Different take on Kashmir

    A very broad understanding of Relativity is that Point of View depends on Point of Viewing. It is more complicated than that, but it does explain how we interpret things.

    Travelling to Kashmir for work, was always normal and it felt the same this time. The trip was planned in detail, the daily schedule was aligned, contingencies were appreciated and I collected as much data as I could on the intended places of visit & had questions ready. Out on the first flight of the day, the window seat too supported the old routine of terrain analysis & searching for familiar areas from above. Change hit while traversing the Srinagar terminal since now, as someone out of uniform, appreciation of normalcy took centre stage. I had last flown out of SXR in 2016 and security at the airport was more than at any other place. This time, the place still felt secure, yet the security was not visible. 

    On the drive to the city, one saw new cafes, retail outlets, malls & of course, traffic. Suddenly the comparison with other state capitals that I had recently visited brought out the positives of development being afforded to citizens. Though tagged along were the issues of rapid urbanization, guess that is universal.

    Day 1 afternoon the agenda was visiting a business site in Badgam about 25 km away. I last remembered the place as a semi-rural community which we had crossed in a heavily armed convoy. This time, a newly launched store was giving people the opportunity of experiencing organized retail. Out of habit, work started with a structured set of briefings loaded with questions. As we progressed from the ground to the second floor & professional matters covered, the focus shifted to digging deeper into the feel of the store. I am still learning the trade, but I strongly feel that retail is more about people than merchandise. 

    The people echoed a sense of pride & ownership. They were all keen to learn. The team was cohesive & discussions were targeted at becoming better. Dashboards aside, it was evident that the place was in good hands. The best proof came from customers I saw, who came with curious eyes & checked out with bags of clothes. This was not what I had seen in the last work visit to Kashmir & certainly very different from what was read in mainstream media. 

    Back in the room, the night was spent answering emails & questioning my belief system. Was Kashmir back to normal? What is normal? Are a few hours of learning this time enough to negate a few years of learning last time?

    Day 2 started with breakfast surrounded by Gujarati tourists whose volume was directly proportional to their excitement of feeling cold. It was too early for snow, but Jignes bhai (name changed) was optimistic about Pahalgam and the smiles on the family were telling.

    An early start for Anantnag took us through the fog at Pampore. The highway showed exits to places like Tral & Pulwama which were always associated with violence. Again, the drive felt safe but security was hardly visible. 

    The workplace at Anantnag was again reassuring as the scope for improvement was matched by the willingness for improvement. After a few hours of thrashing processes, the discussion over tea, loaded with milk & sugar (could not hurt the intent of hospitality so just drank it) shifted towards the benefits of more, better-paying jobs that were coming into the valley. Organized businesses were slowly becoming a career option as the elimination of 'Bandhs' meant that people could work & get paid throughout the year. A luxury that was only available to government employees earlier. 

    It made a special impact when people discussed the security forces without realizing my past in uniform. Two statements stood out; first, a store owner commented that sales to uniformed persons are a substantial part of his turnover and second the hotel guard, who was from Uri, answering as to why there is no security force on the streets said." How can it be normal, if it doesn't look normal?"

    I was even more comfortable on the ride back to the airport with the driver playing Punjabi rap numbers. The saffron plantations & effect of autumn on Chinar trees did make for good sights but as I took off from Kashmir, the question lingered, is 'normal' back?

    Once home, I searched for recent analyses on Kashmir. Political, Economic, Military & Social. While they all made sense, their vector sum did not align with the reality I saw on the ground. That is the beauty of truth, it does not need to make sense. People may define their own 'normal', but if I just take the set of people of Kashmir that I met, the aspirational Kashmiri is seeking his/her version of Kashmir. For years they have borne the social costs of economic stagnation & the economic costs of social stagnation. Upliftment now is a human right. 

    Listening to people discuss growth possibilities in Bandipore, Kupwara & Baramulla was very heartening. In my last experience, just crossing these areas required reconnaissance & planning. After years of turmoil, someone managing the affairs is doing the right things as the major event in the city was an investor summit instead of a procession or call for a strike at Lal Chowk.

    One may question whether opening organized retail is more important than say a hospital or a school, but where we stand as a nation, all of the above need parallel processing. The space program needs to co-exist with the food distribution to the poor. 

    I saw a Kashmir that is breaking the chains of an uncomfortable past. It is aspirational. It does not want to do the same things that were done earlier and it is ready to take control. This time the feel of Kashmir was different. What impressed me more than the beauty of the place was the determination of this generation to build a better future.

Restarting Bhutan: The Policy Factor

 

    The South Asian region is seeing nations tripping over poor economic decisions made over the past few years. In the Indian neighbourhood, Pakistan is living from bailout to bailout, Sri Lanka is in major turmoil, Bangladesh fears the worst, Nepal is showing cracks & Afghanistan has not had a chance to even look at the economy. Most of these countries have faltered by applying policies that have worked in other countries without (or with) realizing the extreme differences in fiscal realities. As a common factor, Pakistan & Sri Lanka have gone down the Chinese debt trap and Bangladesh & Nepal are on a similar path. The abode of peace, Bhutan was seen as the wise one, biting only as much as it could and pursuing happiness. But of late it has been taking decisions that might put its people on the path of discomfort.

    The Bhutanese economy is largely dependent on Hydropower & Tourism. Hydropower plants financed by India export electricity back to the power-hungry neighbour and generate vital cash flow. Add to this large Indian assistance money & defence support create a major chunk of Bhutan’s money bucket. The country has also been prudent in spending this wealth in ways that protect ecological & economical needs, however, it is walking a tight rope in trying to balance sustainable development & aspiration of people who seek a better life.

    Two years of COVID were met by a predictable government response, isolation. In absence of vital medical facilities & complete dependence on vaccine supplies led to people being made to confine in their communities. This had a major impact on small businesses & trade which was the mainstay of the growing middle class. Even when the world eased lockdowns, Bhutan kept the people confined & only opened institutional trade enabling the government to sustain the population. So, while the numbers showed healthy economic activity, the benefits were only doled out as Kidu. The simplest lay interpretation of kidu is that, in the Bhutanese system, the King personally takes care of the well-being of the people. It is a unique and humane social security system to ensure necessities and livelihood as well as any other aspect of a Bhutanese citizen's life when necessary. The greatness of the gesture is accepted, however, this support while sustaining is not a tool for development.

