Gluing cybersecurity with geopolitics
GRU being ingenious. Utilizing an informant in the US to infiltrate the conservative natsec community & plant disinfo on, well, cyber-enabled disinfo ops. Creating a highly blended environment for informational-psychological effects. Reflexive Control redux unlike anything! https://t.co/GPGc7PuXv5
— Pukhraj Singh (@RungRage) August 22, 2020
An observation on the Debbins affair:
Continue reading “An observation on the Debbins affair”
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.
Continue reading “The chimera of cyber offence”“Almost all disinformation operations are imperfect by design, run not by perfectionists, but pragmatists.”
— Thomas Rid in Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
As Thomas Rid quips in his book Active Measures, cyber-enabled information operations are more active but less measured. So, it is rare to see the instance of an old-school disinformation operation that seems to have served its purpose quite effectively.
Active Measures, in the general sense of the term, are rarely this successful, so the operation I am going to discuss certainly stands out.
Continue reading “A ‘perfect’ disinformation op during the India-China-Australia tensions?”The Atlanic Council has released a report on Iranian influence operations, Iranian digital influence efforts: Guerrilla broadcasting for the twenty-first century.
Here are things that I agree or disagree with:
Continue reading “The Atlantic Council’s report on Iranian influence operations”My talk at College of Air Warfare, Secunderabad, delivered on 17th Dec, 2019. Exquisitely titled, “In cyber, the generals should lead from behind.”
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.
Continue reading “On China, it’s time to consider cyber operations – Hindustan Times”My keynote at the ITWeb Security Summit 2019, Johannesburg & Cape Town. This is, by far, my most extensively researched talk.
Talk slides: