The India-China Territorial Dispute : Is it at the Dead End now?

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Defence Service Staff College, Wellington recently organised a seminar on China. This is an annual affair.

Prof Mohan Guruswami delivered a talk on “The India-China Territorial Dispute : Is it at the Dead End now?” at the seminar. He has very kindly shared his power point presentation. You can read the presentation, the link is given above.

Indian Armed Forces are still in stone age as far as knowledge management is concerned. They steadfastly refuse to share knowledge with the rigidity that cannot be explained. The contents of the seminar would be far more useful to others  in higher ranks and appointments when there was a galaxy of speakers, experts on the subject, were assembled. If you visit the website of DSSC you will find only photographs. Same is with Army Training Command. Every year all Cat ‘A’ Ests conduct one high profile seminar on topical subjects. How does one access those knowledge or pearls of wisdom. They don’t even put those in Army Intranet. It is another matter how does anybody, even if it is put in Army Intranet, access these knowledge as after 1400 hours offices close. It is not available in residences and there are plethora of cyber security restrictions.
All  steadfastly refuse to put their professional journals in the net. These are available in open domain in print form.

Large number of dissertations are submitted every year by students undergoing courses of instructions. Very few can be classified as security restriction. What can be done? I have put close to 450 dissertations by armed forces officers in my Knowledge on Line website : http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/. If you visit the Dissertation page there at : http://indianstrategicknowledgeonline.com/index.php?t=Dissertations you will find dissertations of Chiefs, Army Commanders and equivalents who had done courses abroad are kept there as first 30 dissertations. 
All think tanks and most of the training ests of armed forces today post the videos/ podcasts, PPTs of the presentations in their web site. This is easily done. Technology has all the answers except changing fossilized mindset.

Use of soft power by armed forces? LOL.

When you deal with knowledge in open domain why this attitude of frog in the well. How long we will hide behind a façade of security. Most of speakers don’t submit a written paper or even a speaking note.

Armed forces officers are particularly sensitive about their presentations. They refused to share anything. They are not able to come out of their Sainik School/ NDA syndrome: others will make use of their presentation!

At this Age ? Come on.

Will People learn ?  

Meanwhile thank you Prof Guruswami for sharing the presentation. He has done it earlier also. 

*** A Changing Rulebook to Tame the New Global Arms Race

Geopolitical Weekly 

By Omar Lamrani

Since man has gone to war, arms control has existed in some form or another. Among the first were the rules of battle protecting sanctuaries established by the dimly remembered Amphictyonic League in seventh-century B.C. Greece. More than two millennia later, cultural and religious norms and taboos restricted and established rules around organized violence until they yielded to modern arms control efforts taken up by diplomatic means and treaties — especially with the advent of industrial warfare. 

Arms control efforts, however, remain a manifestation of the geopolitical realities of their age, highly influenced by issues from the balance of power to technological advancement. The past 60 years have been an exceptional period for arms control, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the preceding 50 years had seen two total wars where arms control was all but nonexistent. The end of the bipolar framework that existed in the Cold War, and the rise of a more multifaceted world, will once again take us into a new arms control era. This new era is one in which great-power arms control treaties akin to those of past decades are more difficult to strike, but where arms control is not entirely abandoned.

The Cold War era, especially its latter stages, represented a particularly intensive period of arms control. This was largely for two key reasons. The first was the rise of the nuclear era and the associated public and official concern over a particularly fearsome and devastating weapon. Indeed, the nuclear arms race and the emergence of mutually assured destruction emphasized the need for arms control measures to contain tension and reduce uncertainty. The second reason was the fact that the Cold War was largely a bipolar world, with the United States (and by extension, NATO) and the Soviet Union (and by extension, the Warsaw Pact) entirely focused on each other. This made it easier to negotiate arms control treaties under the relatively simple premise of more or less equal limits. 

*** Trump’s Dilemma

Friedman's Weekly

By George Friedman

President Donald Trump's ability to make changes depends on whether his support rises or falls.

Editor’s note: This week, in light of the Republican withdrawal of a bill that would have repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), we are republishing George Friedman’s piece from Dec. 16, 2016 about the constraints on the power of Trump’s administration. In that piece, George talked about how weak the office of the U.S. president is in general and how weak Trump will be as a president in particular. This past week’s legislative setbacks for the Trump administration are foreseen by this Dec. 16 piece. In addition, its insights are not just relevant for explaining the significance of that defeat. The piece describes the broader challenge Trump will be facing throughout the course of his presidency.

