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Pukhraj Singh

Cyber geopolitics, cyber geostrategy and information statecraft

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Pukhraj Singh

Since a decade, I have carried the alter ego of a cyber geostrategist (for the lack of a better term). I am a cyber threat detection engineer with two decades of experience. I run a cyber security operations centre in the day and transform into a geopolitical wonk at night.

After the 26/11 terror attacks of 2008, I became the first lateral entrant to be inducted from the private sector into the Indian signals intelligence agency NTRO under the Prime Minister’s Office. It was then that I realised the role which cyber operations are going to play in shaping the world order.

I immediately felt the need to start working on a new taxonomy and ontology for international relations. Projects like the Explorations in Cyber International Relations at MIT-Harvard had just started delving into the subject matter at that time.

Since then, I have mostly been an autodidact when it comes to gaining an interdisciplinary knowledge of cyber policy. My byline made its way to all the national Indian broadsheets like the Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Tribune, Deccan Herald, Outlook, The Print and many others. I trained senior Indian military commanders, participated in Track II dialogues on cyber policy, and also advised the Indian government on its draft cyber doctrine.

In 2021, I, my partner and our son moved to Brisbane, Australia, under the Distinguished Talent program — to be in the peripheral vision of the Five Eyes. I have made steady inroads into the national cyber discourse of Australia. I have been published by the Australian Defence College, Australian Strategic Policy Institute and US Military Academy. I have shaped and participated in national and sectoral cyber exercises, and intelligence sharing and crisis management initiatives.

To be formally recognised in the Western strategic affairs community and bolster my interdisciplinary knowledge, I also signed up for a master’s degree in cyber geostrategy at UNSW Canberra, at the Australian Defence Force Academy. It is finishing in November 2023. I am now formally trained in cyber threat intelligence, detection engineering, Australian defence policy, national security strategy, information operations and strategic communication.

My previous work experience in cybersecurity spans a host of global technology companies based in Canada, India, Malaysia and Israel. I have also founded the Centre for Epistemic Security, an Australian think tank undertaking doctrinal and strategic research on informational, cognitive, grey-zone and hybrid threats targeting liberal democracies.

In my past life, I was known as the founder of Abroo, a now-defunct socio-political initiative for the empowerment of the Dalits and marginalised of the Indian Punjab. I have anointed myself as an amateur poet and aficionado of Punjabi Sufi music.

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Writings

2022: Australian Defence College: Counterpropaganda is not a dirty word

2022, Hindustan Times: CERT-In’s new cybersecurity directive is a misadventure

2021, Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Critical infrastructure legislation should also set the parameters of cognitive security

2021, Observer Research Foundation: The equities of telco cyber exploitation: 5G and the Huawei ban

2021, Observer Research Foundation: The SolarWinds hack pokes holes in Defend Forward

2020, Hindustan Times: SolarWinds: Cyber strategists are back to the drawing board

2020, Hindustan Times: On China, it’s time to consider cyber operations

2020, SC Magazine: Understanding strategic threat intelligence

2020, Infosecurity Mag: How the MSSPs can strive to be detection ninjas

2019, Outlook: A post-Kudankulam roadmap for India’s cyber deterrence

2019, Hindustan Times: An act of war in the Indian cyberspace

2019, The Centre for Internet and Society: Before cyber norms, let’s talk about disanalogy and disintermediation

2019, US Military Academy: A death knell for the international norms of cyber conflict

2019, The Quint: US-Iran tensions: What Indian cyber commanders can learn

2019, The Print: An adversary India has paid little attention to: Pakistan army’s public relations wing

2019, Deccan Herald: Gerasimov of South Asia

2019, The Tribune: Nations should strive for cognitive security

2018, The Tribune: We should all have something to hide

2018, The Tribune: There is continual war in cyberspace

2018, The Tribune: Digital privacy and the illusion of choice

2018, The Tribune: Digital privacy is a Faustian bargain

2018, The Indian Express: When code is law

2017, DEFCOM: A Journal of the Indian Army: Cyberspace as a theatre of ‘nonlinear war

2016: Centre for Advanced Strategic Studies: Cyber, Darkly

2013, Seminar: Thinking offensively!

2011, Jindal Journal of International Affairs: Battle-ready for the fifth dimension: Assessing India’s cyber-defence preparedness

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Speaking

2023, AusCERT 2023 Conference: Non-linear, decentralised and multi-stakeholder incident response using the Incident Command System

2021, DynamicCISO Summit: The empirical paradoxes of cybersecurity

2021, CyFy: 5G, 6G and beyond: How to secure the Internet?

2019, College of Air Warfare, Indian Air Force: In cyber, the generals should lead from behind

2019, ITWeb Security Summit, South Africa: Politics and power in cybersecurity

2019, Nullcon: Hacking elections for fun and profit: disinformation and cognitive cyber offence

2019, Headquarters of the Integrated Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, India: Synergy in joint cyber operations

2018, Signals Intelligence Directorate, Indian Army: Understanding the physics of cyber operations

2018, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses: The digital age, cyber space, and social media: The challenges of security and radicalization

2018, Rootconf: The death of enterprise security as we know it

2012, Nullcon: Shall we dust China? The geo-strategic realities of cyberwar

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Contact

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