    A total absence of tourists meant that no hotels, taxis & related businesses had any income. Most connections were lost, skilled manpower reverse-migrated & infrastructure suffered decay of disuse. Small traders who used to import goods from the land ports of Phuentsholing in the South West & Samdrup Jonkar in the South East had to scale down due to reduced demand & difficulty in sourcing. One of the biggest strengths of Indo-Bhutan trade was always the people-to-people relations that integrated commercial lines in both countries & facilitated people-driven growth & exchanges. Economic hubs of Siliguri & Guwahati were always social melting pots hosting mutually beneficial convergence.

    The decline in COVID threat came as good news to people who had prayed for the restoration of normalcy. However, recent policies announced by the Bhutanese government hint at an inclination towards the proclamation of openness with retention of control. The free movement of people across the borders, up to a certain distance for Indians in Bhutan & unrestricted for Bhutanese in India is being changed. Indians can now only venture inside this limited area for 24 hours & will need to undergo certain processing. This limits the flow of casual tourists, labour, traders & others who may not have the luxury of paying for the processes. While India has not given the reciprocal web for the Bhutanese, locals on the Indian side feel that their generous hospitality is being replied to with paper policy tilting the deep relations of equality cherished by people from both sides.

    In search of high-value-low-volume tourism, Bhutan has announced an increased visitor fee for all tourists. This again will end up affecting the budget traveller & the affordable hotel businesses in Bhutan. While Bhutan may assume a larger per-person spend from the tourists, the high-end tourist infrastructure is very limited & does not match the service standards offered in a similar process, globally.

    These two decisions appear to be influenced by similar policies in other nations. Japan has a "sayonara tax". The 1,000 Yen ($9.25) fee, is paid by international visitors as they leave the country. This is reasonable as tourists on average get the value for money in return. Bhutan charging about $200 each from international tourists & Rs 1200 for Indian tourists may end up stunting its own travel industry. While the bigger players & government may see larger revenue, it is the smaller businesses that will end up suffering. Similarly, the travel restrictions are most likely to create a situation of reduced interactions. This is strange as for decades it was this free cultural exchange that created the unique social blend of Bhutan.

    These decisions have an eerie similarity with actions in the neighbourhood. Sri Lanka had suddenly decided that they will go pure organic farming without giving time for the logistics chain & related ecosystem to develop. Unfortunately, it was the people in the lowest part of the pyramid who suffered and had to face the brunt of an economic collapse. Leaderships seeking control always prefer to control the flow of men & materials and then deciding distribution of welfare. 

    The people of Bhutan are free to choose the type of aspirations they want to be materialized through development. However, textbook policies, in their original form, have a limited place in the real world. Despite a large hydropower setup, & exports, Bhutan still needs to import power in the off-season. The delays in developing new projects & absence of other streams like Solar / Wind still keep Bhutan energy insecure. I am certain that it is understood that smaller businesses keep the household income up and directly impact the happiness index so cherished by the country. Income from institutional trade does add to the government revenue, but only has a median impact on household growth. Policies that isolate people and impede collaboration mostly go against basic social constructs. Bhutan may need to diversify its revenue streams, address grassroot realities and focus on the skill development of its population to offer people choices to decide their future. Choices that can be exercised & materialized & not just traded for happiness. 

Chinese Information Influence in Bhutan

    We can choose our friends but not neighbours. Bhutan is wedged between the two Asian giants, India & China. Historically, the Himalayan nation has sought peace & maintained focus on Gross National Happiness (GNH), but as China continues expansionism & India unwilling to buckle, this precarious situation of the Drukpas remains a critical challenge.

    Three attributes mainly dictate national relations: Geography, Culture & Trade. With gradual plains in the south & steep peaks towards the north, even before the enthronement of the Wangchucks in 1907, the flow of people & trade was mostly from the Indian side. Chumbi Valley route did offer access to Tibet, but years of Mongol-Tibetan Invaders kept faith low on promises of riches from the north. Buddhism came to Bhutan in 747 AD, but unlike the Gelugpa (Yellow Hats) sect from Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet the Bhutanese majority follows Nyingmapa (Red hats) sect with important monasteries located at Paro, Bumthang (in Bhutan) & Tawang (in India). Even the Kolkata-Malbazaar-Sikkim Silk route that had trade tributaries integrated from Bhutan, was mostly a South to North flow of merchandise. Thus, Bhutan organically aligned with the southern side on historical fundamentals & not on post-colonial ideals.

    The 2019 boundary deal between Bhutan & China, did produce a steam let-off in the relations, but with imagery of Chinese settlements in isolated border areas of Bhutan, their promises look to be as reliable as their products. With ‘control’ as the aim, China intends to go for the bigger prize in Bhutan, ‘influence.’ The toolkit is already in motion.

    In targeted Influence Operations, the slight, imperceptible, incremental change in behaviour is the objective. The strongest play in this game is ‘habituation’. If a person develops a habit of accessing information, in a particular way, his habit can be exploited to implant perceptions. Chinese activism seeks to exploit: weak state institutions, fragile civil societies, or countries where “elite capture” is a feature of the political landscape. With a GINI Index of 37.4 & GNH a priority, Bhutan is not an easy target, but the fragile stability does offer opportunities in three ways:

• Chinese influence that shapes or constrains choices and opinions of local political and economic elites.
• Chinese activities that influence or constrain the parameters of local media and public opinion.
• China’s impact on local civil society and academia.

    With the onboarding of democracy & cultural opening-up in Bhutan, communication platforms were the first inroad targeted by the Chinese. The Bhutan InfoCom & Media Authority lists many active newspapers, with the major ones being Kuensel & The Bhutanese publishing in English & Dzongkha. A scan of these will indicate perceived freedom for journalists to comment on local issues, Indian issues & global news but a minimal critique on the state. While not much is picked up by these papers from the Chinese media, Indian discourse seems to find editorial interest. This undertow of highlighting the noisy Indian democracy seems to be the first straw in managing information flow for the Chinese operatives.