Donald Trump’s presidency will have geopolitical consequences. Most of the world wants to know what he will do. But that depends on what he can do. That, in turn, will be determined by the political dynamics within the United States as well as by counteractions of other nations. This is a case where politics rises to the level of geopolitics. Trump’s actions will be conditioned by the actions of other players, particularly in Congress. Trump, after all, will only be the president and his unilateral powers will be limited. For most of the things he wants to do, he needs Congress to go along. Therefore, the American stance toward the world will depend, for the moment, less on what Trump wishes than what Congress decides to do.

** The Brexit Has Begun: Now What?

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Until now, the Brexit had mostly been a succession of public statements, declarations of intent, veiled threats and wishful thinking. But today, the British government made the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union manifest by officially invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty and delivering formal notification of its departure from the Continental bloc, the first member ever to do so. This started the clock on negotiations over the terms of the divorce and their future relationship, which will leave both the United Kingdom and the European Union considerably changed.

After months of buildup, the early weeks of the Brexit process will be rather unremarkable. Before conversations between the two sides can start, the European Union will have to define its own negotiation strategy. The bloc's remaining 27 members will spend the coming weeks discussing their priorities for the negotiations before holding a summit on April 29 and giving the European Commission a mandate to negotiate with London on their behalf. The first topics of the Brexit negotiations will probably include Britain's financial obligations to the European Union (the "EU bill," which by some estimates could total up to 60 billion euros, or $65 billion), as well as the rights of EU citizens living in the United Kingdom and of British citizens living on the Continent.

India-Israel Relations: An Opportunity That Can’t Be Missed

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BENNETT SEFTEL

With the Middle East mired in a constant state of turmoil, reoccurring tectonic shifts across the region have encouraged new partnerships, sometimes between unlikely players. One such blossoming relationship is the India-Israel alliance.

“Israel and India have a firm alliance, between two peoples and two states with illustrious and greatly inspirational pasts,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin affirmed during his visit to India last November.

Although both India and Israel were partitioned under the auspices of the British Empire and declared independence within a year of each other – India in 1947 and Israel in 1948 –interactions between the two nations haven’t always been smooth.

According to Dr. Shalom Solomon Wald, Senior Fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute in Israel, throughout much of the 20th century, India’s position towards Israel was deeply affected by India’s alignment with several Arab states as well as with the Soviet Union.

“Effective lobbying by Palestinian leaders and rising nationalism in the Arab Middle East profoundly influenced India’s policies for 80 years,” explains Wald. “India’s leadership position in the Non-Aligned Movement alongside numerous Muslim countries and its quasi-alliance with the Soviet Union reinforced its decision to reject any political and diplomatic relations with Israel.”

Learning from Israel: Countering stone-pelters in Kashmir

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By Cecil Victor

The use of pellet guns to control juvenile stone-pelters has acquired an odium it deserves. It has become counter-productive of the intent and purpose of crowd control in the perfervid Kashmir valley. The government needs to explore the use of an even more stinky (not at all facetiously suggested -- in fact very seriously proffered) alternative the crowning characteristic of which is that it is not lethal, will not break the skin or any bones -- but leave the target in a sloe of despair. At least for three days. 

In the battle for hearts and minds in a counter-insurgency/counter-terror situation every psychological ploy becomes important in the curbing, containment and neutralisation of threats to public order. Overt and well-publicised unveiling of the new equipment and public withdrawal of the obnoxious shotgun from the security arsenal will set tongues wagging and people thinking -- which young man would want to move out in public stinking like a load of sewage? And which community would want to live with an all-pervasive smell that would be the result of a stone-pelting incident?

The government has tried the shotgun and acquired opprobrium. It uses teargas as standard equipment. It used pepper spray (PAVA) to limited effect (it needs to experiment with better ways of dispersal including the use of drones). There are reports of some police forces reverting to the catapults using glass marbles as warheads -- these can be as lethal as pellets if a person is hit on the head.

