So this tweet below landed on my TL some days ago. It was about ADG Strategic Comms talking about the IW and Cyber warfare that India was subjected to on the first day of Op Sindoor.
Sharing some thoughts on the same.
Here goes ..
Here’s the ANI video that formed part of the tweet above 👇
What caught my attention was the very specific statistics that General Sharda put out in his talk.
However, the most interesting part was the fact that the attacks were launched within 30-40 minutes.
THIS is what caught my interest.
Let me explain why.
The sheer numbers of attacks and their ‘bombardment’ through cyberspace within 30-40 minutes means that the Paakis were already prepared even before the first Indian munition was fired on 7th May 2025.
They knew India would attack. And they were prepared for it.
They were prepared not only militarily, but also in terms of info warfare and cyber attacks. I think it would be a fair assumption that such planning would already have been in place since long. And when the time came, it all was let loose in a torrent.
This was the same template that they let loose during Balakot when the then Propagandu-in-Chief was the first one to announce the strikes, thereby taking the initiative in the war of narratives.
First ‘true visuals’ of the strike too were let out on social media by the same Propagandu-in-Chief soon thereafter. In doing so, Bhikharistan took a lead on the narrative front.
How effective that was the long run, I shall discuss later in this thread.
What helped the Paakis during Balakot Airstrike was also the lack of immediate visuals from IAF due to weather conditions at the time of the strike.
Needless to say, satellite imagery emerged soon thereafter, putting out the truth.
What helped further was also the fact that Abhinandan ejected over PoK after shooting down a PAF F-16 and was captured. Here too, we witnessed Paaki Propaganda Warfare at it finest!
First they announced capture of 3 Indian pilots and then shamelessly said, Na Ji .. ek hee tha!
What had happened in the above instance was that in the fog of info-war, they had counted their own downed pilots too as Indian pilots. In fact Paaki citizens actually lynched one of their own pilots to death, assuming him to be an Indian pilot.
Talk about irony!
But that is history.
My reason for bringing that out all over again was to highlight the fact that Paakis flooded the social media landscape with so many falsehoods and different versions of actual truth that true facts virtually drowned in that deluge.
As Maj Gen Sharda mentioned in his video embedded in the first tweet, we were bombarded with ‘Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinfomation’ on the first day of Op Sindoor.
Hereinafter, as per Paaki plan, we were to once again be playing catch-up on narrative front while military facts would get obliterated under this flood of ‘Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation’.
Unfortunately, Paakis were once again caught fighting the previous war!
This time, there was no questions of missing visuals of Indian attacks and utter and complete impotence of the Brown Panted Ones to either prevent them or retaliate against them.
This time the Awaam themselves provided proof.
On the other hand, the Propagandu Warriors of Bhikharistan could only provide bombastic claims with not one visual or other proof!
Oh, and they also hacked Indian Dams, as confirmed by their idiotic defence minister in their parliament.
Hot Air and DEAFENING Applause followed!
Btw, don’t miss what is said in the video above.
A minister in Pakistan Govt announces publicly in their very SENATE that they have attacked Indian Dams via a cyber attack.
What bigger a smoking gun can we ask for?
IMO, in this instance of Op Sindoor, the battle was convincingly won by India both in the Kinetic as well as the Cognitive Domain.
However, fact remains that even though Kinetic engagements may have petered down, attacks in the Cognitive domain still continue. The good General himself says so.
This is where I come to the question that triggered this chain of thoughts :
Is it time to consider Kinetic actions against warriors of the Cognitive domain as well, whenever the inevitable next round comes?
Mull over it for a moment before moving ahead.
Personally, I most definitely believe that time has come to physically eliminate the IW infrastructure, including its manpower, whenever the next opportunity presents itself.
A keyboard warrior in today’s world is just as lethal as one with a rifle in his hand.
Period.
It is a given that info warfare is a highly delegated operation with multiple nerve-centres feeding millions of individual social media users. However, fact remains that nerve centres play a highly important role in setting narratives and giving course-corrections wherever needed. While Info Warfare goes on unabated across national boundaries and without any distinction between uniformed and non-uniformed ‘warriors’, official information channels still play a key role in providing critical raw material for manipulation on social media.
These nerve-centres are what are identifiable on ground & should ideally form part of the target list whenever the next Indian missiles & bombs fly Westwards. By choking the flow of info from official channels thru physical elimination, Info Ops on the other side will definitely be hobbled.
Being the militarily weaker power, Bhikharistan naturally has to invest greatly in shaping perceptions outside as well as within their borders when it comes to conflicts with India. No wonder their DG ISPR is a Lt Gen ranked officer while the Indian counterpart is a Major General. However, fact also remains that more stars on the shoulder STILL does not make a horse out of an ass. Even when celebrating Pakistani ‘victories’, they pick up photographs of Indian Army!
That said, attacks on critical national infrastructure and critical national leaders, both military and non-military still continue unabated as mentioned by the ADG Strat Comms in his address in the first tweet of the thread. This is kept up even during ‘peace’ time.
THREE CRORE attacks on the National Stock Exchange itself on the first day of Op Sindoor.
Let that sink in a bit.
Imagine the chaos had even one of those attacks succeeded.
Our guys have to successfully defend 3 crore times, while Paakis have to succeed only once.
THIS is the beast we are dealing with.
The beast needs to be dealt with, not just in the same coin, but with brute physical force.
Once again, as General Sharda mentioned in the video above : ‘War is about making the adversary submit to your Will.’
To that I shall add that any & every means towards achieving that end is justifiable. Even if it means physically destroying the network supplying narratives & inputs to Info Warriors, as well as Info Warriors themselves.
THIS is the sum total of what I want to say via this blog post.
As far as the ‘FANTASTIC’ Bhikharistani win of Feb 2019 goes, it did them a fat load of good barely 6 months later when India abrogated Article 370 and all that they could do was make a song and dance about it!
Here is what I wrote at that time.
Must See!
Bottomline : It might be time to blur the lines between Cognitive and Kinetic Warfare, once and for all.
Period.
:Fin:
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