ALSO READ: Philosophy and Methodology of Intelligence and Big Tech – Part 1

Human Error – ‘Free Will’ is the Hurdle

The paper points toward an interesting thing – the element of ‘Free Will’ in human minds. It says that in the future, with the invention of technologies and enhancement in intelligence research, the exactitude of predictions will certainly grow but it will never reach total precision. And the reason for that is the “Man has an element of free will, and can always act irrationally, even against his own interests.” As long as men with ‘free will’ are there, there is no way to verify the conjectures about the intentions, and free will can surprise anytime. One can say that the ‘Human Error’ that these tech products and improvisations are trying to minimize is Free Will, which was a key hurdle in influencing/controlling the system in the past.

New Improvisations

Nothing has affected the ‘Free Will’ of humanity more strongly than the Corona pandemic. While waiting for the lockdowns and restrictions to go over, everyone was literally forced to spend more and more time on technology platforms. Many businesses around the world and the very idea of their existence vanished during this phase and everyone seems to lose something or the other but we cannot let this fact go unnoticed that it is the Big Tech club that has emerged as the biggest beneficiaries of Covid pause. The recent stats on their quarterly revenue tell a lot.

Google, Microsoft, and Apple’s combined revenue crossed over $50 billion in the April-June quarter. Facebook saw a 101% increase (as compared to the same quarter in 2020) and for Amazon, it was the third consecutive $100 billion quarter, its sales grew 27% to $113 billion, in the last three months.

On one hand, in between the news on new variants and third wave, many countries are still struggling to recover, and to restart their economic cycle, on the other hand, the Big Tech owners have started pursuing new aspirations in new domains, not in cyber but in the physical world i.e. farmland, sea and space.

The Case of India

In Arthshastra, Aacharya Chanakya has said: “ACQUISITION and SECURITY, are dependent upon peace and industry. Efforts to achieve the results of works undertaken is – industry. Absence of disturbance to the enjoyment of the results achieved from works is – peace.”

While the Indian government is drafting the guidelines for social media and eCommerce, these tech giants have already started entering into new domains and sectors. Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have already started capturing the fin-tech and payment markets; there are already Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and Facebook Pay and WhatsApp’s recent P2P money transfer feature.

Now they have started exploring microcredit, digital insurance, MSMEs, retailers and social commerce and their growing financial portfolio is a serious matter, from the national security point of view. Recently, the RBI warned against these patterns which can cause financial destabilization in the long run.

After one and a half-decade of behind-the-scene predatory practices, they are now in an open fight with the domestic companies. Now there is frequent news about small traders, retailers, startups and telecom operators raising concerns over the FDI and trade policy violations and on the unethical/discriminatory business approach of these US content providers. The confederation of all Indian traders (CAIT), a body of over 8 crore Indian traders, was forced to move the Supreme Court against the hegemony of Amazon and Flipcart kind of eCommerce platforms and their alliance with selected suppliers and local private banks.

In 2019, during Reagan National Defense Forum, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos shared his deep commitment toward the home country’s intelligence and defence department’s interests and criticized fellow Big Tech players for not doing enough on their part, out of the pressure of some of their employees and socio-public groups. And he said: “If Big Tech is going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, this country is in trouble. That just can’t happen.”

A recent development is that Amazon is planning to diversify its entertainment portfolio in India too and looking for ways to acquire multiple film and media distribution players.

Economic security is one of the most important dimensions of national security, and the question before countries like India, who are embracing the Big Tech products to the fullest is – how they will deal with this situation where things are now beyond simple profit/loss calculations.

Perception Management

Social media platforms are the biggest mediums of trend creation, and trends can build/affect/and can damage the perceptions.

When the song of a school kid from some remote village, goes viral on social media, the chief minister of the state invites the kid to his house and felicitates him, literally, for being viral. Even though it seems a normal and healthy trend but unknowingly such activities legitimize social media to shape and control the narration. And this is not the first time, there are many such incidents in the past when some street singer, some Baba ka Dhaba, some housewives, some old person, getting the name, money and fame overnight and all these heart-touching stories, for a moment make people think that is the real power of social media, this is the real empowerment of the common people!

Now, this is something which is visible, it is a visible trend, there is a need to look at that is not visible, which is hidden and, if speaking in the language of intelligence, then let us test those hypotheses for which there is not enough information that can refute it.

From the last 3-4 years, a tsunami of social media influencers belonging to all age groups, all castes and communities and all classes of the society is emerging on these platforms. There are thousands of influencers who are running their shops on these tech platforms – YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. They have enormous viewership and one can say that if these are the real numbers, then they have good public support too. When they produce something viral, their content spreads like corona virus, they go global and then they receive endorsement/promotion from the local and global perception management ecosystems, existing in politics, media and businesses.

