Abstract -
The revival of the dormant quadrilateral strategic partnership group or quad was first proposed, after 10 years, by the then Prime Minister of Japan in 2007 due to their common interests of India, Japan, USA and Australia in Indo-Pacific region. Due to ever changing and increasing digitalization and concerns on cyber security, today’s era has no doubt about cyberspace and its infrastructure standing as the central focus due to geo strategic compulsions leading to formulation of foreign policy in a way that reframes the existing setting in place.
Quad alliance in the era where social media has potential to escalate geopolitical tensions needs to have collective measures for digital collective defence to ensure that peace and stability is maintained not only in the region but also in whole world as the increasing digitalization is making nations rely upon each other on their needs.
Against such background, paper focuses on the need to prioritize critical and emerging technologies and the challenges quad faces in achieving its aim besides discussing as how quad can prevent cyberspace from becoming a domain of warfare where nations are engaging in offensive activities making it militarized and fear of a potential threats to all connected networks including critical infrastructures that are connected to it.
Keywords – digital quad, digitalized geo politics, cyber alliance
Introduction -
The quadrilateral security dialogue or quad first initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe comprising four maritime dependent democratic nations India, Japan, Australia and USA, all having common interest in the Indo-Pacific. The alliance which was more a strategic partnership went to dormant state for 10 years after Australia left the group till it expressed wish to rejoin in 2017 owing to shift in threat dimensions after technology showed its potential in shaping the geopolitics and social media in particular was able to fuel violence (Elsaesser, 2021)1 , thereby becoming a factor in internal politics, economic development and also national security of a nation.
The cyberspace is the domain where all member nations can work together as practically speaking on maritime security it can be Indian navy ensuring security at Indian ocean while Japan and Australia can take care of the pacific and USA in the high seas can continue its patrolling in its aim of ensuring free movement that is in accordance of internationally recognized norms, but complexities that arises due to advancement in technology that is increasingly converting our daily used utilities into smart systems by connecting with cyberspace made Australia initiate the QTN to promote track two researches and public dialogue on important issues of technology.
There are several evidences of nations developing and using offensive cyber weapons like Stuxnet, flame and other malwares (malicious-software) (Sterling, 2012)2 that has potential of disrupting real life functioning which is beyond just collecting data, as dependency on cyberspace increases the cyber criminals can break into transportation and critical infrastructure network causing in widespread chaos urging nations in deploying cyber soldiers in their defence. State backed cyber soldiers are often referred as the APT or Advanced Persistent Threat groups are responsible in safeguarding their ICT technologies and also indulge in offensive action on adversary’s network shifting from the traditional domains of land, air and sea. Contrary to the regulations at high seas that are covered under recognized UNCLOS (Bateman, 2020)3 there is no such agreed regulations on using the internet or information highway and being cheaper mode to inflict damage on enemy it is increasingly used over other methods and there is presence of Chinese malware in networks of Quad members, where India, United States, Australia and Japan all have faced similar attacks in past (Kaushik, 2020)4 .
Quad and digitalization of geopolitics-700
It is the digitalization of geopolitics that made Australia to change its stand from being a close Pacific ally of China to investing heavily in initiating the QTN or quad tech network (Hurst, 2020)5 at National Security College, Australian National University with partners from multiple stakeholders from not only form quad countries United States, India and Japan but across the world. This rapid digitalization is creating in big shift in geo strategic environment, and as critical technologies are penetrating the industries it is reshaping the traditional functioning where we not only getting more efficient functioning but bringing us a threat in mind on the consequences if the software code that is driving the industrial machine gets compromised by an attacker.
The recent attack on cyber Iran’s nuclear plant after the deadly 2010 Stuxnet has revived the Israel-Iran crisis (Chulov, 2021)6 and the expulsion of Russian diplomat by USA on the grounds of cyber attacks on solar winds and alleged attempt in manipulating US presidential elections ("US imposes sanctions on Moscow, expels 10 Russian diplomats", 2021)7 has triggered fresh diplomatic standoff with Russia retaliated with expelling 10 diplomats and also additionally blacklisted 8 top officials (Teslova, 2021)8 . This action is supplemented by US’s close ally UK announcing sending warship in black sea amid the rising Ukraine-Russia tensions ("UK warships to sail for Black Sea in May as Ukraine-Russia tensions rise- Sunday Times | Reuters", 2021)9 .