5 Take-Aways From Pakistan's Economic Cooperation Organization Summit

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By Mahboob Mohsin

In Pakistan there is a palpable fear that the new U.S. administration may be less discreet and more direct when it comes to tightening the noose around the country’s foreign aid. Note that it is taken as a given that the Trump administration would assuredly cut down on aid to Pakistan; the only uncertainty is over how abruptly it will be done.

As the Trump administration runs out of patience with Pakistan’s “could not or would not” approach to dismantling terrorist infrastructure runs out, for Pakistan, it looks like the chickens have come home to roost. For Pakistan, at least, the upcoming “dramatic reductions” in U.S. foreign aid were not entirely unpredictable after all.

However Pakistan, even at this inflection point, continues to make economic gains, at least in terms of macroeconomic indicators, and is quickly realizing the significance of regional connectivity. Faced with a possible shift away from dependency on U.S. aid, Pakistan is ready to tap into the economic potential of collaborations with China, the Central Asian republics, Turkey and Iran. And there was no better moment to boast the gains made so far and explore more opportunities than in the 10-country summit recently hosted by Pakistan.

India Considers Stepping up Military Assistance to Afghanistan

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By Franz-Stefan Gady

India is purportedly evaluating whether to repair grounded Afghan helicopters and transport aircraft. 

India is mulling stepping up its military assistance to war-torn Afghanistan by offering to pay for repairs to grounded Afghan Air Force (AAF) helicopters and military transport aircraft, Reuters reported on March 22.

According to the Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, Manpreet Vohra, India dispatched a team of experts in 2016 to assess the needs of the AAF. Following a visit to Kabul, the Indian aviation experts estimated that it would cost about $50 million to procure spare parts and make repairs on 11 grounded Mi-35 helicopters and seven military transport aircraft.

“We have been looking at the scale of the challenge the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] faces, particularly in one segment, close air support,” Vohra said in an interview in Kabul this week with Reuters. “We are trying to see how we can help. They have a large number of attack helicopters and transport aircraft grounded for want of spares, for expiry of certification.”

Pakistan Gets Closer to One of Russia's Muslim Republics

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By Ahmad Rashid Malik

The outreach from a Russian republic could help reshape Pakistan’s geopolitical milieu. 

The president of the Republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Nurgaliyevich Minnikhanov, paid a visit to Pakistan from March 18-19, visiting Lahore and Islamabad. This was the first official visit undertaken by a leader from Tatarstan, a republic in western Russia, to Pakistan. Minnikhanov’s delegation also included Tatarstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Albert Karimov; Alexey Dedov, Russia’s ambassador to Pakistan; Taliya Minullina, chief executive of the Tatarstan Investment Development Agency; and Marat Gatin, deputy director of foreign affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan.

During meetings, the chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Shahbaz Sharif, shared his vision of development and public services with the president of Tatarstan. Both leaders wish to cultivate trade and economic relations between Pakistan and Tatarstan. Sharif pointed out that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) offers new opportunities to expand relations with the Russian republic.

Sheikh Hasina's visit: India needs to address Bangladesh concerns

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By Sreeradha Datta

India and Bangladesh, the two South Asian democracies, are also neighbours with the longest common border of over 4,000 km. They are also partners in progress and development and have over the last seven years been able to sketch out an increasingly deepening engagement trajectory.

The governments on both sides would want to showcase their bilateral partnership in the region. Political leaders on both sides appear invested with each other and have gradually, especially since 2010, been able to widen the bilateral scope to even include defence cooperation in recent times. The development of large and small infrastructure projects, trade facilitation, cross-border linkages and security cooperation are some of the salient features of this evolving relationship. 

Clearly there is much to rejoice in bilateral ties between the two neighbours at present. It would be no exaggeration to state that India and Bangladesh are enjoying the most comprehensive bilateral engagement since they established diplomatic ties in 1971 immediately after that country's independence from Pakistan. But we need to ask whether the evolving momentum can be sustained and, more pertinently, can this process be made irreversible?

“Peace Through Strength”: Deterrence in Chinese Military Doctrine

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By Dennis J. Blasko

“Peace Through Strength”: Deterrence in Chinese Military Doctrine

“To pursue peace through strength, it shall be the policy of the United States to rebuild the U.S. Armed Forces.” President Donald J. Trump, January 27, 2017.

“[Gen. Martin Dempsey] told American troops based in Japan on Thursday that ‘the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it.’” Associated Press, April 25, 2013.

