Grey-zone warfare is that space between peace and open conflict wherein coercion, deception and non-kinetic levers are used by nations to achieve their strategic goals. Cyber-attacks, economic coercion, organized criminal activities, and use of proxies, are resorted to in a gradual manner to achieve strategic objectives, without triggering military response. Use of subversive and/or coercive steps that fall below the threshold of a conventional conflict impacting national security adversely, poses a sustained, multi-domain, and acute challenge to the national security interests of India, given its geopolitical environment, large democratic polity, digitalising economy, and complex federal policing structure.

This challenge is a reality now, and it requires very deft and focussed co-ordination in view of national security challenges. There is a need for clarity of mission for agencies, improved civil-military coordination, investment in resilience and attribution capabilities, tighter regulatory frameworks for information and critical infrastructure, and expanded international cooperation. Targeted disinformation and influence campaigns, using social media platforms, tend to polarise domestic politics, undermine trust in institutions, and shape elite or public opinion on strategic issues such as caste and communal tensions, border issues, infrastructure projects, etc.

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India, with open media environments is quite susceptible to such threats. Recent developments in our neighbourhood, especially in Bangladesh, and Nepal, resulted mostly because of the effective mobilisation of masses, especially Gen Z, through social media campaigns by interested entities, which resulted in government change. Misinformation campaigns as tools of information warfare have been resorted to by the Chinese and Pakistanis frequently with an intention to disturb peace in India. Attacks on critical sectors like energy, power, transport, health, financial systems, government services etc. can create cascading economic and social disruption while masking the attacker’s identity.

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Cyber capabilities are cheap to deploy and deniable. Chinese cyber-attacks are quite common in India. Recently........

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