China is developing cyber capacities in pursuit of its economic, political and strategic objectives. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China differs considerably from its Western counterparts in its approach to cyber and network operations. It thinks that cyber and network operations occur in an information domain. Along with the technical aspects of cyber operations, the PLA combines psychological warfare in manipulating public opinion, media warfare and the legal warfare that influences legal arguments to strengthen China’s diplomatic and security position.

India is in the next phase of digital transformation. The digital presence of economic and national security infrastructure is growing in the country at a rapid pace. All critical infrastructures are dependent and have integrated cyber technologies for management, control, and operations. Different types of software are in use. The critical systems are under various types of cyber-attacks. The complexity and numbers of attacks against critical information infrastructureare increasingand becoming sophisticated by the day.

… cyber weapons will be used individually and blended simultaneously with conventional kinetic weapons as force multipliers … for both attacker and defender, it is difficult to predict; cyber weapons often achieve things other than their intended purpose … strategic calculation for attackers thus becomes considerably more complex ... over-reliance by strategists and scholars on such imprecise terminology has significant risks for misinterpretation and premature prescription ...

China feels that U.S. is its main adversary ... China is trying to match U.S. technological capabilities with its own strength in AI as a leap frog technology and a new concept of war ... But there will be lot of problems in implementing this concept of Intelligentization Warfare to reality. However, President Xi Jinping has thrown the gauntlet, and it is up to the U.S. the other adversaries and the rest of the world to follow this concept keenly.