    On the internet front, the majority of Bhutanese took to WeChat as the community messaging service (I don’t call it social media). Only a small group that needed to communicate with contacts in India adopted Whatsapp. The WeChat ecosystem has provided easy opportunities to proliferate anti-India sentiments and sometimes even anti-west information. On social media too, the Bhutanese access broadband information, including Chinese Social media, which at any level is just state propaganda because these platforms are banned for the Chinese public. In major population centres like Phuentsholing, Thimphu & Paro, discussion boards on Facebook reveal sharing & commenting on common threads like issues with infrastructure developed by Indian organisations, aspirations of elite-tourism (high paying travellers only), and social issues in India. While people should be free to discuss anything they like, everything comes with a context & a budgetary reality. If not accorded the correct perspective, these discussions are certain to get mainstreamed. Unwillingly influencing free choice.

    Armed with spare cash accumulated from trade excesses with the world, China offered $10 Billion to Bhutan in 2017, during the peak of the Doklam crisis. Now, this was symbolic against what India integrates with Bhutan, but was clearly vectored towards a debt trap since it far exceeded the absorptive capacity of the Bhutanese economy. While India offers assistance & sustainable hydropower investments, Chinese financial help to countries is mostly turning into long-term headaches, Sri Lanka being the latest victim.

    Anyone who has travelled there will agree that Bhutan is a peaceful abode. It is not perfect but the general aspiration is to live in this imperfect harmony. However, this balance is as dynamic as the definition of happiness. People today are exposed to luxuries & they continue to climb Maslow’s pyramid, with time. Carbon Negative & GNH concepts are getting redefined. Today, Beautiful valleys aside, Ferro-Silicon Industries in Pasakha on the Indian border spew effluents that have continuously degraded the quality of tea from the gardens on the Indian side. The Barsa river water bears the ill effects of these industries as it flows into India and the effects from factories at Samste, Gelephu is the same. COVID induced tourism ban has shattered the low/middle-end tourism industry dependent on tourists from the nearby Indian States. This impacted a large number of Bhutanese livelihoods and speaks of the robustness of medical facilities available. The Lhotshompa expulsion issue may be suppressed now, but it will always be a chapter of Bhutanese history. Ideals are easy, civilisation is costly.

View of Pasakha Industrial Area (Bhutan) From Central Dooars Tea Estate (India)

    It may have faults, but the Bhutanese people do deserve ‘Sovereignty’. Of land, of choice & of their way of life. The influence of media may just be the next step towards continued expansion by China inside the Land of Thunder Dragon. Sometimes, the worst part for Bhutan seems to be the need for choosing between things it does not want.

Damaged Goods Left Behind in Afghanistan

We all like to get new gadgets, buy new vehicles & collect implements that make our lives easier. The shine of a new phone, the smell of a new car & the sound of a new machine always lifts us. However, as someone who spent the last few decades maintaining, repairing & restoring stuff, I am a firm believer that something that doesn’t work when needed, is as good as not there.

After overtaking Afghanistan, the Taliban were delighted to discover the spoils of war. Billions of dollars worth of military equipment left behind by the Americans & allies. From a sheer scale point of view, this made the Taliban the best-equipped terror group in the world. Reality hit when they realized that most of the higher-tech equipment like aircraft, helicopters & other weapon systems were rendered unserviceable before discarding them into the hands of the Taliban. 

While rudimentary small weapons like the Russian AKs hardly need any care, to keep a helicopter air-worthy or a radar/radio mission reliable is a technical & logistical ballet, pretty hard to master. 

One may wonder why anyone will leave such expensive & sophisticated war machinery on their way out of the battle zone, knowing fully well that it will find its way into the hands of the enemy? It all boils down to time & cost. While it took two decades to accumulate the equipment in Afghanistan, the decision to withdraw gave the allies just months to extricate soldiers, material & even afghans who were embedded into the operations. Pakistan had reaped many benefits extracting transit fees from over-land convoys supporting IASF till 2014 & the Americans thereafter, the same routes were not prudent for going back. Faced with the high cost & limited lift capacities of aircraft, it made more sense to leave the equipment behind than to haul it back.

While managing the lifecycle of any equipment, the decision to discard is quantified in terms of the economics of sustainment. Once inducted in the battlefield, the equipment value depreciates with use and if the cost of maintaining the system exceeds half of its residual value, it makes less sense to sustain the system. Media reports are full of coverage on damaged hardware left over by the American forces and how the Taliban must be regretting their premature celebrations on inheriting the latest war toys. As of now, it appears that the Taliban has limited capacity to make these weapon systems fit-for-use, but I would not disregard the ingenuity of self-taught technicians in innovating repairs. They may not be Tony Stark, but the influence of places like Darra Adam Khel is always lurking.

The disintegration of the USSR taught us that weapon stockpiles coupled with crippled economies make perfect targets for weapons trafficking. The situation in Afghanistan & the unfastened control of various Taliban warlords gives a direct pipeline for Pakistan to do what it does best. Export terror. 

At a very broad level, military logistics is a system of activities, capabilities & processes that connect a nation’s economy to the battlefield. The outcome of this process is the establishment of a ‘well’ from which the forces draw their combat potential. It is certainly an expensive well.  Obsessed with ruling through the barrel of a gun, the Taliban leadership will dedicate substantial resources to operationalize the military equipment & infrastructure sidelining national needs expected from governments. It remains to be seen who moves into this business with the Taliban since the real value of any conflict is the debt that it produces. 

The Americans may have lost a big stockpile of hardware, but from a simple cost-benefit, they gained a trouble-free exit while their opposite side was rejoicing the illusion of gains. Smaller weapons that were taken over do not pose any major threat to the west and a peaceful Afghanistan is far too complicated a game. But in the optics of it all, the US not only displaced Russians as the last empire to retreat from Afghanistan but also changed the image of terror from a traditionally dressed man holding an AK-47 to a Taliban in modern combat gear holding an M4. Sometimes we are collateral damage in our war against ourselves.

