ONWARD WITH PM MODI’S DIGITAL STRIKE

Prime Minister Narendra Modi acted in an unprecedented manner after the way in which 20 courageous Indian Army soldiers led by their Commanding Officer were martyred at Galwan on 15 June in the dead of night. The Modi app ban will enter the annals of global commerce as the point where the once unstoppable forward progress of Chinese technology and its applications was stopped in its tracks. And because in such an industry, either there is forward movement or a process of pullback ensues, the move by Prime Minister Modi may herald the end of the PRC dreams of overtaking the rest of the world in Artificial Intelligence. Should China ever emerge as the masters of advanced technology, the consequences for democratic political structures would be immediate and profound. Within China, state-controlled media spend reams of newsprint and hours of talk-time running down democracies and their functioning as dysfunctional. The migrant crisis in India and the riots over the murder of an innocent African American by a brutal policeman of another race got considerable attention in PRC media, which played the incidents up as examples of the “chaos and confusion inherent in democracies”. Earlier, the protests in Hong Kong at the restrictions on freedoms enjoyed by the people in that Special Administrative Region were similarly presented as being caused by what is termed the excess of democracy and consequently freedom in Hong Kong. Soon after that, the National Peoples Congress, which has the unique record of overwhelmingly assenting to any measure proposed by the Chinese Communist Party, passed laws that ensure that the level of freedoms in Hong Kong are the same as that in the Peoples Republic of China, which is non-existent. Any time the CCP wants to take action against an individual in Hong Kong (or, more troubling, outside), all they need to do is to swoop down on her or him as soon as that unwary individual steps foot in a territory under Chinese jurisdiction or in the control of the CCP the manner Pakistan or Nepal under Oli is. Not that such measures will work, even in the short run. It is only a matter of time before Hong Kong erupts once again in anger at the denial of freedoms and human rights, and before such a wave enters the Chinese mainland. In particular, the growing underground Christian church in the PRC is becoming as much of a focus of anti-communist thinking as was the case in East Europe during the days when Soviet tanks kept the countries of that region under subjection.

Although the framers of the Constitution of India and the people chose democracy as the political system of choice, now that the world is once again witnessing a separation between communist authoritarianism and democratic freedoms as during the days of the USSR, the Lutyens Zone seems determined to prevent India from joining with the forces of freedom against the forces of internal repression and external aggression. There are substantial reasons why so many in the Lutyens Zone are battling to ensure that the Modi app ban is not followed up, for example by preventing Huawei from entering the 5G market in India and in replacing Chinese computers across the board with alternative (preferably indigenous) substitutes. It may be difficult to do away with Chinese equipment at a stroke, but at a minimum, what is needed is to block PRC systems from operating as the brains of a system, the way Chinese computers are in the case of electrical systems in India. It is astonishing that thus far, even such an elementary security precaution has not been carried out even within the state sector. The apps ban needs to be followed up by more steps designed to prevent intrusive PRC activity that sucks up meta data for the development of AI systems that in time will assist the PLA and GHQ Rawalpindi in joint operations against India. The soothing words coming from Beijing are designed to stop the Digital Surgical Strike on Chinese digital systems from being carried to a logical conclusion, rather than being diluted or abandoned halfway, the way so many initiatives have been in India. The people will not forgive any retreat from continuing with the path of freedom from virtual control by countries that have shed the blood of Indian soldiers in combat.