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The standard assessment of state-sponsored cyber intrusion targeting the Indian system sees such actions as an attempt of sabotage of critical infrastructure – a compromised load dispatch center, an attacked port authority, a power grid being put offline. Applying this approach to the case of Digital Public Infrastructure of India is not only wrong, but…
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Contemporary conflicts are being increasingly fought across both, physical and informational domains. The nature of information warfare has evolved, from being an auxiliary aspect of military affairs to becoming a strategic tool that influences crisis messaging, legitimacy, and escalation. In rapid-onset conflict scenarios, nations find themselves fighting not only on the battlegrounds of war but…
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Since late 2023, millions of Afghans have been deported from Iran and Pakistan despite holding documents that had long permitted them to live and work, yet both governments describe the removals as nothing more than routine immigration enforcement. The mass displacement of Afghans has created not just a humanitarian crisis but a fertile recruiting ground…
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The conventional analysis of IP theft understands it to be an act of commercial criminality – a renegade engineer, a bribed supplier, a patent casually dismantled in a laboratory in Shenzhen. The application of this diagnosis to India-China relations is not only incomplete, but actively counterproductive, in that it confuses a strategy with a category…
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In the early weeks of 2026, before the war between Iran and the United States broke out, a reputed news outlet hosted two well-placed Indian commentators, one of whom volunteered the view that he does not see Chabahar port shutting down at all. He argued if any port was going to decline, a view the…
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On 25 April 2026, China launched Pakistan’s PRSC- E03 satellite from the Taiyun Satellite Launch Centre, thus completing Islamabad’s three-unit electro-optical (EO) observation constellation. This article argues that the completion of Pakistan’s EO programme, achieved through China’s technical and launch support, represents a shift in South Asian strategic competition. This extends the India-Pakistan rivalry into…
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In March 2012, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled in Bangladesh’s favour against Myanmar, settling a maritime boundary dispute that had dragged on for decades. Two years later, a Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal resolved another longstanding maritime boundary dispute with India. Together, the two rulings granted Bangladesh an additional 118,813…
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The US President, Donald Trump recently sent out a warning that the US Navy would create a blockade against Iranian ports and maritime access to the Strait of Hormuz. This warning has had the world on edge. Nearly 20% of global oil consumption along with a major share of LNG trade passes through the Strait…
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This article was first published with the Observer Research Foundation. On 29 April, 2021, the 28th session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) adopted the revised Maritime Traffic Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China (MTSL) which came into effect on the 1st of September 2021. MTSL is the primary law regulating…
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On April 20, when all eyes were on the US-Iran ceasefire talks in Islamabad, the pirates from Somalia made a dramatic comeback in the Indian Ocean Region, hijacking a Somalia-flagged fishing vessel, ALKHAYR 2, off the coast of Somalia. At least 11 armed pirates boarded the ship, but disembarked a day later. On the same…