An Uncertain Future

Aditya Kakkar

The government has been grudgingly accepting India’s less-than-stellar cyber security capabilities in the wake of an investigative report published by the newspaper ‘The Tribune’ on January 4. The report exposed the flimsiness of India’s cyber security protocols in managing its citizen database, which is in the form of an ‘Aadhaar’ number linked to the individuals’ biometric and demographic data. Domestic criminals or external enemies may use this information for financial fraud or identity theft through a tactic known as social engineering in which they attempt to manipulate people on the phone or online to reveal confidential information such as passwords or bank details.

Cyber Swachhta Kendra launched by Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad

The government has maintained plausible deniability and initiated knee-jerk reactions to allay the country’s fears. The problem is lack of in-depth awareness of cyber security and a nebulous overarching policy by the government. In contrast, last year Chinese President Xi Jinping said that his country will push for the integration of the internet, big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the economy to move up the value chain. The Chinese news agency Xinhua also reported that Beijing will be developing a USD2 billion AI park to fulfil its ambition to become a world leader in AI by 2025. Unsurprisingly, China’s new AI plan explicitly highlights an approach of military-civil fusion to ensure that advances in AI can be readily leveraged for national defence. The comparison with China is to simply illustrate our strategic policy hollowness.

The concern about network security is not just an elitist concern about individual privacy but a matter of utmost national security. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has warned of threats to smart grid systems in the country and