What is Hybrid Warfare?
Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare. By nature it is a non linear and does not involve sequential progression of a planned strategy. As early as 1999, a publication of China’s People’s Liberation Army, mapped the contours of hybrid warfare, a shift in the arena of violence from military to political, economic and technological. The new weapons in this war, were those closely linked to the lives of the common people. Recently it has been noticed that a Chiese data company by the name of Zhenhua is indulding in data collection of top Indian leaders, armed forces officers, bureaucrats, industrialists etc.
What does Zhenhua Data do?
Zenhua is a China data company which targets individuals and institutions in politics, government, business, technology, media, and civil society. Claiming to work with Chinese intelligence, military and security agencies, Zhenhua monitors the subject’s digital footprint across social media platforms, maintains an “information library,” which includes content not just from news sources, forums, but also from papers, patents, bidding documents, even positions of recruitment. Significantly, it builds a “relational database.
Significance of data from publicly available open sources
It is not data per se but the range and the use to which it may be put to that raises red flags. So Zhenhua’s 24 x 7 watch collects personal information on the target from all social media accounts; keeps track of the target’s friends and relationships; analyses posts, likes and comments by friends and followers; collects even private information about movements such as geographic location through Artificial Intelligence tools. Seemingly innocuous granular information may be put together in a broader framework for deliberate tactical maneuvering. That’s at the heart of what Zhenhua itself flaunts as its role in “hybrid warfare.”
Does this monitoring flout any laws in India?
Under the Information Technology Rules, 2011, under the IT Act, 2000, personal data is “any information regarding a natural person, which either directly or indirectly, in combination with other information available or likely to be available… is capable of identifying such person.” This, however, does not include information available freely or accessible in the public domain.
As flare-ups intensified along the Line of Actual Control, India blocked, incrementally since June, over 100 Chinese apps for engaging in activities “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”. But such moves are unlikely to impact an operation like Zhenhua’s. There have been a string of recent reports on China’s attempts to cultivate potential assets for sensitive military, intelligence or economic information in the US and Europe through social media.
The threat of surveillance and monitoring of foreign individuals by an authoritarian China is very real.