Don8217;t hoard information, deploy it

As early as 1977, Robert Kupperman, chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, recognised the vulnerability of a society increasingly reliant upon technology: Commercial aircraft, natural gas pipelines, the electric power grid, offshore oil rigs and computers storing government and corporate records are examples of sabotage-prone targets whose destruction would have derivative effects of far higher intensity than their primary losses would suggest8230;8217; Information culled digitally form vulnerable nations can also give lesser nations an edge.

In the seventies, Kupperman could not think beyond a digital terrorist strike but in the nineties, national governments have been investing in the same capability to defend themselves, offer harm and listen in on the digital communications of other nations. Every year, the computer network of the US Department of De-fence suffers 250,000 attacks.

Most are the handiwork of weekend hackers, but a small number are believedto be professional, politically motivated intrusions sponsored by other governments. Last year, hackers stole the DEM software us-ed for running US military satellites and networks. In response, the US opened infowar wings in all the services, graduated a batch of infowar officers and earmarked 64 billion for the National Infrastructure Protection Centre. Last fall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff labelled cyberspace quot;as critical a battlefield as land, sea or airquot;. And the Rand Corporation devised a war game simulating a digital attack.

India, too, has been a victim of infowar. La-st year, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre was attacked by an international anti-nuclear group calling itself MilwOrm. After the Kargil action began, Pakistani hackers attacked the National Informatics Centre8217;s Ass-am server. But these were typical attacks for self-promotion, where only poorly-defended Web servers are targeted. The information on Web pages is altered to embarrass their owners.

The most celebrated case is that of EhudTenebaum, the Israeli youth who hacked the US DoD two years ago and used the publicity to net a lucrative modelling contract with an Israeli computer firm.

In fact, neither India nor Pakistan is dependent enough on technology to make pure infowar rewarding. But there are shades of grey between infowar and propaganda that can be profitably used. There is a useful lesson in Britain8217;s MI6 spy case involving former agent Richard Tomlinson, who is accused of putting a list of names of serving agents on the Internet. The Indian intelligence agencies have reams of data on Pakistan-sponsored terrorist operations. They have information on ISI links with various insurgent groups across South Asia. Nothing prevents India from publicising this material on the Net and identifying Pakistan for what it is 8212; a terrorist state in which the military enjoys disproportionately high influence.

Nothing but our mindset, that is. We must wake up to the reality that in the new theatres of war, top secret information can be lessuseful than information that is intelligently deployed. Friday8217;s revelation of the conversations between Lt Gen Mohammed Aziz and Gen Pervez Musharraf is a case in point.

The first conversation was recorded on May 26, but the transcript was made public more than a fortnight later. It must be presumed that the intelligence agencies wanted to keep the line open. But in an irregular war partly fought through the media where international opinion is as important as deployed firepower, whatever operational details we-re divulged in the intervening days are unlikely to have been more useful than public information that would have put paid to Pakistani denials of involvement in Kargil.

While we continue to insist on a bilateral settlement of the Kashmir issue, we cannot ignore two facts: that Kashmir will remain a matter of international interest, and that all conflicts now have a media element.

Especially since we discount a military solution, we must develop the skills to fight this battle in themultilateral diplomatic space and through the media. In the current conflict, we have already sent out the wrong signals by herding the press out of Kargil. And we have not been able to cash in on the support of the West and China, which cannot tolerate a nuclear aggressor in South Asia.

There can be no debate about the fact that we need a more adequate propaganda machine. The Indian diplomatic establishment has produced only third-rate propaganda warriors. Pakistan has repeatedly tried to internationalise the Kashmir issue and India, with all the facts on its side, with firm control of the moral high ground, has always been on the back foot. Even now, after the nuclear tests, when world opinion has been forced to side with us due to the compulsions of the West, including the compulsion to survive, the Pakistani point of view hogs airtime in western media. We get short shrift.

A propaganda initiative to set this right should be backed by a listening operation to keep tabs on nations and organisationsinterested in the issue. The infrastructure is dirt cheap. The people to run it can be found on every technical campus in the country. Hollywood made the myth, naming every other hacker in the movies Mehta or Siva. Now, India should forge the reality. The days of hoarding information are over. It is time to deploy it, like any weapon.