C is for Cyber

Susan Landau’s Listening In is an encyclopedia of cyber security, but misses out on the opportunity to set the stage for policy dialogue.

After the San Bernadino terrorist shootings of 2015, the FBI recovered an iPhone belonging to one of the attackers. FBI and Apple Inc came to loggerheads when Apple declined the FBI’s request to create software that would unlock the security protection on the iPhone. FBI wanted “exceptional access” to be built into the encryption systems on Apple’s iPhone, using the pretext of national security. However, Apple argued that in an age of cyber attacks, weakening of security should be the last thing to do, even if that means that the data of terrorists and criminals remain hidden from law enforcement. The basis of Apple’s argument was that security loopholes would be eventually found and exploited by hackers, presumably causing more harm to national security.Using the above case as the background for her book Listening In Cyber Security in an Insecure Age, Susan Landau, a cryptography and cybersecurity expert, studies the clash between the individual’s need for privacy and the law enforcement agencies’ need for access to information. Landau unequivocally bats for not weakening security standards, even if that makes government investigations difficult. She sets the stage for her argument for stronger encryption standards by narrating one example after another of cyber espionage, exploits and attacks, and how these have been getting more sophisticated over time. She traces the first cyber espionage to 1986. With the involvement of the CIA, KGB, and a student in Germany hacking into systems at an energy research lab at Berkeley, this story makes for a fascinating read.Read more here>

80 years before Kerala floods, Mahatma Gandhi blamed caste system for natural disasters

When S. Gurumurthy insinuated that the Kerala flood disaster was somehow related to allowing women into the Sabarimala temple, he revealed a failing that afflicts even mahatmas in India. After the devastating Lisbon earthquake, the Catholic religious establishment put forth the view that the disaster was divine punishment for human sin. This angered the Marquis of Pombal. Pombal was no doubt a ruthless autocrat, but he is relevant to the current flood crisis in Kerala. Today, as we despair about the enormity of the calamity that has struck Kerala, we can take heart to the empirical evidence that shows natural disasters can improve long-term economic growth.Read more

Modi govt will further alienate the south by moving Aero India to Uttar Pradesh

Moving the Aero India show from Bengaluru to Lucknow — as the Modi government is reportedly considering — is a bad idea that will not only hurt India’s economic interests but also deepen the sense of grievance developing in the southern states. Political leaders in Karnataka have already come out strongly against the move.It is wholly unnecessary to move this global event out of Bengaluru in order to promote economic development in Uttar Pradesh. Given the massive growth projections for India’s defence and aerospace sectors, it is unfathomable why the defence ministry should think in zero-sum terms.Why not organise an entirely new and different event in Lucknow? Given the plans to set up a defence industrial corridor in Uttar Pradesh, there might be a case for a big industry event. It just doesn’t have to come at Bengaluru’s expense.Read more

Return of political commissar

A couple of years ago, top executives of a mid-sized Western multinational found themselves in Beijing attending a strategy meeting of their Chinese subsidiary. After they covered the listed agenda, they found their local CEO cribbing about their Indian operation and how his Indian counterpart was dropping the ball, missing business opportunities, and suchlike.Read more

Modi govt must punish lynch mobs, not coerce WhatsApp into curbing users’ freedoms

WhatsApp is doing a lot of things in response to the union government: tagging forwarded messages as such, testing “a lower limit of five chats at once”, removing “the quick forward button next to media messages”, and promoting digital literacy. It also plans to introduce its “fake news verification model” in India ahead of the coming general elections in 2019. It has also announced a public competition to identify solutions on how to counter the spread of mala fide information.Yet, in the absence of any measures of its own to deter and punish violent lynch mobs, the government’s determination to move against one specific channel of communication could well end up as a wild goose chase.Conceptually, laying all the blame at WhatsApp’s door is a lot like blaming bus service operators for allowing criminals to ride to the scene of the crime. Not that the bus operator has no role to play in preventing the crime; but that it is not solely or primarily the bus operator’s fault that criminals ride their buses to work.Read more

The strategic dimension of higher education

Having studiously avoided all entrance examinations for the past 25 years, I was struck last week when my colleagues showed me a few questions from the Gaokao, China’s annual national college entrance exams. Now, I’m familiar with the debate over the Gaokao and its flaws, especially over whether it selects for merit as is claimed, but I was not prepared for what I saw in the question paper.

