Chinese scholar Sun Tzu had rightly mentioned: ‘The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’ 5th Generation Warfare (5GW) is an apt reflection of this century old quote. 5GW is not about combat. It is about shaping insights and perceptions. Today, the focus has shifted to non-kinetic instruments of warfare. To accomplish this objective, the role of information or ‘correct’ information becomes indispensable. Information has become an important element of power. Information superiority will decide the winner and losers. As rightly mentioned by pioneer of Soft Power Joseph Nye: ‘In the information age, the mark of a great power is not just whose army wins, but also whose story wins’. Barbara Haskell had first deliberated on the idea of information as power in her article ‘Access to Society: A Neglected Dimension of Power’ in International Organization. Likewise, Richard Rosecrance in the book The Rise of the Virtual State has talked about the role played by information in the conduct of foreign policy. The RAND Corporation defines IW as: ‘..conflict or struggle between two or more groups in the information environment’. IW is a virtual tool through which nations not only attain strategic aims but also advance foreign policy goals. IW is also representative of a civil-military camaraderie: how deftly the government and the armed forces of a country interact with one another along with leaders in power, media houses, civilians, think tanks to favourably impact the opinion of the populace. Human cognition is the penultimate goal of IW activities.
The marriage of convenience between information and technology has facilitated cyber-attacks, dominant manoeuvring, negative publicity using media, Internet spamming among others. Lessons learned from Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda taught the U.S. military the innate power of information. Information Warfare has become a challenging issue with the onset of Artificial Intelligence.
My brief interaction with the distinguished officers at the Eastern Command last month is an event that I will always cherish throughout my life. I had suggested that India needs a cadre of Tech-Lingua Strategists (a strategist who is well versed with updated technology and is also a linguist). These cadre of strategic tech-linguist will become feeder to the Information Warfare division of the armed forces of our country.
Recently the ORF had hosted a discussion on India-EU cooperation on Russian and Chinese Disinformation and Propaganda. Ages ago Greek philosopher Plato in his system of education had recommended censorship of literature, poetry, tales and music which was undertaken to ensure that the susceptible young minds were not exposed to detrimental information or ideas. Information is also about context. What West calls as Soviet Propaganda, the Russians abstain from using the word ‘propaganda’. As of today, Russians have deftly employed information warfare not only in manipulating the U.S elections but also in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. Possible escalation and immediate intensification of Russia-Ukraine can take place and the role of information warfare will have a huge role to play in it.
On Strategic Languages
As the balance of power transcends from the Atlantic to the Pacific the rise of civilisational states like Russia, India and China has become an irrefutable reality. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, India’s Indo centricity and Indo asymmetry in South Asia along with the incessant quest for power by China holds testimony to the fact. Learning Russian and Mandarin today has become a strategic necessity. Russia, India and China are also part of many plurilateral groupings like BRICS, SCO among others. While China remains a dominant competitor for India, Russia continues to remain India’s strategic ally – a major defence partner. Learning Pashto, Tibetan and Arabic also remains crucial for our Intelligence officers. Soliciting Information in a language is only one aspect. Listening, Reading, Writing and Understanding is quite another. While the Russian language still has some similarities with Sanskrit and has designated alphabets so is not the case with Mandarin. It is a tonal language. It has obfuscating characters. The role of Tech-Lingua Strategists gains prominence here. An engineer well versed in Mandarin will be conducting coding in Mandarin language. Combined with that her knowledge about Chanakyaneeti or strategy will give her multi domain expertise where she will be able to use her skills deftly in war fighting. Chinese programmers mostly use English for coding however this does not limit them to use Mandarin as a programming language. Efforts are being made to develop the Chinese version of the computer language and they do use it in documentation.
Leveraging Technology
Two quotes of Napoleon Bonaparte “War is Ninety Percent Information” and “The Secret of War Lies in Communications” summarise the relevance and criticality of Information Warfare. From mideveal times to current conflicts this component of Warfare has only been repeatedly reinforced and history is replete with examples of battle outcomes shaped by innovative use of Information Warfare. It is intriguing to note that while basics remain the same however the various dimensions of this warfare tool have only grown in their linkages and dependencies and a lot is attributable to Technology. From Information seeking, gathering, collating, analysis, dissemination and decision-making technology has been the main driver holding the vital key in the OODA loop.
The Industrial Revolutions have contributed significantly in shaping this dimension but IR 4.0 in particular is turning out to be a game changer. The Emerging technologies are actually causing a disruption. Which are these technologies and what is their potential to alter the status quo in the role of the Strategic Tech-Linguists. It all boils down to the fusion of sensors and power of processing. Technologies in play are IoT, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Quantum Computing, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Block Chain and of-course Advance Materials which serves as the substrate for many of the above technologies. The essence is that the Strategic Tech-Linguists now has a lot to handle and not in a near real time frame but now virtually in the future realm to shape the warfare and outcomes. It is a powerful tool and many of the so called ‘hard tasks’ now eased with adoption of technologies. But this comes with a challenge to the Tech-Lingua Strategist in the form of info over load and saturation against which caution will need to be exercised.
But coming back to the context and in particular focussing on the ‘Linguist’ which is a scientific study of language and the sub fields include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics . Artificial Intelligence and Speech recognition technologies will be very instrumental in both coding of info warfare packages to the adversary as well as decoding the adversaries web. This will be a real challenge for technology to capture the emotive aspects be it in the form of exhilaration, confidence, arrogance, fear, anguish, anxiety all centred around the subfields of phonetics, syntax, semantics and phonology etc.
The picture that comes to mind is the very first hacking incident of 1903 where Nevil Maskeylne a British inventor and magician broke into a morse code message to be played out to a public audience replacing the message with a barrage of insults . So will the technology succeed in conveying and carrying the authenticity and originality of the message, theme, intent or the story. It may be argued that in the domain of Info Warfare this is just one of the tools but in the Indian sub-context it is very critical given the long borders and lot of them unsettled resulting in hotspots of conflicts be it Galwan or Demchok. Here, the role of a tech savvy Tech-Lingua Strategist becomes important and we need to develop this and train a professional cadre.
Conclusion
As India progresses to become a Vishwaguru, it is indispensable to keep ourselves updated. The dynamic nature of warfare will only pose serious challenges. The role of culture, language and technology will define how wars can be evaded or fought. In this regard, the Information Warfare Division of the Indian army can plausibly look out for a muti-tasking venture where disparate skills – strategist, linguist and technical expertise may prove to be a boon in fighting battles and narratives.
Dr. Aparna Varma is Assistant Professor at Rashtriya Raksha University, Gujarat.
Lt Gen Sanjay Verma PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd) is former Director General Capability Development IHQ of MoD. He is presently Consultant to DRDO.