i.e. The Chinese PLA Unit 61398, APT41, APT22, and they regularly work for finding vulnerabilities in Indian cyber system so that they can use it at the time of conflict or war. North Korean and Chinese cyber group are known to systematically target and sabotage Indian cyber defence and offence mechanism.

Countries like China, North Korea and Russia know the repercussions of conventional war that’s why now they are shifting towards 0.5 warfare that is Psychological and Information warfare through different ways like cyber-attack, fake narratives and propaganda, economic barbarism etc. to counter other countries.

India’s capabilities on cyber warfare:-

The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), an influential think-tank based in London, published a report on ‘Cyber Capabilities and National Power’ which assessed the cyber capabilities of 15 states. India is positioned among the third-tire countries on the basis of cyber warfare capabilities.

National Cyber Power Index

In National cyber power Index, 2020 prepared by Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs puts India at number 26 out of 29 countries. Two Asian superpowers, India and China, had similar GDP per capita in the early 80s and India was rising IT power in the 90s. Today, China has surpassed India in every Cyber index and capabilities.

India’s spends 0.65% of its GDP on research and development which is one of lowest in the world and that is the reason for lacking in innovation of cyber technologies. After all these data, Indian government is not very focused towards cyber warfare and working in lackadaisical manner. It’s time for India to formulate a National Security Doctrine with focusing towards cyber as fifth dimension of warfare.

India’s approach in future:-

As India is doing great in diplomacy so this is the right time to take leverage in cyber domain by associating with countries like the United States, United Kingdom, France and Israel. Simultaneously, India should focus on becoming self-reliant on cyber by increasing investment in research and development of these technologies. Every country is now understand the value of self-reliance (aatmnirbhar) after Russia invaded Ukraine and the superpowers of the world deserted Ukraine to fight alone against the mighty Russia.

India must establish a Central Cyber Command as a umbrella organisation to monitor the activity of all existing institution. As there are many organisation working in cyber domain like National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), Defence Cyber Agency, Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Defence Intelligence Agency. The need of the hour is to streamline all these organisation under the Cyber Central Command so that process gets faster against cyber threats.

“We worried for decades about WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now it is time to worry about a new kind of WMDs – Weapons of Mass Disruption.” ― John Mariotti