This tension supplemented with the developing cordial relations between authoritarian nations Iran and China signing partnership deal on trade (Wenting, 2021)10 will hopefully in a matter of days include cyberspace with other authoritarian nations like Russian having similar opinion aimed in countering democratic quad cyber alliance resulting in race of fragmentation or balkanization of cyberspace ("Cyber balkanization and the Future of the Internets", 2018)11 . The difference in opinion have also made international bodies acting as proxies of super powers where UN’s ITU (International Telecommunication Union) is accused to be working under influence of China where it increased its contribution to UN to many folds ("Is China Contributing to the United Nations’ Mission? | ChinaPower Project", n.d.) after the then US President Trump reduced contribution (Shendruk, Hillard & Roy, 2020) allowing China to have its diplomats across key positions in UN allowing China’s Belt and Road initiative included as a part of sustainable development goals besides facilitating expansion of Huawei. China’s influence was also seen over WHO (World Health Organisation) during annual meeting (online) where it blocked words like Taiwan and Formosa (Taiwan was formerly called) (Everington, 2020). While US initiated international body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for managing the domain names is accused to be influenced by US even after making it open for multi stakeholder form of governance (Finley, 2016)12 .
Cyberspace escalations and QTN collective defence
Our increasing dependence on the information highway for our essentials has made governments to increase their presence in the domain sometimes resorting to use it for carrying out offensive activities like espionage and other propaganda including election interference on daily basis. Cyberspace domain is now the battlefield for tussle between nations where every day social media war has potential to disrupt international relations, the recent Australia and China twitter war where China use morphed pictures to blame Australia (Ward, 2020)13 and also declined to apologize to Australia as demanded giving rise to tension in relations between two nations having heavy trade partnership.
Most of the day-to-day events now gets escalated to cyberspace where social media like Twitter and Face book act as an platform for conversations on trending social movements, from #Me-too to #Black Lives Matter the has tags have created awareness among people and now even the Myanmar’s military have shut down the internet social media platforms have raised their voices for that as well. There are also at times when social media has initiated violent clashes by spreading false information thereby urging in mechanism to control the spread of fake news and to also prevent the state from carrying surveillance. Being a borderless domain to ensure deterrence the QTN can also engage with other similar nations like the Britain’s D10 (Brattberg & Judah, 2020)14 focusing on 5G technology or creating a group with nations have similar opinions against threats on the lines of quad plus comprising nations Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, France, and Sri Lanka (Hasija, 2021)15 . The alliance can also include Taiwan which holds expertise in using social media to confine impact of this virus through a well planned and systematic effort that helped in proper distribution of masks by linking all government affiliated pharmacies under a centrally digitalized platform (Chow, 2020)16 .
Digital India and Quad
India remains pivotal in balancing Asian power politics and there can be attempts by other nations to ruin the relation with other nations as it is very difficult in attributing attacker in cyberspace. As attacks on India’s critical infrastructure like on Kundankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) alleged by North Korea (Sircar, 2019)17 can be also an attempt by Chinese for preventing the shift of North Koreans away from Chinese as India receives North Korea students for studying in India, the situation can also be other way round where these North Koreans who are generally considered to be expert in cyber affairs are using Indian servers to wage attack on other nations displaying India as attacker can impact international relations of India.
Similarly, it was also seen that Pakistan like always did not miss the opportunity in running propaganda against India using fake accounts resembling China in social media platform Twitter (Krishnan, 2020)18 when India and China were in standoff resulting in Indian people expressing their anger on China on social media which actually was done by Pakistan. Among the quad members India stands more vulnerable as the dependency on Chinese systems are more in industries and it can be possible to even penetrate air-gapped networks that are not connected to internet (Hoffman, 2020)19 by compromising people who are associated with it that can be mapped with several means like analyzing calls, chats and data from other applications that have Chinese funding.
Banning of selective Chinese applications can be the start but not final step towards making the Indian network safe as already there are huge foreign investments in technology including on those applications which are having banking and personal details of Indians like Paytm etc. (Shah, 2020)20 . During India-China standoff an US based cyber security firm Recorded Future found that China was using its APT RedEcho to target the Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO) in India’s financial capital of Mumbai (Mihindukulasuriya, 2021) 21 giving it an indication to the damage China can cause.
India being among the top countries of receiving cyber-attacks needs to promote its initiatives like Cyber Swacchta Kendra (Dogra, 2019) 22 to expand to citizens of quad members as well and to lead India’s National Cyber security Coordinator (NCC) at the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) in preparing a comprehensive cyber security framework, that includes protection to submarine cables and also satellite which stands as main medium for connecting to internet, the data flow happens only by either of two i.e. submarine cables and satellite which interestingly both are owned by private players. The emergence of low earth satellites (LEO) by spa--ceX which is aimed in providing better internet to region which still remains poorly connected again can be at point of contention if the satellite lost its path or collide with other nation’s satellite.
