With varied and organised capability for cyber, space and information warfare, China is potent threat for India; cyber capability is critical, and manpower is key
The authorities claim they are still investigating the cause of the 23-hour power outage inSpain and Portugal this Monday. They have ruled out a cyber-attack or other forms of sabotage, pending further investigations.
However, the power outage in the Iberian peninsula that brought trains to a halt, choked up traffic by shutting down traffic lights, switched off telecom towers and forced hospitals to cancel non-emergency surgeries, offers a compelling insight into why India needs to shore up offensive and defensive capabilities in cyberspace.
China's 3 new agencies
Last year, China unbundled the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s Strategic Support Force and created three new agencies, the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force and the Information Service Force, distributing the specialised functions of the Strategic Support Force among these three agencies.
The PLA also has a Logistics Support Force. It further has five Theatre Commands and four service arms: the army, the navy, the air force and the rocket force.
Each Theatre Command has unified control over the four services and the four specialist arms, the so-called Forces, which respectively focus on space assets, cyber/electronic security and cyber/electronic attacks, network information systems and information warfare, and logistics.
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The Chinese armed forces are, thus, set to carry out integrated operations in space, cyberspace, and air, on the ground and the sea and under the sea. It can knock out or incapacitate satellites that gather intelligence and provide crucial surveillance and communications.
The advantage of scale
It can stage cyberattacks that bring down power grids and terrestrial communication infrastructure. It can, for example, play havoc with the banking, stock market or depository infrastructure, creating financial mayhem.
If there is any other country in the world that can muster manpower on the Chinese scale in defensive and offensive cyber capability, it is India.
While people panic as a result of such assaults, they can unleash diverse conspiracy theories on the hapless population, spread rumours and incite violence, before planes start bombing raids, ships fire rockets and the soldiers go marching in.
The Indian defence system is fully aware of such capabilities and has initiated countermeasures. Where the PLA has a potential advantage is in scale. The armies of hackers it can mobilise, wearing a uniform or volunteering as zealous patriots in groups such as Salt Typhoon, are far more numerous and populous than their counterparts in other nations.
iSoon-like hacking groups
China also has hacking groups like iSoon, which do entrepreneurial hacking on their own initiative, and hawk their findings to assorted government/security agencies.
In 2022, a US government report, by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, noted that the PLA had 60,000 personnel who were cyber-capable, and that China had exploited more zero-day vulnerabilities across the world than any other nation over the period 2012-21 (a zero-day vulnerability is a security hole in a computer system, unknown to its owners, developers or anyone capable of remedying it).
The same report goes on to say that, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Military Balance+ database, 18.2 per cent of the units in China’s Strategic Support Forces focussed on offensive operations, compared to only 2.8 per cent of the units commanded by US Cyber Command.
Of course, these numbers should be taken only as indicative, and US figures could be self-servingly understated.
Also read: In era of 'grey zone', cyber attacks tools to achieve politico-military aims: Rajnath
The short point is that China has massive manpower trained and deployed in cyber espionage, sabotage and security, far outstripping India in this department.
What India needs to do
If there is any other country in the world that can muster manpower on the Chinese scale in defensive and offensive cyber capability, it is India.
India has to do a great deal more to promote ethical hacking and create a large pool of hackers capable of defending and advancing India’s national interest in cyberspace, operating on government instruction as well as freelancing on their own.
However, cybersecurity cannot be left to cybersecurity experts alone. Every interface between the internet and any bit of automated equipment, whether traffic lights, the power grid, rooftop solar feeding into the grid or the sluice gates of a dam, is a potential source of vulnerability.
Extensive work
It is not viable to outsource securing all vital infrastructure at every possible node of vulnerability to cybersecurity professionals. This calls for training, educating, and, more to the point, sensitising all operators of modern equipment in any sector about the dangers of cyber security, and how to guard against them. In other words, cybersecurity must become basic hygiene.
This is where India’s educational system lets us down. Students do attend school, but learn very little.
Survey after survey shows that literacy and numeracy are at pathetic levels. Nutrition in early childhood determines how well the brain develops. Chronic malnourishment, particularly in the case of essential micronutrients, as well as poor quality air, stunts the development of young Indian minds.
Where education falls short
The caste system militates against large sections of the population aspiring to excel in learning.
Absentee teachers and the poor quality of teaching convince parents that the only way their children would learn English is to put them through English-medium schools, even if the child never hears a word of English spoken at home. The teachers who teach in English hardly know the language and being forced to learn science and history in a language they barely understand maims the child’s comprehension.
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Only when competency imbues all of schooling can higher education have a large enough pool of talent to draw on, to bring up specialists in large enough numbers. Focussing on Indian Institutes of Technology while neglecting primary education might not have mattered for national security in the past. Today, it does.
In the modern world of technology-pervasive national security, success calls for a whole-of-nation effort, in a very many sectors that shape the necessary human competence.
That is, if you want to keep the lights on.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)
