An old accepted theory about war says that a real victory is one that is won without fighting a real war. From this point of view, China has been engaged in such efforts, which have led to a psychological advantage over India since the encounter in the Galvan valley of Ladakh in June 2020 and losing two times more soldiers than India.

For this, It is falsely praising the Chinese military equipment in his propaganda newspaper Global Times, and sometimes propagating the lie of giving bad food to the Indian soldiers stationed in Ladakh.

In this war of information,It is also involved in espionage efforts with two arms, which has been revealed by two recent incidents. The first incident is through a technology company supervised by the Government of China by the President of India Ramnath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Ministers of many states, MPs, MLAs, Army Chiefs, sportspersons, entrepreneurs, 10,000 people of our country.

The second incident pertains to the work of a Chinese woman and Nepalese citizen who has been arrested recently, besides an India-based freelance journalist for the Chinese intelligence agency. 

Chinese and Nepalese nationals engaged in espionage under the cover of two shells (mask) companies, while the arrested freelance journalist is accused of sending documents related to the Indian Army and Defense to China's intelligence officers through them.

This incident confirms to what extent China's intelligence system has been active in our country. Certainly these actions of China cannot be tolerated. This is why these arrests have taken place.

The question is, what does China achieve by doing such digital surveillance or spying and is it possible that such counter-digital spying is possible? So that we can also get information about the activities going on at the level of governance. It is also important to know how was China able to do this? 

As far as the digital information war waged by China is concerned, China itself has named it 'Hybrid Warfare'. Disclosing this digital espionage in newspapers around the world, it has been told that the activities of the world's leading personalities from 2.5 to 35 million people were in the eyes of this company called Zenhua Data Information Technology, associated with the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China.

The expansion of this hybrid warfare can be gauged from the fact that it was keeping an eye on important people and organizations from all walks of the country besides the influential personalities of politics, law, sports, film, industry. 

Also, a complete database of hundreds of accused of crime, corruption, terrorism, drugs, gold, weapons or wildlife smuggling was also being collected. The most surprising thing is that when Chinese handsets, mobile apps and telecom devices manufactured by Chinese companies are being banned all over the world, including India, on suspicion of spying, China managed to spy on another route . 

By the way, it is claimed that at the behest of the Chinese government, this company spread the network of digital espionage all over the world. In today's time, when information has become very important and big objectives are being achieved through data, then it can be said that by gathering information of millions of people from different countries including India, China will launch a new type of information war. Wants to tease It is noteworthy that this Chinese company has declared its objective to achieve the purpose of 'Hybrid Warfare' by collecting such data. 

The term 'hybrid warfare' implies a variety of combat equipment, but in the context of this Chinese company, it aims to gain dominance or damage a country in civilian ways. In this type of warfare, people and countries that the company was monitoring were collecting information about their entire 'digital footprint'.

It means all kinds of information about those people who are present on the Internet. It is noteworthy that the company has also been collecting information about which people and organizations these people and organizations have relationships with. 

It was also collecting information related to places and their movement. Regularly monitoring this information, this company was creating a huge database so that every information related to the concerned persons or countries could be provided immediately on the request of the Chinese government.

All this work is actually related to digital profiling of people and countries, with the help of which measures can be taken to harm those people and countries and this is the most dangerous aspect of this digital espionage. 

In fact, the first problem is that India, including the rest of the world, has not been able to guess that Chinese telecom companies are not only recording every digital activity of our citizens but also providing information to the Chinese government.

The second problem is that the way China has started using the cyber world for intelligence and surveillance, neither a country has nor has any country been able to monitor China in the same way. 

READ HERE MORE : Understanding Deepfake Technology

In such a situation, now it is better that we protect our information ourselves. However, the level of our preparedness on this front was recently revealed by the cyber attack on the National Information Center (NIC), the largest data agency in the country, where the information of the Prime Minister and many important personalities was blown apart by the information of the national interest through digital burglary.

For this, it is necessary to ensure that on the one hand the security of all types of information is strengthened, on the other hand, companies making telecom equipment and apps, including mobiles, are allowed to operate in India only when they ensure that Their servers will not be located outside India.

It is important to do this because it is not yet known where the data of Indian citizens using the Internet is stored and no one is stealing it. It will also have to ensure that the Internet companies will provide all the digital information submitted to the government on demand. Although the question of privacy of citizens becomes important in this, one of the measures is that the laws to keep privacy intact are effectively implemented in the country.