What is 'not' being said on Afghanistan

For thousands of years, life in Afghanistan flourished. Geography dictated lifestyles with vast valleys and barren stretches, grouping tribes with different takes on living. The imposition of modern social constructs started with this collection of tribal identities being defined in the boundary of the nation-state of Afghanistan. Empires thereafter tried their best to ‘manage’ this landlocked place, only to add entropy and leave. Today, the world is live-viewing a human calamity with the Afghans having the illusion of freedom as a choice.  

In a very cold and callous way, countries are doing in / for Afghanistan whatever is necessary (for them). It may be an over-simplification, but this simple statement can be injected with reality when we start defining ‘necessary’. Certainly, Peru is not in the field, but the customary suspects of the ‘perpetual great game’, are. The US, et al left because they did not want to focus on winning a game that will soon become irrelevant to domestic politics. Russia played the silent watch game, waiting for someone to remove them from the unwanted position of the last empire buried in Afghanistan. Pakistan gained from war profiteering in its Strategic Depth & its master China is now looking at an unavoidable involvement, even if just to prove that it is a superpower. 

It seems to be a checklist of superpower-ship; amassed wealth, powerful military, interventionist policies & involvement in Afghanistan. The Chinese hope not to repeat the mistakes of the Greeks, the Mongols, the British, the Soviets, and finally the Americans and their allies, but new mistakes will still be mistakes. If Afghanistan sinks into chaos, it could become a serious obstacle on the way to a stable and secure "Silk Road", China’s global infrastructure development strategy. Beyond serving as a sanctuary for anti-Western terrorists, unruly Muslim fundamentalists in power in Kabul might be eager to support the Uighur cause in China.

Stakeholders like United States, China, India, and Russia articulate two interests that justify allocating resources to stabilize Afghanistan:

• Preventing terrorist groups from establishing secure bases

• Promoting the economic rise of continental South Asia by securing investments in connectivity and integrating Afghanistan into those networks. (BRI, Rare-earths etc)

The best way to realize both of these objectives is to establish an effective state in Afghanistan, which raises the question of who will build it, pay for it, and fight for it. Taliban doesn’t seem to emerge as an answer to these questions. Even historically, No Afghan ruler or government has been able to build and sustain a state within its territory using solely domestic resources. The presence of foreign donors or security providers, as well as economic cooperation with some neighbours, can threaten other regional players.  While the stabilization of Afghanistan produces a partial public good for the international community, the actors who establish such stability eventually exploit the position they acquire in their own interest. Both the Soviets in the 1980s and the US since 2001 intended to “stabilize” Afghanistan in ways consistent with their interests. But rivals and adversaries such as Pakistan and Iran, the United States (against the Soviets), China (likewise), and Russia (versus the United States), perceived their efforts as threatening, even when those states also benefited from the limited stability imposed by the foreign presence.

Given Afghanistan’s economic and demographic profile as well as its linguistic, religious, ethnic, and economic links to neighbouring countries, virtually any neighbour or great power can destabilize the country at minimal cost by offering benefits to clients willing to fight. So how do you find common ground when the vector sum of individual interests is zero? Should the world let the Afghans find their path? 

It is too early to conclude the analysis. For now, away from the news, one might like to focus on what is ‘not’ being said on Afghanistan:

• China’s diplomatic dealings with Taliban

• Race for the Lithium deposits

• How the Taliban allowed all western (enemy)  military personnel to leave, unharmed.

• Should UNAMA now consider peacekeeping 

• Indo-Afghanistan trade through Chabahar

• Will the Taliban remain contended with Afghanistan or will they……

And finally, Pakistan. What new play does that bewilderment of a nation have to ensure that it continues to extort rent threatening its own collapse?

To Be Contd.....

Messaging in Troubled Times

The second wave amplified the lessons of the first. Some were learned. Some were not. Most were forgotten. There might be a shortage of medical supplies & many other things, but information overdose is a reality.

 Earlier, information sources were in the custody of a few then web 2.0 made everyone a ‘seeder & a leacher’ of information online. This democratized information but skewed data-to-noise ratio. There is a certain alienation in digital communication. Not being fact to face, delayed feedback, devoid of non-verbal aspects and easy anonymity are a few of the parts that take the feel away.

 Groups on community messaging services like WhatsApp, following on social media platforms like Instagram & Twitter etc make joining any conversation possible. The urge is understood but not bereft of responsibility. Platforms are full of false info, tangential conclusions and utter noise masking the critical factual data. The ‘Pandemic’ is now accompanied by the ‘Infodemic’.

 In the pandemic, people have been marked, stereotyped, discriminated against, viewed negatively, and suffered status loss due to a perceived contact with a disease. In addition, high levels of stress and anxiety was experienced by people due to significant changes in their day-to-day life, social structures and movements. To top that, information professing helplessness & fear might be a good ploy to sell products or modify offline behaviour, but is certainly not aligned to a nationally beneficial perspective.

 Did we get hit again? Yes! Is someone at fault? Yes! But purely in the realm of information management, the most important factor is to empower the people with the right information. Sadly, it is complex to be simple.

 Effective communication is proactive, polite, imaginative, innovative, creative, constructive, professional, progressive, energetic, enabling, transparent and technology-friendly. However, there are multiple factors playing a key role in accepting information, like social and cultural characteristics. Gender, generational contrasts, language inclinations, strict convictions, religious beliefs, and varying literacy influence the action of the masses. To package information in a way that it presents the needed facts, in time & conveyed in a way that it gets accepted and acted upon is the big win. This is the integral job of all the official Twitter handles, Facebook pages etc and they need to be manned by specialists who can keep up with technology & calamity.

 Information on oxygen shortage clutters information on oxygen availability. It would be prudent to have a setup informing the reality of medical support availability and even availability of first-care information on how to approach symptoms. Today, it is crowdsourcing that is the real source of info, a simple analytic tool can converge feeds, mine info and make user data available.

 Communicating responsibly is everyone’s job. Highlighting ills is important but so is selling hope. And somewhere in between lies the need of plain information away from all the padding of politics, marketing, greed & sometimes just habits. Crisis response communication setups are the need of the hour. They need not necessarily be government-run. The setup will encompass manpower, hardware, technology and cross-departmental chain-linking. Private players can add value, incorporate innovation & be commercially viable for long-term sustenance & growth. Data integrity & security can always be imposed based on law-of-the-land info governance.

