Nature of warfare shifting from physical to online - PM | Daily News

Nature of warfare shifting from physical to online - PM

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing the Defence Seminar 2018.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing the Defence Seminar 2018.

The nature of warfare is shifting from physical to online, due to the increased use of computers electromagnetic spectrum and artificial intelligence in commercial, economic military and all other cutting-edge activities, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said .

Addressing the Defence Seminar 2018 organised by the Sri Lanka Army, which commenced last Thursday (30), he pointed out that technology driven new media including Social Media is another source of non-traditional threat. New Media including social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other websites on the Internet are also becoming global disruptive forces. We have seen the potential of this new media to destabilise nations and affect serious change in the case of countries, like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt .

“On a different but a more realistic perspective the nature of warfare is shifting from physical to online, owing to the increased use of computers, electromagnetic spectrum and artificial intelligence in commercial, economic military and all other cutting-edge activities. Critical services at risk from a cyber-assault include, but not limited to political, economic, financial, energy, transportation, security infrastructures where vulnerability management of cyber based systems has become an extremely demanding task in the face of innovative use of technology by the attackers. It is essential to apply the best practice approach to reduce national vulnerabilities immediately and to develop a robust cyber security system to prevent the disruptions by attackers with collaboration of all nation states.

Moving from the virtual battle space to the real world, we encounter new trends and shapes of violent extremism. This in the spectrum of conflict, can begin from a peaceful demonstration and swing all the way through insurgency to catastrophic terrorism. Present day conflict is in this realm and fits into the space of Irregular War (IW) the violent struggle between the state and non- state actors having access to the most modern technology.

These conflicts are historically protracted and test the resolve of a nation and other parties involved. There is no quick- fix or recipe that meets all irregular threats, because the nature of the new will be alien from that of the past,” the Prime Minister said.

He said the state and the military must learn its lessons from the past, but the response should be on contemporary lines of action. 


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