The idea of “peace through strength” can be traced back to at least Roman times and almost certainly goes back even further, but in U.S. history, it is associated with Ronald Reagan. In his essay, “The Ancient Foreign Policy,” historian Victor Davis Hanson salutes its origins and links this “common wisdom” to the concept of deterrence.

From Vegetius’s Si vis pacem, para bellum [If you want peace, prepare for war] to Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength,” the common wisdom was to be ready for war and thereby, and only by that way, avoid war, not to talk bellicosely and to act pacifistically … Deterrence (and with it peace) often was not defined only in material terms; it rested also on a psychological readiness to use overwhelming power to confront an aggressor … Again, deterrence (“the act of frightening away”) rested not just on quantifiable power but also on a likelihood to use it.

A First: Chinese Honor Guard Marches in Pakistan Republic Day Parade

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By Ankit Panda

For the first time ever, Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops joined Pakistan’s Republic Day parade in Islamabad. Troops from Saudi Arabia and Turkey joined the parade as well.

The participation of Chinese troops in the parade this year highlights growing ties between China and Pakistan, two countries with close ties that refer to their bilateral relationship as an “all-weather” partnership.

Pakistan’s president, Mamnoon Hussain, noted that the participation of Chinese troops marked a “historic moment.”

According to Xinhua, China’s state news agency, “A contingent of the guard of honor of the three services of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” participated in the parade.

Xinhua acknowledged Hussain’s comment on China’s inaugural participation, but did not explicitly mention that this was a rare foray by the Chinese armed forces abroad.

“We have come here to convey a message of friendship to Pakistan on behalf of the Chinese people and the Chinese army. We sincerely hope that Pakistan will progress day by day and its army will be stronger and stronger,” PLA Major General Li Jianbo said during a rehearsal for the parade, according to Xinhua.

China Is Building a 100,000 Strong Marine Corps

By Franz-Stefan Gady

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The People’s Liberation Army allegedly plans to increase the size of its amphibious assault troops by 400 percent. 

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is set to increase the size of its Marine Corps from about 20,000 to 100,000, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on March 13. According to unnamed PLA insiders and experts interviewed by SCMP, elements of the expanded Marine Corps would be stationed abroad, including Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in southwest Pakistan.

The PLA Marine Corps (PLAMC), part of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), has gradually been expanding its size over the last couple of years as its mission is slowly expanding from conducting operations in China’s coastal areas — including defending Chinese holdings in the East and South China Seas, next to preparing for a possible amphibious assault on Taiwan — to more global roles.

“The PLA marines will be increased to 100,000, consisting of six brigades in the coming future to fulfill new missions of our country,” a source told SCMP. The source also noted that two combat brigades were already transferred to the PLAMC, increasing the size from roughly 12,000 (two understrength brigades) to around 20,000.

China´s Blue Water Navy Strategy and its Implications

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By Yoji Koda 

Will China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which has grown into a local giant, also become a blue water armada that operates continuously in the Pacific and/or Indian Oceans? Yoji Koda believes that this influence-expanding goal has a major drawback – i.e., maritime chokepoints that are vulnerable to interdiction by a number of other nations, most importantly the United States.

Preface

In recent years, China has been challenging existing and established international maritime norms, represented by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), customary international law, and international standards for conduct at sea. It has done so by making extensive, unilateral territorial and maritime claims and through heavy-handed maneuvers in its surrounding waters, especially in the South China Sea (SCS) and the East China Sea (ECS).

China’s recent willingness to take extraordinarily strong unilateral step to exercise its influence in maritime affairs is fundamentally related to its national objectives. In general, these seem to be: (1) preserving the Chinese Communist Party’s untrammeled authority; (2) protecting China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity; (3) promoting social welfare and people’s quality of life; (4) building and maintaining a strategic nuclear posture that is comparable with that of the United States; and (5) constructing its own global expeditionary capabilities, which have been a U.S. monopoly for decades.

China Base Sparks ‘Very Significant Security Concerns’

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By COLIN CLARK

WASHINGTON: For the first time, an important United States military base, one where a great deal of highly classified communications, intelligence and operations occur, sits within a few miles of a military competitor.

HENDERSON BROOKS REPORT

Mohan Guruswamy

I will be speaking tomorrow at the DSSC, Wellington on the India-China territorial and border issues. I am sure our conduct of the 1962 war will come up in the discussions as will the Henderson Brooks report.