 Deaths due to covid are human statistics & not just numbers. The narrative controls have blurred all responsibilities. From the originators, the spreaders, the faulty planners & opportunity grabbers to everyone who has been an accomplice in “forwarded as received” acts. The need for a specialist information dissemination mechanism is as critical as the spread of the virus.

Hope feels that this pandemic will be over soon, but it might not be our last. There are many things that we need to get right, information management is vital as it will always be the common thread, whatever the next wave or type of calamity be.

 

 

 

 

Force Preservation in the Online Social Domain – A Digital Camouflage

In this age of Digital Socialisation, the digital realm is increasingly becoming an important dimension of the contemporary battle-space. Much has been said and done about cyber-threats, however extremely limited or no attention is paid to the challenges that arise from the malicious use of openly available digital information on and around military organisations.

 Today, The adversary does not need significant resources or advanced cyber capabilities. To pose a threat, social media and connected technologies are easily accessible and they provide information and infrastructure that can be exploited by anyone with access to an internet-enabled computer.

 Social Media is a mix of human psychology (read social behaviour) with the internet of things. This is correct except that the human angle appears to be 70% and the network, the balance 30%. The personal internet was available even in the early 90s, but it was then the synthesis of the human urge to communicate with a person (a face) vis an IP address that brought the explosive growth of social media platforms. The arrival of the smartphone, the handheld connected computer, brought the world into our palms. The benefits of this convergence are many. That said, phones to watches, everything is becoming a computer. It may be surely an achievement to rejoice, but if everything is becoming a computer, then it is to be understood that everything is also becoming a potential surveillance device.

 The survival of any military force is a principal consideration in strategic planning and decision-making. It has implications that extend well beyond military operations and into issues such as public support and political cohesion. It is evident every day how the nation’s military protects it’s members. Recently media highlighted the steps taken by the Army for safeguarding soldiers against the coronavirus, over and above the measures constituted by the government. We have also seen how the security of various bases & ports, to guard these vital assets is a military function. Similar to such physical security, digital security is also an aspect that keeps the military planners on their toes.

 We have heard measures like app ban, smartphone ban, wearable devices ban etc highlighted in various reports coming out from the military. I won't deny that they are effective, but there is no silver bullet solution here. Being such pervasive technology, apps like Facebook and devices like smartphones & smartwatches are virtually adsorbed onto our daily lives. Their functionality is today a necessity with e-banking, e-commerce and even crucial contact tracing platforms being inescapable requirements. Thus, such a non-implementable total digital isolation, as a protective measure, is of limited value, to say the least.

 Separating mobile phones from defence personnel in official areas or during exercises and operations may be critical for operational security in many contexts, but it does not remedy the complex threats in the digital domain. An individual’s digital footprint is created over a period. The allied data-points get collected over years of internet activity, is processed through machine learning & artificial intelligence-based computational processes, creating an online profile. Leaving the smartphone outside a particular office, 5 days a week is a simple indicator that you work inside that office. Subroutines transmitting such location data from your device are even embedded in basic map applications and one does not need covert surveillance infrastructure to extract the same. Similar results can be concluded from analyzing any other interfaced app. Flightradar24 gives info on even Airforce C-17 flights, geotagged selfies have been known to reveal even isolated border locations and it does not matter if the photo is shared on Facebook or Whatsapp or even just emailed, the location metadata is embedded in the pic and has nothing to do with the app.

 The military may isolate the individual, but crowd-sourced open information has become a simpler way of getting critical inputs. Recently, a twitter handle posted an old photograph having officers of an elite unit. While many of those may have retired, the comments to the tweet by people having the urge to participate in a discussion, showcase their awareness and naturally seek acknowledgement, gave away the identities of many in the photograph. Cases of people identifying areas and commenting on the military significance of the same are routine and unfortunately can’t be wished away. Information about military capabilities, such as personnel and equipment numbers, can even be obtained from civilian and commercial sensors, such as footage from publicly available or misconfigured traffic and CCTV cameras. It is not that one event is detrimental to the security, but it is the long-term information matrix that can be webbed from such data points that creates the concern.

 The defeat of an adversary, by whatever mechanism, is a cognitive outcome. It is the accumulated stresses of combat and perceptions of a situation that leads to fear, flight, or surrender. A military can be made to perceive the enemy’s relative advantages as a battle unfolds and conclude (through cognition) that the cost of continuing will exceed the possible benefits. Trained for kinetic warfare, military leaders struggle to engage with the complete spectrum of the cyber domain, especially the open domain espionage. The adversary is so distributed that conventional thought of carpet-bombing or armoured punch-through can’t be employed and force-wide digital isolation is not a realistic long-term possibility.

This is where active, adaptive digital camouflage can appear as an option.

 Camouflage, as a concept, is many times confused with concealment. To camouflage is to merge with the surroundings to make you indiscernible to the observer whereas to conceal is to protect from view. Digital camouflage works on enmeshing military digital information with other ‘noise data’ thereby denying the enemy the ability to zero in on the information and process it into intelligence. But this has to be pre-emptive and adaptive. Pre-emptive measures that create systemic resilience against the malicious use of digital information are critical. Raising awareness about adversarial risks related to the social media information environment is a critical first step, but this general awareness needs augmentation with specific education activities, internal communication measures, evolving regulations etc. This countermeasure is likely to be preferred by militaries as it is based on fundamental deception operations. The measures should protect critical information in one or more of the following ways: minimizing predictable patterns of online behaviour & camouflaging indicators when they can’t be avoided by pairing them with meaningless changes giving out an alternative interpretation for the indicators. Once military commanders adapt these aspects in their mission plan, technical specialists can be tasked for implementation.

 

Extracting information from the open internet, especially with an overdose of social media posts, is an abundance of low-hanging fruit, where a small investment can pay large dividends. One can counter the adversary only by proactively keeping him occupied in the OODA loop. A distributed denial of opportunities, planned into the operational philosophy is the future on our doorstep. Camouflage is useful for concealment, but it is not a replacement for offensive capabilities. Force preservation in the digital domain needs to be integral in our strategic communication plan.

