cyber operations – Writings of Pukhraj Singh

8th April 20218th April 2021

General Rawat’s comment on the India-China “capability differential” in cyber operations

General Bipin Rawat, India’s first Chief of Defence Staff, made a sort of unusual confession that we may never be able to bridge India’s “capability differential” on cyber operations, when compared to China. And that we “may not be able to fully catch up.” More in this Twitter thread by a journalist.

My hot take on it in three tweets:

Keeping in mind that a lot could get lost in translation from hacker-speak to general-speak, capability differential could become a self-defeating way to think about cyber. It’s fine to have a totally non-overlapping Venn diagram of cyber capabilites, vis-à-vis India & China. https://t.co/QnCeXWgv6K

— Pukhraj Singh (@RungRage) April 7, 2021

Gen. Rawat also endorses the general misassumption of cyber: imagining operations from the conventional precept of “contact.” Both the adversary & you only battle with ambiguity & uncertainty. Non-contact warfare understands that to some extent https://t.co/Ie9ujouB0m

— Pukhraj Singh (@RungRage) April 8, 2021

3/3 More here: “The Competition Continuum and noncontact operations in cyberspace” https://t.co/vvYGqO5tM7 The best articulation of this competition comes from @halvarflake as explained in the post.

— Pukhraj Singh (@RungRage) April 8, 2021

20th December 202020th December 2020

(Telemetry & toolchains) vs. tradecraft: The SolarWinds hack from a strategic lens

To me, the SolarWinds hack is remarkable because it (momentarily) managed to upend one kind of strategy with the other. A broader strategic calculus is palpable from the operational choices made in this intrusion — from the Concept of Operations which underpins it.

13th November 202013th November 2020

Deconstructing Ciaran Martin’s speech in 18 tweets

Ciaran Martin was the founder of the UK’s National Cyber Security Center and the former head of cyber operations at GCHQ. He gave a thought-provoking speech busting many myths around cyber power and cyber operations (text and video ).

I try to deconstruct it in 18 tweets. Click on the tweet to follow the thread:

1. Deconstructing @ciaranmartinoxf‘s speech from a cyber policy perspective in 18 tweets. Here, he alludes to the technical ambiguity which plagues policy work, i.e. reliance on effects-based frameworks. Operators only control effects to a certain degree for complex intrusions pic.twitter.com/HHUyIo07uI

— Pukhraj Singh (@RungRage) November 12, 2020

20th August 202026th September 2020

The chimera of cyber offence

This is a hot take on a recent piece by two National Law University Delhi academicians, Gunjan Chawla and Vagisha Srivastava: What are ‘offensive cyber capabilities’?

The article starts on the right note: briefly pointing out the evolution of terminology using which Western militaries have tried to circumscribe cyber operations within a quasi-legal framework.

23rd June 202010th January 2021

On China, it’s time to consider cyber operations – Hindustan Times

My opinion piece for Hindustan Times: https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/on-china-it-s-time-to-consider-cyber-operations/story-crMraUyDc64taDRHMhEnhP.html.

The recent border clashes between India and China have led analysts, habituated to conventional warfare, to compare the relative strengths of the two adversaries in terms of the number of tanks, aircraft and other military paraphernalia.

It appears that Indian strategic discourse has yet again discounted cyber operations as an instrument of power projection, which could have offered a degree of flexibility when it comes to coercing, compelling and imposing costs on the contentious neighbour. This is unfortunate considering how much Indian think-tanks have glamourised the cyber domain.

20th December 201925th July 2020

“In cyber, the generals should lead from behind” – College of Air Warfare

My talk at College of Air Warfare, Secunderabad, delivered on 17th Dec, 2019. Exquisitely titled, “In cyber, the generals should lead from behind.”

In cyber, the generals should lead from behind – College of Air Warfare – Pukhraj Singh – Dec 2019 from Pukhraj Singh

24th November 201924th November 2019

Lessons from Kudankulam – Part II: Targeting, jointness & offensive toolchains

I may (or may not) do a series of quick posts highlighting the strategic challenges encountered while investigating a cyberattack like Kudankulam. They would be filed under the ‘lessons-from-kudankulam‘ tag. Since our agencies were literally caught napping, this is a good primer for understanding what nation-state-level cyber capabilities entail:

Some dumbified excerpts from my dispatches to the government: