As technology continues to grow in the world, the ways of wars are also changing. In the beginning, when there was no such advanced technology, the armies had to line up in columns and rows to fight with sword and some other tools. Now, the world has become modern, such technology has been created by human beings who can think like human and take decisions by own and understand the thinking pattern of human beings, this technology is known as artificial intelligence. Undoubtedly, this technology could prove to be dangerous in wars because of two reasons, firstly, it will not take decisions on humanitarian basis or morality, but will do what they are programmed to do using their artificial cognition and it would be more dangerous for world. Secondly, in future, these machines would be able to guess what’s in the mind of people and will target them accordingly. Artificial intelligence is now being used everywhere, as it is also used in social media to find out people thinking pattern like what are their likes and dislikes. And by using this data, security agencies and other companies are getting a lot of benefits and some are negatively using it.
World is still working on AI technology to make it more advanced. Facebook is also using AI technology to find out the people thinking pattern. When we like any post on Facebook, it is saved in their data base and they get to know that this specific person is interested in that specific thing, and in what things this person isn’t interested. For example, if one person searches a terrorist organization on Facebook, it will be saved in their database that this person is interested in terrorist organization. Moreover, data, which is gathered by AI technology on Facebook, is being used in many places without our permission. Such as country’s security agencies and business companies are accessing this data and are benefiting from using this data. Private business companies are benefiting from this data in a sense that they find out what kinds of products do the people of specific area like, they introduce such products in that area and use Facebook to advertise or promote their products in that area and by this they make a lot of money. Security agencies also use these data to achieve their goals. They find out the political thinking or interest of people of specific area, where they want to target, and create disinformation of their own ideology by using fake accounts, news, ads, or any other mean and successfully able to influence the thinking pattern of people of that specific area.
Yual Noah Harari says in his book “Home Dues” that the most important thing in the past was property. Whoever had the largest property, he was considered the most powerful. But now, in the modern times, data is the most important thing, whoever has “Data”, he is the ruler. Moreover, all security agencies are trying to obtain data and use it to target its enemies. For example, Indian agencies are working against Pakistan. They find out that what the fault lines of Pakistan with the help of analyzing online data are and target it and achieve their interest. As we know, the biggest fault line of Pakistan is sectarian conflict. The Shia-Sunni conflict in Pakistan is one of the issues that‘s enough to create instability in the country. And India always tries to take benefits from this controversial issue. One of India ex major “Gorav” in an interview also revealed that India can take a lot of benefits from Shia-Suni conflict. He further asserted that India would have to persuade at least one local religious person of each sect in each district of Pakistan to become India agent. The work of these agents would be only to make one video a week in which they will spread the hatred against other Muslim sect. In addition to that, A few days ago, a group from Europe exposed a network of India. This network had made fake NGOs, local Medias, and think tanks to undermine Pakistan and serve India’s interests. And this network was spread to over 65 countries. This is how instability will be created in the Pakistan by India. India has also been involved in using other fault lines of Pakistan as a tool to create instability such as the Balochistan issue and civilian and military issues to spread negative propaganda in Pakistan to damage the interest of the country.
Now, we should understand that time has changed. In the modern times anything that give an advantage to enemy is weapon and data is one the best weapons that one can use against enemy. In data warfare, we all are soldiers; we all have to fight for our country. Enemy countries armies now directly target us on social media by propagating fake news and many of us easily get trapped by them. We see posts on social media which are against the interest of country and we starting believing in it without doing any research on it. Moreover, in order to prevent the misuse of data, Europe is going to force “General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)”, this year which will deal with how data of locals is controlled, stored, accessed and used. Likewise, we should also sign a regional treaty dealing with the control of people’s data in order to protect the data. It would not be possible without the coordination of countries and social media companies. Moreover, at individual level we can start awareness campaign regarding misuse of data. In that we can aware people about it that how our data is misused by different security agencies and companies and how they are using it to influence our thinking and building our perception.