Agile Military

 In the study of considerations of various military operations the phrase “Flexibility” comes up often. The word assumes greater importance as it is a critical feature when we discuss offensive or defensive operations, counter insurgency or logistics & administration. In execution of any of these, the key is flexibility for a favorable result. The limitations in warfare are multifold complex and, in some ways, complicated when compared to writing concepts, even logical ones. People involved in defense force know that in hierarchical organisations like the services, flow of info, orders and authority is linear. Most documents and execution follow the waterfall concept where steps are sequential and quantified.

 

One would expect military organisations to be nimble and adaptive, for the simple reason that they plan for variable situations including the one which is least likely as a contingency. In the execution phase, these ‘set plans’ bring in a realm of order enabling ‘control’ and ‘predictability’ of successive phases. This attribute of planning actually changes the ‘design flexibility’ to a ‘constrained flexibility’.

 

We continue to evolve our concepts of operations by reeling in perspectives from the Age of Information. The ever-evolving technology in this age and its applications, plus connectivity, have evolved from the limited access to cross-linked information-based decision support systems.

 

The challenges of the 21^st Century like HADR, Non-State Actors, Nationless Corporations, Asymmetric Warfare & even Rogue States, are problems beyond the ability of any single actor or even a small set of very capable actors. For a successful handling of these challenges, the solution must involve a large, heterogeneous collective of entities working together. This collective is itself, complex and dynamic.

 

A more reasonable label for today’s world is the ‘Age of Interactions’. The Compounding technologies that layer above the framework of networks have given us unimaginable real-time interactions. Resultantly, events that may once have had isolated consequences, now generate consequences that have ripple effects and can quickly spin out of control. The viral nature of today’s interactions requires changes considering uncertainties and risks associated with complex endeavors. They cannot be reduced to manageable modules. What is needed is, both, a new mindset and problem-solving strategy. The most promising approach is to increase Agility. While agility is going to be an existential capability in the Age of Interactions, it is not an end unto itself and thus not a capability that should be maximized. Reasonable agility that can be sustainably scaled is the balance point between agile and traditional approaches.

 

Militaries seek hybrid structures and yet constrain the evolution with ‘command & control’. The word "control" does not describe it best because it indicates the philosophy that complex situations can be controlled; a sort of checklist giving options & actions to counter any emerging situations. This is a dangerous oversimplification. In the emerging multi-dimensional battlefield, the best that one can do is to create a set of conditions that improve the probability that a desirable outcome will occur and to change the condition when what is expected is not occurring. “Control” therefore is an emergent property, not an option to be selected.

 

Mapping from Scrum values, it appears that Focus & Convergence are more reasonable versions of Command and Control. They capture the essential aspects of command and control. They can also easily be understood by individuals without any prior knowledge of, or experience in the same. It appears more reasonable in situations of rapid grouping / regrouping of modular combat entities in maneuver warfare or any other entity that will be self-organizing as the operations progress.  These words do not carry any preconceived notions of how to achieve objectives. The focus hints directly at what is to be accomplished while being independent to the existence of someone in charge. Similarly, convergence denotes what the phrase “control” is meant to achieve without asserting the sequence / path.  

 

Incorporating agility cannot be a task. Change for change’s sake is not Agility. Agility implies effectiveness. An entity’s capabilities and behaviors cannot be agile unless they enable the entity to maintain or improve it’s measures of value. Being agile requires responsiveness. In order to be responsive, an entity must be able to recognize, in a timely manner, potentially significant changes in the external macro and microenvironment (read an adversary, or to itself). It should be able to recognize what would be a proportionate response. An appropriate response would include timely acting. In the context of military, agility will always be uniquely defined as per the threats & the capacities or the enablers & impediments exclusive to us. Given this, within the framework, how do we ingrain agility?

 

The first key to agility is “People”. To have an agile force, scrumming needs to be done on this resource, to etch agile practices. The upgrade to an agile manpower to the military is a complex problem.  HR teams will need to continuously deliver on this. It’s a military force; there can be no down time to process the changes.  It might be easy to change the way people work but extremely difficult to change the way people think. Militaries are virtually living microcosms drilled in battle procedures, which are exact opposite of agile. There are existing aspects that can be leveraged for easing in agility, for example hierarchy. In making organizational level changes, like theaterisation & joint commands, frameworks like Scrum (a modified version customized for target teams focused on envisaged desired structures) can be gradually incorporated in the hierarchy. This could be done on manageable collectives to eventually cover the entire services. This would be beneficial as these hierarchies are grouped to train, operate & deliver as units.

 

We are a successful military with sound principles. Why do we need to incorporate organisation-wide changes that are so radical to our fundamentals?

 

This is not a call for change. It is a case for adapting, improving and getting prepared to avoid a ‘future shock’. It may appear to be a conceptual journey across the landscape. It comprises of Complexity with variables of people, networks and the nature of command & control. In the end no structural or functional change in a military organisation can be called sustainable if it is not agile enough for mitigating continuous change. The exchequer would prefer Adaptive Organisations for Effect Based Operations. These aren’t possible while using world war constructs and yet this is not something out of the blue. Special Forces are the ready examples of an agile outfit. They place Individuals and interactions over processes, mission success over milestones, resource collaboration beyond designated tasks & responding to change over following a plan.

 

That’s an agile military manifesto.

Territorial Claims: China’s Greed

Time is analog. No country, that exists as today, has had a perfect run. History of the world, though the best chronology of our life on the planet, suffers from the flaw of human subjectivity. It ranges from being revealing and enlightening at times to just being a set of lies, agreed upon. So from what we have and what we can make out from it, civilizations, countries and nation states have had their ups and downs and those transitions have defined something bigger than just history; our evolution.

 

I had written about the obsolescence of imperialism in today’s world (https://lifeingigahertz.blogspot.com/2020/05/crimea-river.html) and how the same begets diminishing returns. But while the world maneuvers through challenging times, China, has started serving us it’s Revenge Soup, a dish served (cold) after brewing for a century (of humiliation). For those who like to maintain lists, the smallest one today would surely be titled: China’s Friends. With the middle kingdom, all that is needed to suffer a territorial dispute is physical proximity. If you live near China, then Beijing wants your land.

