Time to Redefine Strategic S&T Sectors
India’s scientific community spans various domains, disciplines, research with profit-making and not-for-profit interests and nurtures natural and applied sciences. They work under governmental ministries, special purpose vehicles, Section 8 companies, public-private enterprises, non-governmental private enterprises, and overseas entities. However, the Indian scientific community unassumingly splits into two peculiar categories: strategic and non-strategic.
Many in India’s technocratic circles, including those in the government, often deem the science and technology (S&T) activities occurring in the Department of Space (DoS), Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) as ‘strategic’. Whereas the S&T occurring via the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Department of Science and Technology (DST) does not carry such an epithet hence are often assumed as ‘non-strategic’.
There is no doubt that DoS, DAE, and DRDO are strategic bodies. They are progenitors of a vast array of dual-use S&T with an intimate connection to national security and long-range national interests. But there exists no clear definition of a ‘strategic sector’ in any of the governmental policies or doctrine. Additionally, by not classifying other categories as ‘strategic’, an unintentional message goes out that these are ‘non-strategic’ and hence non-urgent domains. This unintended supposition needs revisiting, particularly when the presumably non-strategic DST and MoES are embarking on crucial and dual-use next-generation technology missions.
The 2020-21 Union Budget made allocations for two new S&T missions, the National Mission on Quantum Technologies & Applications (NM-QTA) and the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). With the DST at the helm of these two missions, the Ministry of Finance allocated Rs 8,000 crores for NM-QTA and Rs 3,660 crores for NM-ICPS over five years. During the 2021-22 Union Budget, which came in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Ministry of Earth Sciences was assigned as the implementing agency for the Deep Ocean Mission and was allocated Rs 4000 crores for five years. These are perhaps among the largest-ever single mission allocations that have gone to the so-assumed non-strategic ministries.
The times upon us do not permit viewing the domains attended by the NM-QTA, NM-ICPS, or Deep Ocean Mission from a narrow scientific but comprehensive geo- and techno-political prism. In that case, these missions are no less impactful than their space, atomic energy, and defence counterparts.
The Deep Ocean Mission aspires to construct remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROUVs) and crewed deep submergence vehicles (DSVs) indigenously to dive below 6,000 meters from sea level. China is reaping dividends from its ROUVs and DSVs that dive into the Indo-Pacific waters. Today, Chinese ROUVs and DSVs lay submarine optic-fibre cables, map exclusive economic zones of other nations, identify lucrative fishing zones, prospect natural resources, and use them as part of military naval exercises. These platforms help both the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Academy of Sciences equally in carrying out dual-purpose activities. Even the U.S.’s foremost DSVs and ROUVs are jointly developed, operated, or shared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research.
The U.S. and Chinese models leave no ambiguity that they consider deep-ocean activities as strategic. These are indicators that the Deep Ocean Mission deserves collaborations and joint-operations between the MoES and the Indian Navy. But this civilian-military fusion has not been codified yet.
Likewise, both cyber-physical systems and quantum communications, even in the non-military domains, possess the great potential of being weaponised or becoming targets of information, biological, economic, and intelligentised warfare, competitive intelligence, industrial espionage, data breaches, and cyber-crimes. With terms such as ‘cyber-physical machine supremacy’ and ‘quantum advantage’ revolving around these emerging technologies, it is clear that even the commercial and civilian cyber-physical and quantum systems will be dual-use in nature. Moreover, the tremendous volumes of novel components that go into making these two emerging technologies, particularly their physical realisations, make it imperative to look at their long-range ramifications.
Although the NM-QTA and NM-ICPS are independent of similar defence and space-focused ventures by DRDO, DAE, or ISRO, the DST missions cannot be deemed entirely civilian. For instance, the NM-ICPS Technology Innovation Hub in Hyderabad, India’s missile capital, is already witnessing civilian-military fusion in understanding the Janus-faced nature of cyber-physical systems. Such fusion is about to grow in other innovation ecosystems too. So, undermining the Janus-faced nature of cyber-physical and quantum technologies coming from civilian laboratories can pose a challenge later.
The weaponisation of civilian and commercial science is a pressing issue of the current multipolar world. Even today, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it has dawned that a virus, which is studied largely by the so-called non-strategic laboratories in India, has been causing an epochal global geo-economic disruption. Shortly, many emerging technologies, including those researched and developed in non-strategic laboratories, can also cause far-reaching economic, political, and security consequences. As a result, it is becoming increasingly futile to carry on with the 20th century comprehension of what makes an S&T sector strategic.
The non-strategic science ministries are indeed the emissaries of peace, co-operation, and soft diplomacy. They provide humanitarian assistance and support through S&T solutions. The scientists directly related to the MoES, DST, or MEITY through their constituent laboratories or recipients of their extramural funding are frequent enablers and facilitators of track-2 science diplomacy. But given the fast-paced technological changes due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, our technocrats and policymakers should comprehend that the tables are turning. Quantum computing, quantum communications, cyber-physical systems, and similar emerging technologies could become equally techno-politically climacteric if not more than space, atomic energy, and defense systems.
The government machinery can avoid getting lost in translation when it calls hard-power goals strategic and soft-power goals unwittingly as non-strategic. It can undertake a simple ternary approach and slot its scientific undertakings as hard-, soft-, smart-power pursuits. The new category of smart-power scientific objectives will entail all those dual-use and dual-purpose undertakings in nature. It will then appear that most of the ongoing capital-intensive S&T missions (human spaceflight, deep ocean exploration, planetary exploration, fission energy, quantum computing, secure communications, sixth-generation telecommunications, cyber-physical systems, CRISPR, personal medicine) are all dual-use and hence smart-power undertakings.
In an era where coercion transforms from destructive to disruptive realms, no emerging technology or its resulting capability can be pigeon-holed as weaponizable and non-weaponizable. For this reason, there is a need for smart power perception and planning for emerging technologies and their abilities. Keeping all these factors into consideration, the Indian government can consider creating a new trans-ministerial entity that curates the R&D, testing, evaluation, and deployment of emerging technologies and capabilities. This entity can be the ‘Cabinet Committee on Futuristic Science and Technologies’ that this author has been plugging for some years. The tremendous churn S&T is going through globally requires the reorientation of our science ministries. If that is too much of an ask, then reforming their perception of what qualifies as strategic science is at least doable.
India is slated to be the fifth largest economy by 2025 and third largest by 2030. It ought to shed how it perceived science during its early years post-independence. The perception of strategic science must change as India grows from strength to strength. Geo-economic and geopolitical vigour will come with comprehending the subtleties of managing high-end S&T missions. Failing to address the subtleties will lead to stunted economic growth and frequent surprise assaults.
*The writer is a Technology Strategy Analyst and holds a PhD in Astrochemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany) and the University of Nice (France). He was a crew member of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
