IIRF is organizing a webinar series on “Protracted Grey Zone & Cognitive Warfare” as a major game changer in the modern warfare. In the next two months this webinar series is starting from the basics and would end with analyzing long term effect of todays ICT policies on the future of security of India .
OVERALL STRATEGY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION
The first webinar will also cover those aspects of information and communication technology that now constitute integral part of modern war fares. Our experts will lead you to these related topics for which public awareness is still in its infancy.
Mr Pavithran Rajan is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy. While serving in the Army, quite early in his career, he did some pioneering work in Cyber Intelligence and Information Warfare. Later he took voluntary retirement and served with the Govt of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, as an advisor.
Pavithran Rajan is an Adjunct Faculty at the Cyber Security Research Centre; Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh and on the Board of Advisors of the Cyber Peace Foundation. He is considered a thought leader in Information Warfare and a Strategic Thinker of the Information Age in India. He is associated with numerous Think Tanks in the country. He serves on the Board of two private limited companies and advises various central and state government agencies including the Armed Forces on cyber security matters.
As already mentioned, Pavithran Rajan is a prolific writer and he has authored a very important book recently which we will be discussing today.
Lt Gen DS Hooda, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM *, ADC
Lieutenant General Deependra Singh Hooda, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM & Bar, ADC is the former General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Indian army’s Northern Command. The General Officer was the Northern Army Commander during the ‘surgical strike’ in September 2016. He is most prominently known for his views on Kashmir with a strong emphasis on human rights. With a career spanning forty years, he has served on both the Northern and Eastern borders of India.
He did his schooling at St Columbas, New Delhi, he is an alumnus of National Defence Academy, Pune. Commissioned into the 4/4 GR on 15 December 1976, which he later commanded
He has been an instructor at the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering, Mhow and Col GS of a Strike Corps. He has also had tenures in the Military Operations Directorate and the Quarter Master General’s Branch at the Army Headquarters. He has also served on the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea[4] for which he was awarded the UNMEE Medal.
He retired on 30 November 2016 after nearly 40 years of service in the Indian Army. He is a prolific writer and speaker on Strategy and Military Affairs
Smita Purushottam
Chairperson SITARA/ Ambassador (Rtd)
Smita Purushottam served as Ambassador to Venezuela (Jan 2012 – Jun 2015), Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Holy See (Aug 2015-Oct 2017). In Switzerland, she transformed the sleepy bilateral relationship with 3 Summits held in rapid succession due to realisation of the benefits of a stronger partnership with the world’s No. 1 country in Innovation, international competitiveness, vocational education and environmental performance. Concrete progress was achieved on black money and Swiss support for India’s NSG candidature. Several investment commitments from high-tech Swiss firms were received during her tenure.
She also served in India’s missions abroad as Deputy Chief of Mission in the Embassy of India in Berlin, Minister (Political) at the High Commission of India, London, Counsellor for Economic and Commercial Affairs at the Indian Embassy in Beijing the Embassy in Brussels, and Language-trainee and Information Second Secretary at the Embassy of India, Moscow. Her most formative experience was in China, as she had the opportunity to study Chinese economic reforms first-hand, which she relayed back to India.
She served also as Joint Secretary at the Foreign Service Institute (MEA), New Delhi; Joint Secretary in the Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters in MOD; Director/Under Secretary (East Europe/Russia/Soviet Union) and SAARC, and Under Secretary (Bhutan) in MEA. She was perhaps one of the few people who predicted that Glasnost and Perestroika would lead to the unwinding of Communist Party rule in the USSR, which was ignored.
She put her China exposure to good use and spent a year as Fellow at Harvard during 2000-2001 where she prepared a paper “Can India Overtake China?” (2001), in which she compared the two economies and their respective reform experiences; analysed the ongoing reforms in the Indian economy focusing on the telecom sector, aviation, privatization attempts and IT, and recommended building a strong manufacturing sector like China had. She emphasised the importance of embedded technology, now called IoT, and predicted the success of the ongoing telecom sector reforms in India. Her recommendations focusing on a strong, high-tech manufacturing base were partially implemented years later. Later her focus switched to China’s Science & Technology Advances and her publications focused on innovation ecosystems, including the highly sophisticated American ecosystem.
She predicted the disruptive effects of China’s tech acquisitions ODI for Europe’s technological base and even EU unity, all of which have come true (the article was rejected as too speculative at the time).
She also attended courses at the National Defence University, Washington in July-August 2002, and the Workshop on the Relationship Between National Security and Technology in China at the University of California, San Diego, in July-August 2013. She attended the High-Performance Leadership course at IMD, Lausanne in May 2017. She joined the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi in 2010, as Senior Fellow where she launched the High-tech Defence Innovation Forum to promote high-tech indigenous science and industry, and also the Eurasia cluster to revive studies on this region. She attended a few business management classes at VUB, Brussels. She was admitted with a full Fellowship for a PhD program at an Ivy league University – Cornell – in 1980 but could not join as she qualified for the Indian Foreign Service in the same year, after briefly teaching History at Delhi University. She was member of the Board of Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Bharatiya Skills Development University (BSDU), Jaipur, which is adapting the world-renowned Swiss vocational education system to Indian conditions.
She is founder of the non-profit Do Tank “SITARA”, a Science, Indigenous Technology and Advanced Research Accelerator, to bring increased vigour to the indigenisation of high-tech production and building a Science Nation in India. It is due to SITARA’s pioneering work on the threat posed by foreign equipment in India’s ICT networks that several reforms have been implemented in telecom security and procurement systems and a fillip has been provided to domestic high-tech production.
Ms. Purushottam has been published widely in reputed journals and newspapers in India and abroad.
Mr Shambhu SIngh , IAS
Special Secretary and Financial Adviser, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways
Mr Shambhu Singh is a mission oriented person with incisive analytical skills and tremendous experience in counter terrorism, rehabilitation and social development fields. He has single handedly steered one of the most enduring insurgencies/terrorism movement to an acceptable threshold thus facilitating its near resolution. He has had work experience in development of the Small Scale Sector in India, Climate Change negotiations in the UNFCCC, Education, Forest & Environment and infrastructure sectors, particularly Highways, Shipping and Power. One of the early birds in adopting ICT in the Government, he has been passionate about India’s domestic ICT Sector development. He superannuated as Special Secretary and Financial Adviser of Ministry of Road Transport & Highways and Ministry of Shipping.
Look forward to this talk on 27th . All the best Brigadier Sandeep and Mr Pavitran Rajan