 

2020 has taught us how fragile our comfort zones are. The marvels of the last century, from industrialization, technology, globalization and digital prosperity, have all been proven weak in front of life threatening events like the corona virus spread. Fundamentals of economic demand and supply failed in the absence of emotional or psychological demand (i.e. People, with money refusing to buy goods / services). The business of excess, that boosted global consumerism and gave rise to double-digit growth, lies idle, shattering the virtual value bubble we had assumed as our datum. Fiat currencies served well for naturalizing virtual wealth derived from hedges and futures, fooling us into a manipulative transactional system. However, bereft of a gold standard, the same do not shoulder the strength to stabilize a real crash when the astronomical debt will need physical mitigation.

 

This is where China has modulated from imperialism to expansionism. Realizing that a majority of money wealth today is just bytes on a system and can be manipulated and controlled through democratic banking systems, the yearning of the “Real” estate as the scale of future power and influence is what china seeks. Be it through debt-traps, military posturing or straight buyouts, china is after land, the one resource completely out of production. In 2014, China supplanted Canada as the largest share of foreign buyers of US residential real estate, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. In 2018 dollars, Chinese buyers accounted for roughly 25% of total foreign investment in US residential real estate. The case is the same in other countries, like in Africa where large agricultural tracts now bear Han ownership to even military bases in Djibouti that fit the three considerations of property ownership: location, location and location.

 

As an emotional response, one would say it is instinctive that "the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth” but this is where countries need to differ from individuals. It is complex to void responsibility of ills inflicted by past generations but once we graduate from individual to national consciousness, the current greater good deems higher precedence than past balance sheets. And if we all apply salt to historical hurt, then the whole humanity would be at conflict with itself and probably would have self destroyed by now. But with the passage of time, complicated human nature has accepted the reality of forgetting, even if not forgiving, history.

 

Coming back to time and it’s analog nature, we are all just in phases of our existence. Centuries ago, Rome was the biggest power, Greece in another time, Mongols once reigned the world, Cholas ruled the seas and Sun did not set under the Union Jack. Yet here we are today, a new phase with new players trying to rule the world.  A few millennia from now, this all will just be timestamps and faded memories.

 

If we apply the convoluted historical logic for claims, should India be asking for the Maurya Empire, or the Chola, or the Mughal? How far back do we go? As the fourth largest country in the world, a few or even a few thousand square miles will not change the geography of China and even a few million square miles wont douse its greed justified by the excuse of humiliation. Till China moves on to its next quest with the mindset of another phase of evolution, the world has no other way but to counter this animalistic urge with sticks and stones. India has a tough draw despite the Himalayan barrier and China’s assertions now border on humour with perpetual changing boundary claims and hankering on global media platforms, ironically banned in its own mainland. For a nation focused on human upliftment, we are doing well in handling these sideshows. We can just go ahead making more friends; it is for the Chinese to see how far do they want to go before being consumed by their own fire.

Anechoic Rescue

It is hard to say, whether there is an increase in the number of conflicts or just an increase in the number of conflicts being reported. The 21^st century might best be defined by the information revolution, but there is a long way to go and we still have another six months to survive 2020. The word ‘conflict’ primarily takes us into the realm of battles & wars, however, that aside, we today are facing conflicts of belief, accepted truths and perspectives that are getting eroded away because of our ever changing definition of life.

 

For a long time, living has been defined through quantized levels above survival. The genius of man, built upon a mammal that could stand on two feet, had opposable thumbs and proportionally the largest brain, gave this blue planet a civilization highly evolved in all sensory experiences. As true as the existence of matter & anti-matter, humans have balanced the tussle between their good and evil. Our development brought great value and learning, but everything that makes life easy is not necessarily good. We, today, have both the best medicines to cure and the worst weapons to hurt.

 

In such a scenario, it is information that makes each human more equal as the possession of the same bears no physical limits. Realized to be vital, the control of this democracy, bereft of rabble, is today the battlefield of Internet giants and governments alike. The simpler times that we reminisce had little info flow, limited options and thus the bliss of ignorance. Issues existed as much as today. The Moore’s Law growth has given us more but has started a fire that has become self-consuming in nature. A crucial part of information architecture is to design a user experience or user interface to ensure that just the right amount of information appears on a webpage or app screen: enough to make it relevant but not so much that it causes information anxiety which is not only a capitalistic side effect but also a symptom of our desire to not focus on the moment. The two combined are the reason and alibi for our ever-losing searches for facts on where we are today.

 

As the major focus on all news media nowadays, the data on Black Lives Matter on platforms like google search, AI driven articles, social media and commercial news (that is the closest I can phrase them) has muddled a social uprising into a cultural and political leverage for infructuous sloganeering leading towards everything except a rational path to the solution. The news on the clashes between the Indian and Chinese Armies on the Indo-Tibet Line of Actual Control too is so overloaded with expert-analyses that the small amount of official versions fade away in doubts. Corona Virus is holding on to relevance at a high cost of lives, but information flow on any of these issues has neither aided resolution nor aspired the confidence of truth. Then why do we fuel this?

 

·      We love being victims: While there is a psychological reason, but our addiction to bad news is the easy proof on this.

·      We are Bored: Event info is constantly updating giving us something to constantly consume. Just see the screen times we waste on just surfing.

·      Perpetual availability: The media has trained us to expect fast news and instant updates as the default way to stay informed.

·     Virtual Social Capital: By constantly consuming, we always have something new to share with friends and colleagues, thus positioning ourselves as being ‘in the know’. The number of people with the ‘I’ syndrome on social media is one indicator.

·      We ‘binge consume’ info: We approach info like the next episode of a Netflix Series. We are desperate to find out what happens next and follow the narrative to its conclusion, which keeps us clicking for more.

