Abstract
The advent of social media and e-media has given the new dimension to the domain of Information Warfare (IW). It has emerged as a tool of psychological operations, propaganda a warfare and perception management that has faster and wider outreach to directly strike & influence the psychology as well as perception management of any country, selected organisations and combatants in any conflict zone/ environment. It aims to alter behavior that ultimately affects the outcome of any conflict. India as a nation is facing the challenge of insurgency/ terrorism as well as continuous threats in neighbourhood due to border disputes that can escalate to war. However, considering present circumstances, geopolitical aspects and economics, countries are avoiding any escalation to the conventional threat level and more relying upon asymmetric or hybrid warfare that remained predominant in the current circumstances without surpassing the conventional threshold. IW has emerged as the low-cost tool of warfare, and both the adversaries of India have garnered expertise in the field of IW which is advent with the kind of targeted information related attacks India is facing on social media and e-media platforms. Operation Sindoor is the latest example that gives insight into how warfare in future shall be unfolding in the context of Indian sub-continent. It involved touching the thin line of conventional warfare by conduct of precision Kinetic strikes using long range vectors and controlling the information flow while countering the adversary’s narratives. The Kinetic damage inflicted on Pakistan during the operation was significant, but at the same time there is requirement of understanding & assessing the damage done by disinformation during the conduct of operation. Hence, there is need to evolve advanced expertise in Information Operations (IO) by developing a system with integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) tech to – Detect, Destroy & Dominate (3 Ds) the future information threats.
