Daily Times

Sir: A seminar about ‘Indian hegemonic design and its implications’ was organised by the Rabita Forum International at Karachi on March 23, 2018).   While addressing the seminar, the chief guest, retired Vice admiral Arifullah Hussaini said, “I think India is wasting its money on defence. The future of war does not belong to conventional methods but artificial intelligence. Whosoever uses it well will win. Therefore, we have to learn artificial intelligence.”

Both India and Pakistan are novices in the field of artificial intelligence. Even China is learning tricks of AI trade from Japan. None of the countries mentioned have any local artificial-intelligence firm of the level of US “Tony Stark”.

But the speaker’s casual remarks jittered India. It constituted a task force under Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran to judge Pakistan’s capability in the field and design a future for India.

The task force was composed of a multi-stakeholder group including government and services representatives besides academia, industry and nascent companies. The Task Force prepared its report in consultation with representatives of Army, Navy, Air force, Coast Guard, representatives of all Defence Public Sector Units.

They include Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited, Garden Reach Ship Building and Engineers, Goa Shipyard Limited, Mazagon Dock Limited, Bharat Earth Movers Limited, and Mishra Dhatu Nigham. Tatas have handed over their final report after five odd months to the defence minister on how to use artificial intelligence for achieving military superiority.

Keeping in view popular interest in the report, Indian media published contours of the report. India’s defence ministry admitted in a statement, “AI has the potential to have transformative impact on national security. It is also seen that AI is essentially a dual use technology.

While it can fuel technology driven economic growth, it also has potential to provide military superiority.” The defence ministry issued guidelines for Indian companies to venture into research projects to develop or upgrade weapon systems and in turn reduce imports in this field, particularly in area of aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare.

It is not swaggering braggarts (like Tiger Niazi), but cool commanders that win wars. We are sure that Pakistan is ahead of India in the field of cyber warfare.

SAMAN JAAVED MALIK

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, July 3^rd 2018.