Information Overload is not the same as “Sensory Overload.” This is when your mind is bombarded with images, sounds and sensations that overload the brain. The brain can handle tens of millions of signals from our senses every second. Think of the number of light sensors within the eye, and equate this to the resolution of a digital camera (and the corresponding file size of the photos it produces). Then include the thousands of touch-sensitive areas of the body, and the range of our hearing. But we can still deal with all of this, because the brain has had tens of millions of years of evolution to deal with this. Compare those tens of millions of years to the few decades we’ve been dealing with information such as TV & Internet. Our brains are still learning to deal with this.

 

So in the scheme of things, there are the information controllers (facebook, google, news channels), the people who pay for that (advertisers / sovereign propaganda) and then there is ‘you’. Yes, you deserve to know. It is your right. But do you need to know? Is it relevant? And do you need it all the time? Most of the info we crave is “Just-In-Case” while it could even be acceptable “Just-In-Time”. De-clutter your life. Don’t let technology fool you into being in control of information. Your twitter notifications, or instagram likes are just added echoes to the noise you don’t need in the first place. They fog your thoughts and prevent you from listening to yourself. Make your space anechoic and listen to your thoughts. If god never wanted you to listen to yourself, the ears would have been far from the brain.

 

I don’t advise isolation, we are social animals. Internet media is a great platform with endless possibilities. Network news is a good check on the powers and open information is great empowerment. It is just that ‘you’ need to be in control. Like medicines, there is an ideal Minimal Effective Dose (MED). Every pill has an MED, and after that specific dose, no other positive effect occurs and overdose is obviously harmful. Consuming information is somewhat similar. You need just a precise amount of it to help you to achieve your goals and put your plans into action. Anything more than that won’t improve your results any further and overload is the bane we want to avoid.

 

In this age of information, “you” are the product and you, yourself, are the buyer. Value yourself.

Up Above the World. So High.

Air Travel, in the times of Corona is more like a necessary evil. Flying commercial still remains the fastest and the most convenient way to move around, especially after getting habitual of a few hour hops vs an overnighter on the road. We are still arguing that international flights, primarily from hotspots in China and other nations should have been stopped late last year only and saved us the agony of a rising curve that was predicted to flatten. The prudence of that aside, the ability of air travel in carrying the virus has certainly been accepted and has changed the airline industry for good.

 

Today, taking a flight implies masking up for the cab journey with a topping of gloves and healthy dollops of sanitizer till just the security check. One is then layered with a face shield and if you are unlucky in the middle row, a PPE gown to save you from your neighbours, in the socially cramped economy class. Fear, precaution or just instructions to follow, the feel of flights is history and it has also taken away the oddly satisfying meals and the seriously debatable coffee that kept you up but made the next seat guy snore away.

 

Emotions are strange chemical reactions. They make seemingly quantized events like going from Place A to B an experience to remember and letting go, a hard choice. The recent take off was ironically a sinking feeling. It was a “Surgical Strike” on the senses with the cabin smelling of strong disinfectant and the crew dressed like surgeons. From being a poly-sensory experience that I was looking for, the flight got downgraded to candy crush and a constant nagging in the head, “are we there yet?” It offends the human ego that nature is indifferent to us. However much we want, the mother elephant and her unborn are not coming back and this virus is not going away. Living with difficult truths, unfortunately, is normal.

 

Another view on this new reality of protective gear and sanitizing liquids is on the volume of discard these single use items create. Their medical-hazard aside, the pollution side-show itself is a big add, on the plastic choking of the planet. The 170 odd passengers and crew, after taking off from mom’s airport and landing at the son’s airport (Bless their souls. Great leaders), disposed 170 masks, face-shields and about 50 PPE gowns. And this happening with every flight presents a substantial source of the new-normal pollution.

 

Our country has shown great ingenuity in exponentially increasing the production of PPEs and sanitization chemicals. Currently, PPE manufacturers use materials such as polyester, polyamide, polyethylene and other polymers. As good citizens we may assume that PPEs, being primarily plastic conform to recycling processes, but PPE is not recyclable (with the existing processes) or biodegradable, and it needs to be treated as waste. Sanitization chemicals contain ethyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol or both to kill bacteria and viruses on hands and surfaces. Alcohols have long been known to kill germs by denaturing the protective outer proteins of microbes and dissolving their membranes. However, the excessive use that we see today needs another look as the solvents are sure to find way into the water systems or even the food chain and may become a concern through bio-magnification.

 

So, what can we do about the PPE waste issue? Gloves, masks, and wipes are playing a vital role in our lives right now as a way to protect people from contracting and spreading the corona virus. Still, harming our environment and possibly polluting the already endangered water sources should not be a necessary consequence. Sustainability of production, use, discard processes and by-products needs to be the foremost focus in this case. Using biodegradable materials, adding end of service indicators and making multi-use items instead of ‘single-use and discard’ variants, come to mind as options for a better PPE. But these ideas require quite an investment from a manufacturer’s perspective and a deviation of the lowest bidder syndrome from the buyer’s side. The easiest and cheapest way to market is rarely, if ever, the most sustainable way.

 

An interesting thought here could be the Circular Economy for the PPEs. A Manufacturer-Distributor combine could cater for PPE supplies to major bulk breaking points like airports, hospitals etc and collect the used PPEs and ensure a systematic discard / recycling. It holds value, as the economics of scale will allow investments into retooling of manufacturing processes as well as recycling procedures, leading to an environmentally safer lifecycle for the now inescapable PPE. It is a major change in this recently booming industry as ‘Before-Corona’ the hand sanitizer or the PPE were more of an emergency requirement than a routine and that has brought a whole new scale to fore. We may wish or impose environmental prudence on industries, but realistically, corporate sustainable development is not environmental or ethical but economic; if it fails economically as a business concept, as an engine of innovation, then it fails.

 

How can you help? Simplify the problem, wipe away the propaganda, listen to experts and use common sense. Wear cloth mask in safer areas, an N-95 mask is not needed everywhere. Use and discard PPE in the proper way and please remember, just because it is from a public dispenser, you don’t need a ‘large’ of hand sanitizer; it’s a different type of alcohol. And yes, please wait for sometime before crushing social distancing as soon as the aircraft lands.

Disclaimer: This was not my flight. Image from Twitter

 

Take the World Environment Day as an excuse to start. Long after COVID-19 is solved, we still will have to protect the Earth.