These tech platforms provide the opportunity to not just earn money but to earn name, fame and brand as well. On one hand, these trends develop some aspirations in the rest of the young minds. Today, we see engineering kids turning more and more YouTubers, Rappers, and Standup comedians, at a time when we need the engineering talent most. There is nothing wrong with pursuing creative talent but it is about the mindset of switching on or off a trend.

On the other hand, what kind of content these influencers produce needs to be seen as well. Around 98 per cent of these influencers produce content that promotes anti-national sentiments and social divide in the name of caste/ community/ regionalism/ language, etc. They promote violence, vulgarity, abuse and all sorts of objectionable/ unethical things. In a way, they are trying to bring some of those challenges of the past, from which India is working hard to move on.

Let us assume a future scenario – what if the Indian government has passed some bill in parliament, which is in the interests of the business, economy or any other larger national interest like the Article 370 abrogation, CAA or recent agricultural reforms. What if these foreign tech platforms would ask their influencers to use their power to create chaos in the society (if that law does not suit their particular interest group/ lobby)?

This is a job of creating misinformation and disinformation. Can one expect these social influencers to act independently and freely and with some sensitivity toward the national security interests of India? Unfortunately, for a majority of them, we cannot! And what if they continued with the foreign agenda? How would the security agencies be able to deal with the tsunami of social influencers, which is paid by, nurtured by, promoted by foreign platforms!

That’s a serious national security concern.

Conclusion

What is the solution? Solutions come to mind only when we think about changing our role – from Guest to Host. We are more on the receiving and defending side. The situation needs to be turned around.

Big Tech is a business model that is based on the study of psychological and behavioral aspects of the human mind. We will have to think about what unique capabilities do we possess and what, as a country, we can offer to the world, which would be more magnificent and productive for the future of humanity!

These platforms are the result of a few decades of investment (on information, technology, and the human mind) but we have a unique asset with the history of thousands of years of investment – the Bhartiya Mind.

To recall that heritage and to encourage the young Indian minds, there is a need to work on the two dimensions simultaneously, and with equal priority.

The potential of business and market information of India, as well as the war strategies/ doctrines of the world, need to be promoted in a big way, among the youth and professional community.

This will help them in developing self-consciousness and with a self-conscious mind, they will be able to explore their own country’s potential in a better way and will be able to craft business strategies, based on an understanding of human instinct/ psychology. That in the future would be able to disrupt the tech dominance.

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Big Tech and Big Data are the two most talked-about trends of our time. From their ever-increasing dominance to staggering market cap numbers, to anti-trust/regulatory issues to ideological conflict with the elected governments/representatives of the world, to new stunts in space, for several reasons, they make headlines more often than any other business on earth.

While discussing the Big Tech and Big Data people often tend to forget that there is an interesting history and background associated with their origin, perhaps because that is one of the least discussed matters of our time.

Computer, internet and cyber, the foundational elements of Big Data and Big Tech, have been invented as an outcome of military and intelligence R&D projects.

The person who used the term ‘cyber’ for the first time, an American philosopher and mathematician Norbert Wiener, in his book (1948) “Cybernetics – or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine,” his thesis was that “a society can only be understood through the study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part.” His next book, which came two years later in 1950, was “The Human Use of Human Beings,” and the theories given in the book inspired many automation efforts that we see today.

As a Tool of Intelligence and Surveillance

Big Tech companies are often propagated as the ultimate dream of an entrepreneur. For many people, these are the ‘garage startups,’ initiated by some college dropouts and computer scientists, who accidentally, one fine day, caught the attention of some visionary venture capitalist, who decided to fund and to bet on those childish-looking ideas and later those ideas, as we know, conquered the whole world! Those stories of hard work, determination, and dedication, are indeed inspiring.

But at the same time, there is a long history of the American scientist fraternity, their businesses and intelligence communities working together as well, from the creation of atomic bombs to satellites to the famous moon landing efforts. And the internet itself is an enhanced version of ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) of the United States’ Department of Defense.

Producing commercial entities as the joint initiatives of defense and intelligence agencies, which can bring massive mutually beneficial information, is a part of the United States’ long strategic tradition. The Silicon Valley and the consortium of tech startups that it produced, which we today refer to as Big Tech, are also not the exception.

