Hybrid Warfare

Context

Some recent finding suggests that China's government is employing hybrid warfare using non-military measures to harm India.

Background

Big-data firm linked to the Chinese government has been tracking India’s top leaders and public personalities, a collaborative investigation points out. The firm is reportedly engaged in hybrid warfare, a war waged away from borders but nevertheless with the potential to inflict serious damage through targeted cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and espionage, hybrid warfare seeks to incite social discord, disrupt economic activities, undermine institutions, and discredit political leadership and the intelligentsia.

In Detail

Indian agencies intercepted a Chinese firm actively working to targets individuals and institutions in politics, government, business, technology, media, and civil society. Claiming to work with Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies, firm monitors the subject’s digital footprint across social media platforms, maintains an information library, which includes content not just from news sources, forums, but also from papers, patents, bidding documents, even positions of recruitment. Significantly, it builds a relational database, which records and describes associations between individuals, institutions, and information. Collecting such massive data and weaving in public or sentiment analysis around these targets, it may threat intelligence services.

It is not data per se but the range and the use to which it may be put to that raises red flags. The Chinese firm is 24 x 7, collecting personal information on the target from all social media accounts, keeps track of the target’s friends and relationships, analyses posts, likes and comments by friends and followers, collects even private information about movements such as geographic location through Artificial Intelligence tools.

With Face-offs intensified along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India blocked, incrementally since June, over 100 Chinese apps for engaging in activities prejudicial to sovereignty, integrity and Defence of India, includind security of state and public order.

There have been a string of recent reports on China’s attempts to cultivate potential assets for sensitive military, intelligence or economic information in the US and Europe through social media.

Hybrid Warfare

Although both state and non-state actors engage in hybrid warfare they vary widely in their means and actions. They all exhibit the capability to synchronize various instruments of power against specific vulnerabilities to create linear and non-linear effects. By focusing on these characteristics of a hybrid warfare actors capabilities, together with the target’s vulnerabilities in these areas and then overlaying these with the means and effects, the Baseline Assessment was able to create a generic description of hybrid warfare.

It describes hybrid warfare as, the synchronized use of multiple instruments of power tailored to specific vulnerabilities across the full spectrum of societal functions to achieve synergistic effects. The Baseline Assessment concluded that hybrid warfare is asymmetric and uses multiple instruments of power along a horizontal and vertical axis, and to varying degrees shares an increased emphasis on creativity, ambiguity, and the cognitive elements of war. This sets hybrid warfare apart from an attrition-based approach to warfare where one matches the strength of the other, either qualitatively or quantitatively, to degrade the opponent’s capabilities.

Facts & Figures

As early as 1999, Unrestricted Warfare, a publication by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), mapped the contours of hybrid warfare, a shift in the arena of violence from military to political, economic and technological. The new weapons in this war, wrote by Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui, closely linked to the lives of the common people. And one morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics.

Indeed, within countries too, political parties target the opposition via these same tools. Every second country is giving hybrid warfare a shot since the Russian breakthrough in 2014-15 (annexation of Crimea and undeclared conflict in eastern Ukraine). But few match China’s capability as we have seen during the Hong Kong protests last year.

Way Forward

Hybrid warfare is designed to exploit national vulnerabilities across the political, military, economic, social, informational and infrastructure (PMESII) spectrum. Therefore India should conduct a self-assessment of critical functions and vulnerabilities across all sectors, and maintain it regularly.

Hybrid warfare uses coordinated military, political, economic, civilian and informational (MPECI) instruments of power that extend far beyond the military realm. National efforts should enhance traditional threat assessment activity to include non-conventional political, economic, civil, international (PECI) tools and capabilities. Crucially, this analysis must consider how these means of attack may be formed into a synchronized attack package tailored to the specific vulnerabilities of its target.

Hybrid warfare is synchronized and systematic, the response should be in the same manner. India should establish and embed a process to lead and coordinate a national approach of self-assessment and threat analysis. This process should direct comprehensive cross-government efforts to understand, detect and respond to hybrid threats.

Hybrid threats are an international issue, China is actively using it against many other nations, including Russia, USA, Japan and other nations, therefore, the response should be collective. Hence India and these nations should coordinate a coherent approach amongst themselves to understand, detect and respond to hybrid warfare to their collective interests. Multinational frameworks preferably using existing institutions and processes should be developed to facilitate cooperation and collaboration.

Connecting the Article

Question for Prelims

Consider the following statements

1. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team aims to issue alerts and advisories regarding latest cyber threats and countermeasures.
2. National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre aims to protect critical information infrastructure in the country.
Which of the statements given above is/ are correct ?

(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Question for Mains

What is hybrid warfare? In what ways can hybrid warfare manifest itself and what measures should India take to respond it?