There is a feeling that India may expand the list of 59 Chinese apps when it would be found that other apps are also controlled from China.

Writing a detailed article in the Sunday Guardian, M D Nalapat , a well-known columnist, tries to prove some Sino experts wrong as they say any trade war initiated by India against Beijing will prove useless and ineffective.

According to him, next to the US, it is India which has the second largest trade surplus with China. In that background, the move to ban 59 Chinese apps in India, as per him, could potentially dry out hundreds of billions US dollar worth of valuations of Chinese companies.

He says some argue that VPNs would enable users to access the banned apps, but this would be used by a few. The replacement of banned apps by domestic alternatives would be a matter of weeks and not the months or years needed to replace hardware in telephony systems.

However, he blames Indians’ carelessness towards security that resulted in ZTE or Huawei dominating the back ends of the entire mobile telephony network. He says over the last decade, societal implications as well as value creation have been faster and also profound than in the case of hardware such as 3G, 4G or 5G. Most of the entities developing and marketing apps valued at several billion dollars each were not even around before 2009.

His contention is that present list of 59 banned Chinese apps may expand later when it would be found that other apps are also controlled from China. This would immediately deprive China of access to metadata of about a billion individuals. Such a move would severely affect progress developing Artificial Intelligence algorithms, technology of immense value in both civilian as well as military applications.

In his write up Nalapat says that under the personal supervision of President Xi Jinping the past four years have witnessed China overtaking the US in both AI patents as well as the commercial exploration of AI systems.

Given the use that AI can be put to in the spheres of intelligence and military operations, the Modi app ban—especially if followed by other countries with large smartphone-enabled populations—could have the effect of reversing PRC success in AI where its existential competitor, the US, is concerned.

Who wins the Knowledge War will prevail over the other, and access to Indian metadata is a necessary component for such a victory. This had been freely available to China until Prime Minister Modi decided it was time to show that there would be a heavy cost for the CCP to bear if it continued to indulge the PLA’s GHQ Rawalpindi-seeded phobia about India.

According to him, the app ban is only the first in the long chain of steps that need to be taken to ensure that the security of India is not compromised through being accessed by a country whose military is hand in glove with GHQ Rawalpindi, a fulcrum of terrorism across the world.

He says just as Afghanistan proved to be a Waterloo, first for the USSR and later to the US, Pakistan will be similar quagmire for China. The folly of going along with requirements of GHQ Rawalpindi will soon become evident to Chinese scholars and analysts. Many there do not accept the PLA policy of trust in the Pakistan army and of permitting GHQ Rawalpindi to stamp its influence on policies directed against India in a manner that goes counter to the interests of the 1.4 billion people of China. It seems only a matter of time before an objective cost-benefit analysis gets

Read the article in detail in the Sunday Guardian: