'AI, disruptive technologies will increase gravity of cyber risks': NSA Ajit Doval at BRICS meet

NSA Ajit Doval highlighted the need for collective efforts to deal with challenges emerging from cybersecurity.

Updated on: Jul 24, 2023, 19:23:37 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval on Monday attended the 'Friends of BRICS' meeting in the South African capital of Johannesburg. In the meeting, the issue of cybersecurity was discussed at length. In addition to BRICS, the following Friends of BRICS countries - Belarus, Burundi, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Cuba - also participated in the discussions.

The NSA level meeting is in the run-up to the summit on August 22-24,

Doval highlighted the need for collective efforts to deal with challenges emerging from cybersecurity. “The Global South in particular needs to overcome limitations of resources. In this regard, India will always remain at the forefront and work closely with the Global South,” he said.

Read: NSA heads to Joburg to meet Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi at BRICS NSA summit

Doval also emphasised that the gravity of cyber risks will increase exponentially with the advent of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and Internet of Things.

He spoke about the connection between cyber criminals and terrorists, including the use of cyber space for financing, money laundering, radicalizing, lone wolf attacks, recruitment and secured communications.

Watch | Doval's Crucial Huddle With China On LAC Standoff; Indian NSA To Brief Putin Aide | BRICS Summit

“The younger population was particularly vulnerable to the spread of extremist ideologies via social media sites as they are technology savvy and have impressionable minds,” he noted.

Doval also held several bilateral meetings with his counterparts from BRICS and Friends of BRICS countries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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