Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has said that the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to cyber attacks has emerged as a big concern for New Delhi.
“The energy sector is one of the main targets of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure,” Singh said while delivering a keynote speech at a convocation ceremony of the National Defense College in New Delhi.
One of India’s top power producers Tata Power said last month that its systems had been targeted in a purported cyber-attack. In 2020, India’s commercial capital Mumbai faced one of the biggest power outages in decades leading to a brief disruption in essential services such as water supply, public transport, and internet services.
Singh said that other critical areas of the Indian economy such as transport, public sector enterprises, telecommunications, financial systems and manufacturing industries have also become increasingly prone to cyber attacks.
“We are increasingly facing threats that fall in the category of non-kinetic and non-contact warfare,” the Indian Defense Minister remarked, referring to the “information war” through the use of “competing narratives” on any given issue.
Singh said that Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine serves as a case study for “information war”, with social media also serving as a “battleground”.
“The propaganda campaigns as a means of strategy to shape narratives are by no means new during warfare, but its reach has increased by leaps and bounds due to the shift toward social media as the primary distribution channel,” he remarked.
Singh warned that the deployment of information warfare has the potential to threaten the “political stability” of a country. He went on to note that the use of social media and other content-generation platforms were being used to “engineer” opinion of the masses.
In his address, Singh also classified the “narrowing gap” between external and internal security as another major challenge for policymakers.
He said that terrorism was conventionally treated as a matter of “internal security”, but it is now classified as a matter of “external security” as the training and funding of terror groups was being carried out from “outside the country”.
Successive Indian governments have accused Pakistan of abetting cross-border terrorism against India, an allegation Islamabad has denied.
Singh said that “concerted action” of the global community is needed in order to counter the “emerging threats” and challenges that he outlined in his address.
“National security should not be considered a zero-sum game. We should strive to create a win-win situation for all. We should not be guided by narrow self-interest which is not beneficial in the long-run. We should be guided by enlightened self-interest which is sustainable and resilient to shocks,” he remarked.
Singh noted that even though many multilateral organizations such as the United Nations (UN) Security Council have been working in the sphere of security, he said that there is a need to further “elevate” international cooperation.
He said that that global response to the Covid pandemic has demonstrated the benefits of “multi-national collaboration”.
Singh also affirmed India’s belief in “multi-aligned policy” and a multi-polar world order in his address, saying that it was the only way to ensure “shared responsibility and shared prosperity” for everyone.
“India does not believe in a world order where few are considered superior to others,” he remarked.