Nothing in the Henderson-Brooks Report we don’t already know.

I must confess that I have read Part I of the Henderson-Brooks Report (HBR) many years ago. I also read a copy of an executive summary of the HBR, which is made available to certain senior military officers. Don’t ask how and don’t wonder why? Some of us get to see things that we are not meant to see. There is nothing in both of them that most of us on comment on security issues didn’t know.

The HBR is a severe indictment of how our government goes about handling critical issues involving national security. It was meant for government to derive lessons to enable it to improve its security related decision-making processes. Since the Report was seen more as an indictment of a particular regime, it was turned into a badly kept national secret. Actually the Report was as much an indictment of how the Indian Military and in particular, the Indian Army conducted itself in 1962. Since the military at some levels does get to study the main points made in the HBR, it is possible that at least the military has derived some lessons from it.

Trump and Eurasian Foreign Policies

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Zorawar Daulet Singh

Download PDF Version

The United States’ (US) political revolution or convulsion, depending on where one sits on the ideological spectrum, has produced ripple effects across the world. While the vast network of allied states in West Europe and East Asia have their own reasons in keeping the “American goliath” engaged in these areas, Eurasia’s rising powers confront a different challenge. The principal challenge for these states is one of adapting to a lighter American footprint while also responding with their own order-building ideas to prevent a destabilising power transition.

Let us explore what the three Eurasian powers—Russia, China, and India—were doing on the world stage, and the possible impact of Donald Trump’s ascent on their foreign policies. Before the November 2016 election in the US, each of these three countries had been pursuing different roles based on a common assumption that primacy and exceptionalism would remain the default image of American policymakers.

Shared ‘Special Responsibility’

How Artificial Intelligence And The Robotic Revolution Will Change The Workplace Of Tomorrow

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by Benjamin Wohl

The workplace is going to look drastically different ten years from now. The coming of the Second Machine Age is quickly bringing massive changes along with it. Manual jobs, such as lorry driving or house building are being replaced by robotic automation, and accountants, lawyers, doctors and financial advisers are being supplemented and replaced by high level artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

So what do we need to learn today about the jobs of tomorrow? Two things are clear. The robots and computers of the future will be based on a degree of complexity that will be impossible to teach to the general population in a few short years of compulsory education. And some of the most important skills people will need to work with robots will not be the things they learn in computing class.

There is little doubt that the workforce of tomorrow will need a different set of skills in order to know how to navigate a new world of work. Current approaches for preparing young people for the digital economy are based on teaching programming and computational thinking. However, it looks like human workers will not be replaced by automation, but rather workers will work alongside robots. If this is the case, it will be essential that human/robot teams draw on each other's strengths.

What Do Jihadis Want? The Caliphate

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by Daniel Pipes

This text, based on a talk delivered by Daniel Pipes at the India Foundation conference on counterterrorism in Jaipur in February 2016, was prepared for publication without his assistance, under the chapter title "The Caliphate, Al-Qaeda, and Global Jihad." The author has made slight changes to the text.

Global Terrorism: Challenges and Policy Options, ed. by Dhruv C. Katoch and Shakti Sinha (New Delhi: Pentagon Press), pp.88-91.

A question often asked is, "What do the jihadis [Mujahideen] want?" The answer is surprisingly obscure, as most of their attacks do not include clear demands.

The horrific attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 and on Paris in November 2015 were carried out by suicide squads, with gunmen carrying out mass shootings. Elsewhere, they have resorted to machine gun assaults, beheadings, bombings, hijackings etc. After the attackers have been neutralized by the security forces, an assessment is carried out of the damage they caused and detectives attempt to trace the identities of the perpetrators, to look into possible motives. Shadowy websites then make post-hoc unauthenticated claims, which still belie the question, "What do the jihadis want?"

A Changing Rulebook To Tame The New Global Arms Race

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by Omar Lamrani

Since man has gone to war, arms control has existed in some form or another. Among the first were the rules of battle protecting sanctuaries established by the dimly remembered Amphictyonic League in seventh-century B.C. Greece. More than two millennia later, cultural and religious norms and taboos restricted and established rules around organized violence until they yielded to modern arms control efforts taken up by diplomatic means and treaties - especially with the advent of industrial warfare.

