Why India must aim to win information wars
Disinformation dominated the recent India–Pakistan conflict. India won the physical fight; we have not yet won the information war. Until it does, New Delhi will struggle to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan globally — an essential strand of our foreign policy.
Once the printing press transformed knowledge distribution, propaganda became a core component of war. Both World Wars saw the use of newspapers, posters, radio and film for mass persuasion. Our challenge now is to craft an information war strategy that accounts for the media landscape, from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and social media to the still powerful legacy medium of broadcast television.
India's private sector already excels in natural language processing (NLP), which is a dual-use capability in the context of information warfare. Indian AI models can easily train on a spectrum of languages, dialects and socio-cultural cues — Urdu and Punjabi variants across the border, regimental slang within the Pakistan army, even the memes that circulate in closed loop apps. Put simply, NLP could be used to speak inside the adversary's head, fracturing morale and redirecting attention long before any kinetic move is made.
Synthetic video is just as dual-use. A well-known 2022 deepfake of President Volodymyr Zelensky urging Ukrainian troops to surrender went viral before Kyiv debunked it. Pakistan tried using low-grade gaming footage of fighter jets being shot out of the sky against us, yet unsuspecting users still amplified it. India's democratic fabric is a force multiplier: Journalists, fact-checkers and civic technologists can inoculate the public against synthetic videos even as the security establishment perfects its own offensive repertoire. Parallelly, New Delhi should rally around like-minded capitals to draft a military code of conduct — setting red lines for deepfake use during peacetime. Autonomous chatbots can also infiltrate adversary networks and poison their information space, while real-time AI-enabled dashboards track public sentiment. Building these capabilities is vital, but so is shielding citizens from misuse.
India's current response — Press Information Bureau fact-checks, official military handles and the blocking of more than 8,000 X.com accounts — works, but only up to a point. The government and platforms should plan in peacetime to create trusted information repositories, much as they did during Covid-19. Platform-originated feeds carrying verified advisories would have quelled the conflict time rumours that briefly sparked panic.
Disinformation hops quickly from open networks to closed, encrypted apps. Public-private cooperation must therefore run deep and span multiple platforms, replicating the signal-sharing model now taking shape against online frauds and scams. After the Zelensky deepfake, X announced it would keep the clip online when shared to debunk disinformation, but remove it when shared to deceive — an approach that balances transparency with harm reduction. Meanwhile, large-scale media literacy drives should flip India's instinctive 'trust, then verify' mindset to 'verify, then trust', especially among users who see digital content as inherently authoritative.
Winning the narrative is futile if the channels that deliver it can be jammed, spoofed, or severed. Information warfare thus unfolds on two inseparable fronts: The stories we tell, and the networks — satellites, cables — that carry those stories to friend and foe alike. Protecting and hardening this plumbing is as critical as shaping the content.
Unauthorised Starlink terminals have already surfaced with militant groups in Manipur during an internet shutdown and with smugglers on the high seas. Recent Indian rules sensibly require low earth orbit satellite operators to demonstrate lawful interception capability, set up gateways in India, share terminal data with security agencies and prevent unverified foreign devices or offshore data decryption.
Another front is physical resilience. India hosts just 17 sub-sea cables — Singapore has 26 — despite our 11,098 km coastline and Indo-Pacific location. Quad leaders' May 20, 2023 statement backed 'high-quality underwater cable networks' across the region. With India set to host the next summit, accelerating that initiative should be a priority.
Domestic news channels repeatedly aired unverified 'exclusives' until government advisories intervened. Beyond restraining sensationalism on prime-time news, India needs a global voice. Attempts to expand Doordarshan (DD)'s international reach have stalled under thin finances, a legacy workforce, and dated production quality. Al Jazeera and Russia Today (RT) illustrate what focused investment can achieve for countries with far less soft power. If fixing DD requires a mission-mode effort, so be it. Credible, high-quality Indian perspectives must be available worldwide.
India's information war doctrine must marry cutting-edge technology and robust public infrastructure with a society trained — beginning in school — to question, verify and act on reliable information. We have secured victory on the ground; the contest for minds and screens is still underway.
Vivan Sharan is partner, Koan Advisory Group. The views expressed are personal.
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