National security is often a touchy subject and while countries like the USA that have developed so much technology for warfare that they can cash in on it becoming public as a propaganda tool without anyone wondering, “what is the latest that they have?”, most professional military powers find solace in keeping their technology classified even if it is not really ground breaking technology. For one thing this allows plausible deniability of it’s use, for another, ambiguity about its existence and inventory details helps catching the enemy off guard.
A very good example of this phenomenon would be operation Bison in 1948. At more than 11,000 feet altitude, no one expected any heavy armour presence when the Indian Army managed to bring M5 Stuart Light Tanks in dis-assembled conditions and reassembled it before charging the Pakistan Army, securing the current UT of Ladakh as part of India. The surprise was undeniable as cemented in a famous interception.
It does seem a bit droll to mention incidents from the sub-continent when we live in a world where the cold war happened. The US military might’s invincible perception was not built in a day, nor is it recent. The Americans and NATO have done a stand-up job marketing American war machines as the best there is, and given their track records in conflicts, it is hard to argue. But while enabled by their performance numbers being available publicly, the Americans took pride in their F-16s and F-15s and their remarkable supremacy of the air-warfare domain, the same population was chasing the silhouettes of B-2 Spirit as UFOs.
That brings us to the issue of domain knowledge. While it is entirely true that in the interest of National security, knowledge of military technology and doctrine is impossible to have reliably in the public domain, owing to the advancement of technology, this gatekeeping brings with it a secret poison. One that can be used by anyone to poison the masses and conduct psychological warfare. When people don’t know or understand how warfare works and what is now within the realms of possibility, conjectures and misinformation run rampant.
This becomes particularly pertinent in the case of India, a major military and economic power globally and one of the leaders in the region, it is too big to be stopped with brute force, too experienced in conducting warfare in its hostile border environments and too much of a perceived threat to the would-be hegemons of the world. But there is one crack in this armour. With more than one-eighth of the world population living here, a large chunk of which is either semi-literate or illiterate and the majority of the remainder being relatively recent members of the literate side of things but with next to no concept of the realities of the security scenario, at home or elsewhere. With the penetration of internet outpacing education policy and deep knowledge, Indians are a huge bull’s eye for anyone trying to play the marksman at information warfare.
This is not a phenomenon exclusive to India, most people in the civilized world do not comprehend the realities of an undeniably savage one that warfare is. However, the particular handicap in India is the diversity and the sheer size of the population. This means countering misinformation is next to impossible and mounting a multi-level information assault is easier than taking candy from a child.
War aside, no technical domain that is of strategic value to a nation is beyond the reach of this phenomenon. People believe in ides that conform to their pre-conceived notions and algorithms of social media excel at saturating consumers with content that does exactly that. Meaning, information no longer needs to be delivered to the right person, the right person actively finds what you are selling and is already primed to buy it.
While domains like economics, politics and foreign policy are highly subjective and perpetually up for debate, and therefore near impossible for even educated people to grasp without significant primary information and experience, warfare is something innate in humans and does not necessarily need an education at all. It is also highly definitive and outcome based. This makes it the smallest target for the enemy, but given the prestige associated, it also has the highest effect, both positive and negative. A lost war can destabilize a government and even a small successful operation can turn the leaders into heroes.
India is surrounded by mostly weak military powers, that have, over the years gone from credible threats to being something one would show mercy out of pity. This however has not dulled their hunger for conflict, and in the face of certain loss, the strategy has changed from direct large-scale conflict to asymmetric and information war in the form of insurgency, terrorism and radicalisation.
So how does defence literacy matter?
In the specific case of India, the nation has seen some truly vile displays of cowardice, in the garb of pure savage violence. In recent memory, the early 2000s saw many security personnel kidnapped, killed and mutilated, a highlight of the time being the beheading of Sepoy Bhausaheb Maruti Talekar of 17 Maratha LI in 2000s, where the head was taken as a war trophy, paraded in Pakistan and kicked around like a football, even earning the perpetrators a cash reward from the then president, Gen Parwez Musharaf. While the actual military response is unknown, present knowledge indicates none. This was not an incident but a pattern of war crimes across the border that started in 1947 and continued throughout the history of post-Independence India. Over the next decade, even incidents as big as the parliament strike and 26/11 saw no kinetic response (Operation Parakram was undertaken after the former but never went hot) and the public morale was that of helplessness and passive acceptance.
One of the primary drivers of the current Modi led government is the lack of its compunctions about using hard power. Surgical strikes in Uri, Air strikes after Pulwama and the recent Operation Sindoor have been undeniable success and the latest of them being a modern benchmark. However, the success of the govt. is exactly why they have become bones of content. Oppositions and influencers with spotty histories when it comes to national pride, alike, have criticized and cast a pal of doubt on the success or the effect of said operations.
For someone that has never been exposed to the capabilities of precision weapons, the holes on the roof of terror camps might seem doubtful. A failed military operation in the face of a vile act of terrorism is a fine way to assassinate the appeal of an incumbent leader. Conversely, when Pakistan saw catastrophic crippling of its military power in May, that would have been the end of the government and the military leadership as they were, yet, by twisting facts and creating plausible doubt in the eyes of a largely ignorant population, not only did the government save face but also managed to consolidate power and come across as a symbol of pride and military might, going so far as giving the chief of army, responsible for the fiasco, constitutional powers and a big fat promotion.
A scene from a famous sit-com represents the fundamentals of this practice well. A paleontologist, entrenched in the idea of evolution is confronted with the fact that so much of past knowledge was proven wrong, so how is it that the former is so sure about what he knows and if there wasn’t even a small chance that he might be wrong. The former folds, being the rational kind and a believer in evidence. This highlights the power of misinformation, a rational mind looks for plausible doubt and given false data, it is swayed. In the lack of domain knowledge, it is simply too easy to do, the modern generative AI makes it even more so. This, used in conjunction with national and military pride. The fact that most Americans today are drunk on their success in Venezuela while ignoring the violation of international law and the breaking up of NATO is precisely the sort of problems that can be created using ignorance with the right PR strategy and India is not immune.
Modern world is no longer separate from the cyber space, but a symbiosis between the two, and more often than ever before, is a technology being misused to devastating effects. Misinformation is not a mere mistake, the recent scandal after X introduced location information for its users made it clear that this is a global and deliberate phenomenon. In this world, simple literacy is not the cure for the modern threats, this hydra can be killed only through domain literacy.