A report in this newspaper by Anish Kumar (“Is Gaokao world’s toughest exam? 10 questions from China’s school test.” July 10th, 2018) has many examples, but here’s one to give you a sense of what the equivalent of Indian 12th-grade students must answer: “Between June and August, a cruise ship travels from Fujian province to Venice, via Mumbai, as part of Xi’s 21st-century maritime silk road strategy. Which of the following would it experience on the way?” Here’s another ”Write an essay on how Thomas Edison would react to the mobile phone if he visited the 21st century.”

I saw a question in the mathematics paper that required basic arithmetic but needed the student to apply the mind to figure out how to approach it. In addition to Chinese and Mathematics, students must take a foreign language (English, Russian, Japanese or French) and either science or humanities. Many of the questions require reasoning and application, not a mere rehearsal of what was in the syllabus.

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Trump's gamble, China's gain

Trump's unilateralism in East Asia increasingly benefits China.

On his way home from the Singapore summit, US President Donald Trump announced in an interview for Fox News that he would be taking strong action on trade, saying that China was likely to be "a little bit upset". And indeed, three days later his administration slapped Chinese goods with a 25-percent tariff, provoking a sharp reaction from Beijing.That was despite China's support and assistance with the North Korea issue in the lead-up to the Singapore summit. For Trump, trade disputes, multilateral engagement, and the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula appear to be distinct, unrelated issues. In his unilateral world, there is little connection between geoeconomics and geopolitics.Chinese President Xi Jinping has adopted a completely different approach to global politics and economy, which seems to be paying off with every unilateral action Trump takes on the international arena. This seems to be the case with the US engagement of North Korea as well.Read more here>

Higher education and the role of government

Dilip Thakore has asked me to respond to the question “Are low tuition fees destroying Indian public higher education.”

Let’s take a step back.

1. Why should the government fund higher education? The general answer to this that there are positive externalities to higher education, and that the optimum level of higher education in society is higher than what the market can provide on the basis of private incentives. In India, there is also the issue of the constitutional mandate for social revolution. Government intervention in higher education is seen as one important way to achieve an equitable and egalitarian society.

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MoD has politicised security for electoral reasons. Opening of cantonment roads shows that

While the MoD must be cognizant of the demands of civil society, its primary concern is the defence of India. It should, therefore, review the closure/opening of roads from a security perspective and also attempt to assuage the difficulties of citizens.Read more

The Long Game in the South China Sea

China outwitted the US by landing H-6 strategic bombers on Woody Island. Can the US get its act together?

Tensions are once again simmering in the South China Sea after Chinese media reported that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) had landed H-6K strategic bombers on an airstrip on Woody Island, which is part of the Paracels group of islands. An official website of the Chinese armed forces reported:

"Several H-6Ks from an unidentified aviation division, headed by division commander Hao Jianke, took off from an undisclosed air base in South China and made a simulated strike against sea targets before landing on an island in the South China Sea…the operation provided experience for Air Force bomber units to use islands as their bases."

Analysts believe that the deployment of the H-6K long-range strategic bomber on Woody is likely to give the PLA coverage across the South China Sea region. Beijing is already believed to have deployed the HQ-9 surface-to-air missile systems, advanced radar systems, and truck-mounted surface-to-air or anti-ship cruise missiles on Woody Island.Read more here>

Get Criminals Out Of Politics

To break the nexus of crime and politics in India, we should not wait until the conviction of accused candidates. Other solutions exist.

