Need to achieve Technological sovereignty

First published in https://stratnewsglobal.com/technological-sovereignty-and-how-india-lacks-it/

 

Sovereignty is one of the cornerstones for ensuring the security of the country and ensures that India as a nation can stand up to pressures from other nations. Sovereignty is critical to ensure our economic independence.

As India moves into occupying the space of an IT superpower, the ability of the ICT industry to provide the requisite technologies reliably for civilian requirements and for military requirements, needs to be significantly enhanced. The issue is compounded with the fact that India has limited presence at the high-stake tables of Digital standards. Standards has turned out to be a major stumbling block in the quest for technological sovereignty. Given that India, as of now, appears to have limited presence at the global forums on international digital standards, we appear to be abdicating our responsibility to secure our IT and digital industry as well as IT usage. This situation has very deep implications on our economy and our defence preparedness.

With the lack of control over the technological layers, Indian economy and defense institutions will be challenged to protect the nation from Cyberwarfare.

More importantly, military hardware itself could be subject to intrusions and control by adversaries, thanks to the increased “intelligence” of the equipment.

Given that tactical initiatives on the ground need to be backed up with complex supply chain which are increasingly dependent on critical information infrastructure such as Railways Signaling, telecommunications network etc, the entire economy and military strategy could be threatened by compromising the critical information infrastructure which has non-authenticated ICT components.

With the same “ICT intrusions”, the Financial Infrastructure of the country can be brought down, impacting the ability of the military to sustain a conventional warfare.

The impact on Network Centric Warfare is also obvious.

Thus, it is imperative that we move towards digital ecosystem which provides greater control over the digital infrastructure.

More importantly, imagine the impact on the economy in general, and the defence logistics in particular, if the “.in” Top Level Domain (TLD) is deleted from the Internet root servers. Such a move would cripple the economy and severely restrict the ability of the Indian defence forces to respond to a strategic situation. It would be worthwhile to mention at this stage that India has minimal control, if not no control, over the root servers. In other words, India has no technological sovereignty over the theatre where cyber warfare gets played out. Thus, an obvious way forward for India as a nation is to build the ecosystem of technological sovereignty which will strengthen its capability.

There is also an increased threat to Technological Sovereignty from Digital Monopolies that control vast amounts of data pertaining to the country, the citizens and the businesses. It is important to address the threat to Technological Sovereignty from Digital Monopolies. This is especially true of Digital Utilities that are widespread, are ubiquitously used and that benefit from network effect an hence become natural monopolies. Since these Digital Utilities operate in an over-the-top manner, where they ride on regulated utilities but the apps themselves are unregulated, they pose a significant threat to India’s security and internal law and order. Digital monopolies that are originate from nations that pose themselves in an adversarial manner to India’s interests are especially worrisome. Among the top 20 apps used in India, one can easily identify TikTok, Likee, UC Browser, Helo, VMate ans ShareIT as apps that are present in most phones in India and that could easily by used to create inimical situations for India.

The impact of polices, regulatory frameworks and standards on technology sovereignty is critical for the growth of the Digital economy as well as the larger economy linked to the digital economy. Digital Economy permeates into all aspects of a modern society, from agriculture to education to health and industry. Therefore, it is imperative to have an appropriate policy framework for technology sovereignty, especially for the Digital Economy. India would need to gain technologies that are not necessarily Frontier Technologies but are critical from the perspective of Technological Sovereignty.