Generally, when we say Big Tech, we refer to a few US tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, and from the last one or two years, Twitter is also seen as a part of this club. But there are dozens of other tech companies, quite big in operation and scale, that exist in Silicon Valley, like Instagram, LinkedIn, HP, Adobe, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Uber, Tinder, Airbnb, Spotify, Foursquare, AngeryBirds, Lyft, etc. If we zoom in and observe their business models, we find that these have embedded advanced surveillance capabilities from the beginning.

Silicon Valley – the Background

The stories behind the foundation of Silicon Valley, which has been branded as the ultimate destination of innovation and entrepreneurship and projected as an aspiration for the young Indian minds too, are equally unique.

It is quite a known fact that the defence contracts of the 1950s and 60s were the lifeblood of the Valley. Frederick Emmons Terman, the leader of Allied radio-jamming efforts in World War II, is credited as the father of the Silicon Valley. It is said that after the War, Terman returned to Stanford University and was appointed the dean of the School of Engineering. And in 1951, he spearheaded the creation of Stanford Industrial Park, which is now called the Stanford Research Park and the ‘engine’ of Silicon Valley, as it is home to over 150 high-tech startups, including HP, VMware, Tesla, Steve Jobs’ NeXT computer, and Facebook, etc. It was Terman’s vision to lease the Stanford University’s land to these high-tech firms.

The entrepreneurial journey of Silicon Valley started with military contracts for microwave and vacuum-tube technologies that were used in aerospace projects, then in the 1960s, they received lucrative contracts in the government’s space and defence programmes, including the popular Minuteman missile effort. For these high-tech startups of the Valley, the CIA and US defense department were their first clients.

Later, the US intelligence community-focused venture capital fund In-Q-Tel was launched too, which intended to finance companies whose products were of interest to the CIA and other agencies. In-Q-Tel’s portfolio now includes security companies such as FireEye and data analysis firms like Palantir Technologies.

The ideas of ‘venture capital’ and venture capitalist were coined to encourage the private sector investments in businesses by returning soldiers of World War II. The father of Venture Capital, Georges Doriot, who founded the first venture capital firm ARDC (American Research and Development Corporation), had a prolific military career, too. He worked as the director of the U.S. Army’s Military Planning Division, was appointed the Quartermaster General during World War II, and later being promoted to brigadier general.

One of the most promising ventures of Silicon Valley – Google – is considered as the biggest improvisation of mass surveillance in history. Google has cooperated with the CIA many times in the past but in 2010, when Google and CIA jointly invested in a private intelligence-based cyber security company – Recorded Future, it caught the attention. It was a tool of real-time web monitoring, to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions, and incidents.

With time, as Google started dominating the consumer market, its other side of working as the contractor of their home country’s security and intelligence agencies went into the shadows!

Geospatial Data

Over the years, Google openly coordinated with US intelligence agencies to transform many small startups into useful strategic assets and one such startup was Google Earth.

The core technology behind Google Earth is originally from Keyhole Inc., which was founded in 1999. At that time, Keyhole’s flagship product – Earth Viewer – was used to sell on CDs to real estate, urban planning, defense, and intelligence groups.

In 2003, CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel invested in the Keyhole, and then it also joined hands with their National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Later in 2004, Keyhole was acquired by Google. In 2004, Google made some other acquisitions too. It acquired the Google Maps from the two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens, and in the same year, it had acquired ZipDash, a real-time traffic analysis company.

Today, Google Map is the default app for Android OS (a product of Google) that has a 95.23 percent market share in India. Although with the recent self-reliance moves of the Indian government in the geospatial domain, and with ISRO and homegrown startups like MapMyIndia coming together, things will certainly turn around in the near future.

There are plenty of such less popular insights about Big Tech and these are not conspiracy theories. The information is official and mentioned in the documents, press releases, and accounts that are available in the public domain. But they never come to notice or become a part of popular discussion and that is somewhat interesting.

One can say that the idea of Big Tech, Big Data, High Tech Startups, Venture Capital, and everything that is associated with Silicon Valley’s culture and glamour have their roots in the military and intelligence ecosystem. The products of the Valley have ventured into all those areas, which have the potential to affect strategic calculations/interest from Economy to Media to Geospatial data to public opinion/perception management, and all this cannot be called a mere coincidence.

So, while referring tech dominance, one must keep in mind that we are referring to a different kind of dominance here – which is covered under the guise of democracy, liberty, equality, global citizen, one world, and now entrepreneurship, innovation kind of flowery words.

Too much discussion on the Big Tech and Big Data often ignores a basic reality, that there are some human minds, a psychology, some philosophy, and a strategic mindset, that works behind these products.