Arms control efforts, however, remain a manifestation of the geopolitical realities of their age, highly influenced by issues from the balance of power to technological advancement. The past 60 years have been an exceptional period for arms control, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that the preceding 50 years had seen two total wars where arms control was all but nonexistent. The end of the bipolar framework that existed in the Cold War, and the rise of a more multifaceted world, will once again take us into a new arms control era. This new era is one in which great-power arms control treaties akin to those of past decades are more difficult to strike, but where arms control is not entirely abandoned.

Above Graphic: The end of the Cold War appeared promising for arms control, but a resurgent Russia, a rising China, and an increasingly multifaceted world have progressively complicated arms control efforts. (-/AFP/Getty Images)

The Cold War era, especially its latter stages, represented a particularly intensive period of arms control. This was largely for two key reasons. The first was the rise of the nuclear era and the associated public and official concern over a particularly fearsome and devastating weapon. Indeed, the nuclear arms race and the emergence of mutually assured destruction emphasized the need for arms control measures to contain tension and reduce uncertainty. The second reason was the fact that the Cold War was largely a bipolar world, with the United States (and by extension, NATO) and the Soviet Union (and by extension, the Warsaw Pact) entirely focused on each other. This made it easier to negotiate arms control treaties under the relatively simple premise of more or less equal limits.

Marines Test Killer Hovercraft, Wooden Glider & 3D Printers For The Battlefield

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By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

The Navy and Marines are experimenting with converting the standard LCAC transport hovercraft, seen here, into an unmanned platform for rocket launchers.

QUANTICO: A hovercraft that shoots salvoes of rockets. A speedboat that turns into a submarine. A mobile 3D printing factory. A big wooden box with wings (yes, really). And, of course, more drones than you can shake a stick at (because they swarm).

These are just a few of the roughly 100 technologies the Marine Corps will check out in its upcoming experimental wargame at Camp Pendleton. About 50 are ready for real-world demonstrations. Another 50 will just be on display, this time, though they might be ready for field tests by the next “S2ME2 ANTX” (that’s Ship To Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise 2017).

Getting all this tech together has been a nine-month crash program, with top Marine and Navy leaders bypassing the normal bureaucracy to counter new threats. Here’s a quick look at some of my fave technologies.

NO END IN SIGHT TO THE ARMY’S DEPENDENCE ON AIRPOWER

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MIKE PIETRUCHA

“Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas to facilitate air and naval forces. This is exact opposite of what we have done for the last 70 years, where air and naval forces have enabled ground forces.”.

Inter-service tussles are a staple of the Pentagon experience, particularly in lean times. Mostly harmless, they are the symptoms of the constant effort by leadership to scrape up together the resources to organize, train, equip, and operate their services. At the end of the day, however, the Department of Defense still provides the nation with a joint force composed of specialized but interdependent services, each with a specific role to play in America’s defense and each with a carefully thought-out role in obtaining military superiority in their various domains. So, it was with great interest that I read that the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley had proposed an acute shift in roles, wherein the Army would take the lead not only in major ground combat, but in “penetrating denied areas” to enable the other services. And it would do it without air or maritime superiority.

The future of AI: 10 scenarios IBM is already working on

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By Jason Hiner

While there's fear about artificial intelligence taking jobs or wiping out humanity, IBM sees the future in far more practical terms. It's using AI to assist human problem-solving. 

Artificial intelligence has emerged as the hottest buzzword in tech‚—despite the fact that it's been around since the dawn of computing. Countless startups are now grabbing onto AI to explain what they do and tech marketers are branding with AI to make simple things like algorithms and basic machine learning sound a lot smarter and more sophisticated.

"AI is a ridiculously broad umbrella these days," said Michael Karasick, IBM Research's vice president of cognitive computing (IBM's fancy terms for AI).

"The reason we use machine learning in these problems is because there's too much data," said Karasick, whose team at IBM Research contains a mashup of mathematicians and systems analysts. The team uses AI for three types of things:Karasick gave a presentation at IBM InterConnect 2017 this week in Las Vegas where he laid out IBM Research's roadmap for AI. The approach of Karasick's team is ridiculously practical, since their mandate is to incubate technologies that could be useful to businesses. As you'd expect, a lot of things they're working on boil down to automation and big data. 