With less than 24 hours to go for the assembly elections in the state of Karnataka, the topic of the criminal backgrounds of various candidates is back in focus. A recent report by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) reveals that 391 of the 2655 candidates face criminal charges, and 254 of these face charges of a serious nature. All three major parties, namely BJP, Congress, and JDS, have such candidates on their party tickets.Of course, a criminal complaint is not proof of guilt. The Representation of the Peoples Act (RPA), 1951 states that a person cannot be debarred from contesting elections nor expelled from the parliament or legislative assembly unless s/he is convicted with a jail term of two years or more. However, there are multiple stages between the filing of a criminal complaint and a court judgment that merit consideration.After a criminal complaint is filed, usually in the form of an FIR with the police, there are at least three stages before a court of law begins the hearings. First comes the investigation conducted by the police or other competent authorities, during which they evaluate the merits of the complaints and collect evidence. Next, the investigating authority files a charge sheet with the court. Third, the court studies the charge sheet and appropriately frames charges against the accused. It is only then that the prosecution and defence lawyers begin arguing the case before a judge.Read more here>

Social Media Censorship Won’t Stop Lynchings. We Need a New Gandhi

That social media in general — and WhatsApp in particular — are important channels through which bigotry is spreading, is now well-known, if less well-understood.Around ten years ago, I had begun to speculate that as mobile internet pervades societies and they become radically networked, we will see both entirely new forms of politics and new forms of political expression.Read more

Indian military must remind politicians that it’s loyal to the Constitution – not the party in power

The military need not seek the limelight. Instead, it should carry out its duties quietly, contain its views and disagreements on politically sensitive subjects to closed-door sessions and let its actions speak for themselves.Read more

Unpacking China’s Social Credit System

The Chinese social credit system has to contend with many challenges and has implications far beyond social control.

Ever since it was formally announced in 2014, China’s proposed Social Credit System (SCS) has attracted much media attention. Reports have frequently ranged from painting it as an Orwellian nightmare to a dystopian fantasy, with most commentaries viewing the policy purely from the prism of social control.While the SCS can indeed be located as an initiative in the tradition of Chinese government efforts at maintaining social order and ensuring public compliance of policies, reducing it to merely a surveillance tool doesn’t do justice to the ambitious scope of this initiative.The SCS is about much more than surveillance and loyalty. It is, in fact, fundamentally linked to the Chinese economy and its transformation to being more market driven. So while nudging persons to adopt desirable behaviour and actions and enhancing social control are all part of the story, there are larger drivers of this policy. Moreover, the implications of the SCS are not just limited to Chinese citizens or within China’s territorial boundaries.Read more here>

Breaking down China’s AI ambitions

China unveiled a plan to develop the country into the world’s primary innovation centre for artificial intelligence in 2017. It identified AI as a strategic industry, crucial for enhancing economic development, national security, and governance.The Chinese government’s command innovation approach towards AI development is crafting a political economy that tolerates sub-optimal and even wasteful outcomes in the quest for expanding the scale of the industry. Consequently, the industry is likely to be plagued by concerns about overinvestment, overcapacity, quality of products, and global competitiveness.In addition, increasing friction over trade with other states and President Xi Jinping’s turn towards techno-nationalism along with tightening political control could further undermine China’s AI industry. Before we dive into the challenges, here’s some background.Read more here>

No, The World Isn’t Heading Towards a Cold War

The Cold War construct is neither sufficient nor instructive in understanding the changes that are afoot in the international order.

Walking into the foreign ministry press conference on December 19th last year, Hua Chunying was her stoic self. As she stood before the crowd of reporters, with the blue and white map of the world depicting China at its center behind her, she spelt out Beijing’s position on the US administration’s new National Security Strategy. The document had identified China, along with Russia, as a “competitor,” “rival” and “revisionist power.” This marked a significant shift in Washington’s strategic posture as it pertains to Beijing. In response, America, Hua said, must “abandon outdated notions such as a Cold War mentality.”Alas, the Cold War is in vogue these days. A quick internet search will lead to a plethora of pieces, from alarmist to analytical, discussing the contours of an emerging Cold War between China and the US.^[1]The meat of such analyses is the understanding that China’s rapid rise coupled with the relative decline of the West is leading to tectonic changes in the world order.This is manifesting in China becoming more authoritarian internally and assertive globally, via growing business and investment ties, deepening socio-political linkages across countries, expanding hard power capacity and projecting its system as an alternative governance model vis-a-vis liberal democracy. All of this is occurring at a time when the West is still struggling economically while suffering from a crisis of faith, with fundamental values, such as free trade, respect for human rights, international cooperation and commitment to multiculturalism under pressure from conservative and right wing forces.Read more here>

Why the south-vs-north debate is a flawed way to analyse the 15th finance commission formula

If this argument of south-vs-north is followed through, a direct corollary would be to also oppose money flows from Bengaluru to Bidar or from Whitefield to south Bengaluru.

