Incidents have happened, there is blowback and only time
will tell how this will end in the short run and in the long run. The long run
is what is more troubling, and it is not about what happens to Israel/
Palestine/ Gaza/ Iran/ Lebanon, but how the incidents that have unfolded will
impact global security and even life.
Again, rewinding to early 2001, my first trip to USA.
Landing late at New York airport I ran like a maniac trying to catch my
connecting flight, jumping, dodging. Later during the same trip, hopelessly
lost in Washington DC, I managed to reach Dulles airport literally minutes
before my flight was to depart. Once again, I ran, jumped, dodged and literally
entered the aircraft even as the flight attendant was closing the door.
Everybody, including the flight attendant were either sympathetic to my run or
at best mildly irritated.
4 months later, September 9/11 happened and life as we
know it changed. In a post 9/11 era, I would have been shot dead within seconds
in both airports, though it is unlikely I would have run and instead missed my
flights. An American colleague visiting India sometime after 9/11 and
experiencing Indian airport security with its famous “boarding pass needs to be
stamped”, said – “If we had such good security, 9/11 would never have
happened”. From rushing to the airport at the last minute, those teary goodbyes
inside the terminal, we now go 90 to 120 mins early and say the goodbyes at
home.
Meanwhile, in India, we walked into hotels, left the
luggage with the bellboy, left instructions for luggage to be delivered to our
room, sauntered off for a bite at the restaurant. Then, November 2008, Mumbai
Terror attack happened. Now, we can’t even take our purse or handbag inside the
hotel without first getting it X-ray checked, getting bodily frisked, identify
our luggage, get it tagged, show our ID, get our mugshots taken by reception,
re-identify our luggage before the bellboy ferries it to the room.
Life as we knew it changed inexorably. The events during
this Israel Hamas conflict also promise to do the same even if more slowly, but
with far more impact on our daily lives.
At one level drones have become ubiquitous in every
theatre of war. Terrorists have sent swarms of such drones to attack key
installations where the economic damage, cost of safety, and even the security
measures set up by a paranoid administration, all have such a huge cost and
impact, that it can cripple a country easily without a shot being fired. Just
see the impact of the open threat given by a Terrorist Pannu from USA, openly
protected by the Govt of USA at the highest levels, against Air India, 80 to
100 “hoax” calls of bombs on flights, on hotels and in each case the cost of
disruption is huge without a shot being fired. The estimated cost incurred when
such a hoax call is made is Rs. 60 to 80 Cr.
Maybe a time is not too far off when a nation at little
cost can manufacture a few millions of small drones, each armed with minimum
ammunition something akin to the pager bombs and then unleash them over a city.
While the number of those killed maybe minimal, the economic and psychological
damage it can inflict is beyond measure. An entire society will be paranoid to
even step out of their homes. What we have been seeing is just the tip of the
iceberg in terms of economic warfare by using offensive technology.
Israel with the Pager/ Walkie Talkie bombs have created a
“monster” that will haunt this world for a long time. Even if the level of
sophistication, human intelligence (as defined in the spy world), logistics and
risks involved in carrying out such a large-scale operation is complex and not
easily replicable, carrying out a similar operation in a small way to inflict
psychological and economic damage is far easier. An enemy nation or terrorist
organisation, from within a nation, can easily carry out such an operation in a
random fashion where hardly few people may get killed but the fear and paranoia
that gets created will have a significant economic impact.
A soldier today is also a fighting machine where
technology is used to reduce risk of death, increase accuracy, focussed
destruction of targets. Target tracking aided by satellite, instant
communication with drones, command centres, support systems tracked by
wearables, means, an array of electronic devices each of which are a
combination of daily use items with sophisticated systems back up. This
combination to forge by a terror organisation is not difficult especially if they
are backed by some powerful government globally. With global supply chains
needed for any item today a determined nation can infiltrate this chain easily
and create an incident that sets off fear psychosis in society resulting in
economic havoc. Here, the affected nation will not have a shred of proof to
blame its adversary even if the whole world knows who is responsible.
Microchips, embedded software, trojan horses can be used
to cripple entire power, communication, banking, logistic, transport and other
systems and till much after a devastating attack and crippling a nation
economically, nobody will still know who is responsible even if everybody knows
who is the likely culprit with no actionable evidence.
In every such situation, the targeted nation may not have
the resources, capability, time, to retaliate and even if they possess all of
these may not have any proof to justify retaliation. Remember, any nation in a
reactionary mode, without plausible evidence gets little benefit as a nation,
even if they respond covertly. For example, post the Surgical strikes and
Balakot air raid by India, the earlier Congress govt cried foul that even they
had been equally tough on the enemy but never announced it. Fair enough as an
argument, likely true, but the popular opinion across an angry nation was that
the Congress govt did nothing while the BJP govt did something. If a Congress
govt carried out 10 secret operations to deter the enemy and did not publicise
any, they score zero while a BJP govt carried out say, 5 operations but
publicised 2, they score 2, 200% more than Congress. It’s like the old joke
about winking at a woman in the dark. Retaliation is as much about narratives,
opinion and image building as it is about deterrence.
When a nation finds itself in a situation where they are
unable to retaliate effectively, nor show anything to its public beyond empty
rhetoric, it’s not just political implications that are involved, it is also
about the mood of a nation. Such situations are complex and there are no easy
answers let alone the right answers. It is here that nations may react like a
snake or a rabid dog or such where it’s a surge of anger, fear leading to an instinctive, irrational response. The results
can be catastrophic. Just imagine an Iran, feeling cornered, decides to get an
atomic bomb, however small and drops it on their enemy. It would be a historical
Déjà vu again in a manner of speaking. One incident, that sets off a long chain
affecting the whole world.
The Nord stream pipelines 1 and 2 were built at a total cost of about 25 Billion Dollars, with Nord Stream 2 commissioned in 2021. The investors from Germany, Holland, France, Britain, Austria owned 49% while Russia had 51 % and yet between them someone blew this whole thing up. Such is the level of madness in a war today.
In short, there are no easy answers and chasing opinions
that sits well with us and makes us feel satisfied, does not mean that we are
fighting the problem. We are only fighting our fear and outrage and the systems
around us reinforce them so long as the system feels that it benefits from
supporting us. The systems could be combination of anybody from a Govt, a deep
state, a foreign power, powerful corporates etc. The competition between them
gives birth to different fears and outrages – this is what is called the war of
narratives.
In this kind of war, call it information warfare, technology
again becomes key. Internet, websites, dark web, instant messaging, mobile
phone apps, the algorithms that create confirmation bias, gather data that
leads to information etc. – all become weapons of war – without a shot fired.
Each such advancement in technology means that a day is
not far off when one sees stuff like transformers at one end which I call the
future hardware and zombies which I call the future software. Technology is
leveraged to create fear/ outrage, economic havoc, anger leading to demands for
instant retribution, capturing the minds and feeding the narratives etc.
Between these hardware and software the future of war and
confrontation between nations can and will undergo significant change. Anybody
trying to predict the possible scenarios will be accused of being a conspiracy
theorist. Various opinions driven by the algorithms of the apps WE use craft
OUR opinions and thus control OUR minds and OUR lives, all the while making us
feel that only WE are righteous. This can only lead US on a path where WE effectively
self-destruct and destroy others while claiming to fight for world peace,
goodwill and what have you – and always blame others.
The future of war will be more economic using technology (including biological) and
the current wars are giving us a sneak preview provided we are willing to see it.
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