Will the Trump Administration Protect Hard-Won Progress with China on Cybersecurity?

By Robert Silvers

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As Presidents Trump and Xi prepare for their first meeting next month at Mar-a-Lago, most early attention has centered on tension points involving Taiwan policy, the South China Sea, North Korea and trade. But another U.S.-China issue hangs in the balance: cybersecurity. While the story has been underreported in the press, cybersecurity experts have concluded that Chinese hacking of U.S. companies decreased substantially after the Obama administration’s strong intervention with the Chinese government in 2015. That leaves open the possibility that, should tensions mount on other issues, China will loosen its restraint and again permit its military and state-owned enterprises to conduct cyber-enabled economic espionage against U.S. companies. Many billions of dollars of intellectual property (IP) would again be at risk.

It is useful to recap some of the history here. For many years, Chinese government and corporate actors—though the distinction is often blurry in China—waged a rampant hacking campaign against U.S. businesses, stealing valuable IP and trade secrets. In response, the Obama administration indicted five Chinese military officials in 2014 for their participation in this mass theft, an unprecedented move that enraged China and escalated tension in cybersecurity relations between the two countries.

Want to fix cybersecurity? Think about worst-case scenarios first

by Alicia Tatone

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Scenario thinking sketches out future cybersecurity problems and helps policymakers begin addressing tomorrow’s digital dilemmas.

Cybersecurity depends on managing the consequences of a single powerful insight: The ongoing and ever-increasing demand for features, performance, and extensions of digital capabilities will expand to fill the space of what is technically possible, and then go beyond it. More than anything else, this is what drives innovation and the rapid rate of change that people and institutions have had to grapple with in the digital world.

It also means that the digital realm will evolve very much like other security realms have evolved in human affairs, but more quickly, with ever-changing vulnerabilities that will never fully be mastered. In other words, bad (illicit) actors coevolve with good, and the meanings and identities of “good” and “bad” are never settled. Threats don’t disappear; they change shape. Since the illicit players don’t need to follow rules or norms other than the ruthless pursuit of profit (for criminals) and strategic advantage (for states), they have a structural advantage and move faster and more boldly than the legal players.

The hackers trying to build a hack-proof operating system

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Jack Detsch

A team of Canadian security researchers is set to unveil a computer operating system called Subgraph designed to protect its users from the most common types of digital attacks. 

MARCH 27, 2017 MONTREAL—As a teenage hacker in the early 1990s, David Mirza Ahmad quickly learned that even the savviest techies can be "owned," old-school computer slang for exposing someone's identity.

After Mr. Ahmad tangled with rival hackers on a local online message board, they discovered his name and quickly found out his phone number at his parent's home in Calgary. They called him from a payphone down the street, and posing as cops, threatened to press charges for his digital trespassing. 

It was just a prank, but for Ahmad, who immediately ripped up his printouts and destroyed his floppy disks after the call ended, it provided a wake-up call that eventually led him to pursue a career in security research. Over the past 25 years as he taught himself the ins and outs of breaking computer programs, he became increasingly aware that the systems that people trust with their most sensitive information are inherently untrustworthy.

What keeps cybersecurity experts up at night?

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Sara Sorcher

For Passcode’s last Influencers Poll, we asked an open-ended question: What’s the most urgent cybersecurity or privacy challenge right now, and what’s one way to fix it? 

MARCH 27, 2017 —Securing elections from hackers. The spread of connected devices. Nation-state attacks. The lack of cybersecurity talent. 

These were some of the pressing cybersecurity challenges that keep Passcode’s group of security and privacy experts up at night.

Passcode’s Influencers Poll regularly surveys 160 high-profile experts from across government, industry, and the advocacy community. For one last poll before Passcode shuts down, we asked an open-ended question: What’s the most urgent cybersecurity or privacy challenge right now, and what’s one way to fix it?

What do you think? VOTE in the public version of the poll. 

Several Influencers were concerned about the impending explosive growth in the sheer number of devices connected to the internet. “Whether one calls them embedded systems, or the 'Internet of Things,' the combination of these little computers, poor security design, and upcoming high-speed wireless networks are a perfect storm of sorts that holds the potential to make all of our current cybersecurity concerns worse, more persistent, and of much larger scale,” says Bob Stratton, a serial security entrepreneur, investor, and consultant.