Philosophy and Methodology of Intelligence

In the year 1989, Prof Isaac Ben Israel, who is currently the chairman of the Israeli space agency, published his research paper titled “The Philosophy and Methodology of Intelligence – The Logic of Estimate Process.” The paper is one of its kind in the intelligence research domain, for two primary reasons: one, the intelligence is a closed domain and there is a lack of meaningful discussions on it’s working philosophy/methods and second, the paper got published at a time when the modern intelligence techniques were in their maturing stage, and this was the same time when the internet was transforming into the world wide web (in 1991).

There is a natural commonality between the intelligence process and big data, both depend on the three As – Availability, Accessibility and Accuracy of information. Since the internet is primarily a tool of military and intelligence works, an understanding of the philosophy and methodology of intelligence research can solve some of the questions related to the objectives and approach of Big Data and Big Tech.

There is a belief that intelligence problems are very complex, they certainly are but the problems related to the physical world are equally complex as well, as the paper perfectly puts “is it possible to solve or predict the weather (“clouds”)? If concrete physical problems can be solved with information and approximation then they can solve intelligence problems as well.

The paper highlights some of the traditional challenges of intelligence research that are related to estimation, approximation, and inexactitude (lack of precision). It critically evaluates the traditional processes of intelligence estimation that were prevalent at that time, such as anti-scientific historicism and pro-scientific historicism, and proposes an approach (amended critical method) based on scientific methods and refutation.

The conventional approach to intelligence research (before internet technologies) was based on historicist methods that emphasize historical processes or trends, and the idea of ‘holism’ to infer large-scale predictions. Those methods were based on the idea of involving/manipulating the dynamics of a society with the social and historic forces, and activism and influencing the trends/processes to push them in a particular direction.

The paper sheds light on the different challenges into those approaches such as obstacles in obtaining relevant information and deriving insights from that, difficulties in experimenting (on a large scale) with the hypothesis/approximations and in testing/validating them, relying too much on ‘what’ part rather than on ‘how’ (the causal explanations), and the lack of a logical process/flow and dependency on the known data, etc.

Prof Isaac has advocated that the scientific approach/measures are critical for analysis or accurate prediction about a group, society, or nation, and their major trends. The paper got published in 1989 and, two years later (in 1991), the internet emerged in its new avatar and become the world wide web, and things have been transformed since then.

After three decades, it is quite visible that these computer technology products and their improvisations are using a similar kind of approach (that is mentioned in the paper) in measuring/monitoring/predicting, and deciding the trends. And the issue of inexactitude in intelligence predictions has been resolved to a great extent.

To put it more succinctly, if Google or Microsoft windows were the platforms for facilitating the initial stage of intelligence research – ‘gathering of information’ then Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp, etc, can be seen as the mediums of ‘experiments’ (through greater public engagement and dependencies).

ALSO READ: Philosophy and Methodology of Intelligence and Big Tech – Part 2

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Big data analytics finds huge importance as far as intelligence inputs are concerned. It is being utilised to continuously gather intelligence for national and military intelligence during peace and war – the quantum varies as per the requirement, ie, during crises and war. Human analysis of this data is well beyond physical capability and, therefore, big data analytics-based intelligence provides the requisite output required for decision making and conduct of operations.

Aspects Associated with Data

Big data analytics gives a big boost to intelligence gathering when there is an information deluge because of the following aspects associated with future data:

•             Volume. Data is ever growing. It will grow at scale ranging from terabytes to petabytes.

•             Variety. Data received from different sources is in structured, semi-structured, unstructured formats.

•             Veracity. Managing the reliability and predictability of inherently imprecise data types is complex and challenging.

•             Complexity. Relationships, hierarchies and multiple data linkages are required to be connected and correlated

Discovery of useful, unexpected patterns data, non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful information from data by automatic or semi-automatic means of analysis in order to discover meaningful patterns leading to data simulation and modeling will be the order of the day as part of the Intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance (ISR) philosophy.

Enhancing Military Intelligence

Engaging and scrutinising social media platforms can give us answers to many security incidents which otherwise may go unnoticed. Big data analytics has a potentially significant role in helping to manage the data deluge and assisting analysts in focusing their efforts. The various defence intelligence agencies in the country should build on the huge investments being made in this area by the commercial sector.

In modern combat scenarios, a data scientist helping interpret and analyse data could save many more lives than hundreds of troops on the ground. Algorithms can be developed to analyse hundreds of thousands of open-source documents generated each hour and compare them with the human intelligence gathered and billions of historical events and then have predictive capability to anticipate specific incidents and suggest measures proactively. Big data analytics can provide the following platforms as value additions:

•             Threat Alert System. Alogrithms can be designed which can alert the commanders on the mention of concepts such as terrorism, bombs, riots, etc., across various information sources. Trending offensive videos/content specific to a person, organisations, geography, etc., can be undertaken.