The terms of reference for the 15^th finance commission (FC) have come under attack from many quarters in the last few weeks. Of these, the most prominent line of attack is that using 2011 census data will end up hurting the interests of the southern states.Since their population is one of the factors considered while distributing tax revenues among states, some say the southern states will be punished for controlling their population. To resolve this moral hazard, a few southern states are demanding that the dated 1971 census be used for the FC’s revenue distribution formula.But this claim and the ‘north-vs-south’ debate sidestep other substantial flaws in the terms of reference for the 15^th FC.Read more here>

Where is the Nudge Unit?

The government had promised to use the insights of behavioural economics to shape public policy. This budget revealed no signs of it.

As some of us might remember, in September 2016, it was announced with much fanfare that the government think tank NITI Aayog was going to set up a “Nudge Unit” on the lines of the Behavioural Insights Team in the UK. It was reported that NITI Aayog had tied up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to go about changing behaviours of people. The policies that were supposedly going to benefit from this nudge unit were the flagship programmes of the current government — Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan Yojana, Digital India, etc.In delivering his Union Budget speech today, the Finance Minister has laid out the priorities of the Union Government for the next year. However, Mr Jaitley did not mention anywhere that this Government will spend any money and effort on incorporating behavioural insights into public policy.It’s impossible to know whether NITI Aayog’s Nudge Unit has been set up and what it is working on. Neither the NITI Aayog website nor the BMGF website has any information that hints at setting up of such a unit. What is more, in February 2017, the Government had cut its ties with BMGF on a health mission due to an apparent conflict of interest. We do not know how that incident affected BMGF’s promise to fund the nudge unit.Read more here>

On Sale: Your Vote

Our data, taken without our consent, can be used for informational warfare that harms our democracy.

The Cambridge Analytica (CA) controversy has captured international mindspace over the last two days. In an interview with the Guardian, Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower at CA, laid bare the facts of how the company, under the influence of Steve Bannon (Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and former executive chairman of Breitbart) and Robert Mercer (an AI billionaire and Republican donor) used data from social media for “information warfare”. Wylie claims that over 50 million Facebook user profiles were harvested under false pretences, and then used for ballot box gains in the 2016 US presidential elections.People not only share and like things on social media, but often participate in “free” quizzes and personality tests that let these social media companies gather data on their personal and ideological preferences. The analysed data can  then used for commercial purposes, by either directly displaying ads and news tailored to particular demographic groups, or by further passing this data (knowingly or otherwise) to analytics companies like CA. The data analytics firms combine data from multiple sources and, using highly advanced algorithms, can generate sophisticated psychological profiles at group and individual levels. They can sell these to anyone who stands to profit from exploiting this data. These profiles are powerful tools, and can be used for tactical and strategic purposes against one’s opponent, or for spreading propaganda and fake news to influence  susceptible people. Thus ensues “information warfare”.Read more here>

The vulnerabilities of Xi Jinping and China's Communist Party

Today, despite all the accumulation of power, Xi and the CPC are far more vulnerable than is apparent.

In advance of the National People's Congress (NPC) meeting in Beijing, which will mark the official start of Xi Jinping's second term as the president of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party's (CPC) Central Committee proposed a set of constitutional amendments, chief among them being the removal of presidential term limits and the inclusion of "Xi Jinping Thought" in the country's constitution.NPC deputies are expected to overwhelmingly support these changes in a vote on Sunday, effectively allowing Xi to remain at the helm of Chinese politics for as long as he deems fit.Ever since the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi has been making moves to upend norms of collective leadership and succession that were cobbled together after the excesses of the Mao Zedong era.Read more here>