Trust and challenges
The new Biden administration is supporting USA’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region and quad but at initial period of his term there was a mixed response when it comes in showing its support to ally where Biden’s defence advisor preferred to use Asia-Pacific over the term Indo Pacific (Stashwick, 2021)23. The Biden administration has continued ban on un-trusted 5G vendors that includes Chinese state supported Huawei ("Washington to 'safeguard’ US from Huawei - Global Times", 2021)24 and with passage of time has considered cyberspace as crucial element of foreign policy, president Biden has also pushed for using technology over troops in his policy towards China (Wadhams, 2021) 25
Biden taking aggressive measures against Russian and at same time conducting extensive high sea patrols in Indo-Pacific even challenging India’s maritime EEZ in Indian ocean (Joshi, 2019) 26 is also becoming challenge in trusting for India as India has to start a new beginning by overcoming the US non-cooperation of past where in Kargil war it denied GPS of Pakistan, although India replied with deigning own NavIC but the loss due to non-cooperation was crucial ("NavIC: Two decades after US spurned India in Kargil, country replies with desi GPS", 2018) 27 .
US approach must not give feeling of US’s exclusive interest in only getting insights of Russian technology and not of becoming friend of India. As we have already seen it is technology that didn’t stop another very strategically important nation Bangladesh in purchasing surveillance device from a country i.e. Israel that it deny recognition in paper ("Bangladesh bought spyware from Israeli surveillance company", 2021) 28 .
Challenge for the quad in the quad tech network or as a group is the political opinion of its leaders now the legal initiatives or any developments that are being initiated will take at least couple of years and there is election due in Japan ("Japan PM Suga signals chance of calling snap election - Asahi", 2021) 29 and Australia ("EPO 2021: Prime Minister Morrison likely to hold next federal election in 2022", 2021) 30 where the change in leadership can also indicate the is the huge diversity in terms of some of these like how it was with Australia that led to quad getting dormant after it was first initiated in 2007 whereas for India the increasing digitalization will definitely include cyber alliance as a priority for any government that holds the power.
The difference in opinion also matters as India remains top country in shutting down internet but it is due to its neighbor Pakistan’s involvement in spreading hatred using social media. India needs to overcome the challenge and allow the citizens of Kashmir the much needed access to internet by preventing entry of Pakistani based cyber criminals and also Australia and United States need to continue focus on foreign expansion of China through its five eyes program instead of conducting surveillance on its own citizens (Martin, Donaldson & Bolongaro, 2020) 31 .
India also has to consider in planning for its inland water supply as China is increasingly building dams on river Brahmaputra for producing electricity can also be turned into a flood making machine if waters are released to the low-lying north-eastern region of India.
Recommendation and Proposal
The Quad can work on the following:
- Initiating a cyber threat intelligence framework with all members
- Creating fact checking monitoring mechanism
- Collaborating on AI related researches to prevent using of deep fake in ruining international politics.
- Conducting regular exercises with prior intimation in networks to prevent attack by belligerent nations of the alliance, it is also to be kept in mind as penetrating network without consent can ruin the relations similar to how US navy entered Indian ocean EEZ without informing Indian navy citing free movement.
- Establishment of digital early warning control system
- Push for deciding on threshold limit
- The ban on Chinese state owned Huawei might have given a setback for their china standards 2035 but have not stopped, the quad needs to make their own standards and push for countries using that including to those who are debt trapped by China.
- Creating a multi stakeholder team for addressing zero day vulnerability
- Install dedicated cables connecting head quarters of member nations for secure communication.
- To not limit in just preventing use of Huawei equipments but to ensure their non influence in other nations as well through which where they can possibly compromise the security.
As there are already multiple data governance frameworks that are prevailing in the borderless domain, with the booming of digital economies in the region a new data governance framework including legal norms can be initiated at national and regional level by including other likeminded countries in the region also ensuring that access to internet, stable internet and digital literacy to people in the region thereby reducing the digital gap.
Conclusion
Quad might not be an exclusive cyber security alliance but have cyber security included in its area of international cooperation and collaboration besides other two arenas of maritime and economic security, interesting the widely used medium for transferring data i.e. submarine cables actually falls under maritime and economy is getting digital now therefore the group can now push for a cyberspace governance architecture as there is no unified cyberspace governance framework in place. The quad comprising democratic nations can push for sustainability in cyberspace and also ensuring balance of power with rapidly emerging critical technologies and as these four countries are challenged by expansionist China in both maritime and cyberspace their approach to formulating policy can be roadmap for global regulation. For keeping pace with the changing dimensions of threat it is necessary to initiate collective cyber defence under QTN and work on application of international law on the information highway by including all stakeholders that can define the threshold upon which there can be an all-theatre retaliatory action on the perpetrator. The collective defence can focus on ensuring security to its own network and sharing best practices among member states by conducting regular exercises to implement secured network and ensure continued deterrence over enemy.
As China has trade interest with all the Quad members and it cannot afford war with any quad members it is therefore more an effort by quad to prevent the information highway from getting flooded with propaganda and manipulating the international politics as well as domestic policies by denying access to critical networks and ensure freedom of navigation in information highway.
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