•             Social Media Monitoring. Prime topics/ concepts being discussed in the social media can be monitored and studied specific to geography, person and organisation, etc. Analytics of information source, for example, affinity of information sources to a specific user group, geography, etc, will have high intelligence value. The sentiments of people regarding a policy or concepts can be known and proactive actions taken, as required.

•             Information Mining. Information in the news/documents related to a specific person, concepts, etc, can be searched to find out the posts related to a given concept. New information regarding a specific topic, for example, on missile defence – new articles, publications, white papers, patents and other information related to this topic comprise inputs that will be of great help in planning the intelligence strategy at the higher level.

•             Social Network Monitoring. A study of related people based on social networks can be undertaken. Topics discussed by related people which represent information about the behaviour of a person will have very high intelligence value. Macro analysis of social media graphs to identify users’ groups active on a website can be analysed.

•             Document Analytics. Concepts, topics discussed in a document collection can be studied. For example, the topics that the foreign ministry of Pakistan is focussed on, based on analysing the articles/documents on its website. The documents can be grouped into separate segments – documents discussing politics, sports, games, foreign affairs, etc. Finding trends related to specific topics might be an important way to discover the hidden insights in a document.

Perception in the Analytical Workflow

In counter-intelligence/ counter-terrorism (CI/CT) operations, big data collected by drones, satellites, UAVs, technical intercepts, etc., can be automatically analysed based on the big picture provided by ISR data, which can be created as part of the big data initiative. This will allow the CI/CT operations to be carried out in real time. Data intensive Geographic Information System (GIS)-based applications can be used with big data platforms in the hinterland to assist the forces deployed to fight left wing extremism.

Implementation Model

The military leaders of the future will not be able to cope if they cannot handle ambiguity in decision making. Missions and responsibilities coming in the way of military leaders today, were not even imagined a few decades ago. The social media platforms today are big enablers and not just mere search engines. They are a medium of communication that allows a multi-dimensional view against the earlier uni-dimensional view. Implementation should follow an evolutionary path within the wider information management/ information exploitation strategy and be coherent with the defence Information & Communication Technology (ICT) strategy. It should not rely solely on big data capabilities for the defence forces. Rather, the defence forces should build on the huge investment in this area being made by the commercial sector and in doing so, ensure that they are well positioned to track and exploit further commercial technological developments, as and when they occur.

To start with, the initial focus should be on day-to-day functional issues since this will help build up a case for the usefulness of big data. Some guidelines are as follows :-

•             Prepare the defence intelligence agencies culturally to transform operations based on big data analytics through change management applied top down.

•             Incorporate data analytics/data mining as a module in all the ongoing projects where better delivery can be achieved.

•             Initially, use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software on an experimental basis and then opt for own research & development (R&D) for product development after gaining sufficient experience to translate the requirement technically.

•             Technology and non-disclosure agreements on data sharing, to develop algorithms developed by industry, R&D institutes and academia on live data, which will be more realistic than development on synthetic data.

•             In-house skill set development, from the data analyst to the data scientist.

•             Pilot projects to validate concepts.

Indian Perspective

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has stressed on the need to focus on incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data computing in the armed forces as China was way ahead in terms of spending on this technology. The armed forces today are the repository of big data and there is a need to record, institutionalise the information and carry out predictive analysis using AI.

The Big Data applicability in defence forces is urgently required in the fields of intelligence and surveillance, border, maritime and space management, operational planning, logistics management, financial management, disaster management, cognitive analytics and analysis of archival data.

Some challenges in terms of requirement of qualified Big Data scientists, security policy related to data cleansing from legacy applications and achieving standardisation and change management issues can be overcome by following an evolutionary path of implementation which should be in synchronisation with the IT roadmap of the armed forces.

Final Word

Big data analytics is the way forward for enhance military intelligence. Intelligence gathering based on big data analytics has a potentially significant role in helping to manage the data deluge and assisting analysts in focussing their efforts. Evidence-based information superiority and fully analysed intelligence outputs will give increased situational awareness, which will be the primary requirement of commanders at all levels to fight a war of any type in the future.

Intelligence of such class, based on big data analytics, will enable commanders to assess the battlefield situation in real time and in a better way to take appropriate and timely decisions. Such a system can integrate the efforts of all intelligence gathering functionaries to optimise the resources and results. Intelligence report generation and distribution to local, national and international partners can become quick and easy. Such systems can be continuously refined in response to the changing behaviour of the target and stakeholders.

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