SINGAPORE: With geopolitical fragmentation and rapid technological change driving new security threats, countries must rethink national security beyond traditional military defence, said Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Tuesday (Apr 21).
He warned that the world is becoming more volatile and unpredictable, with risks emerging across multiple domains, demanding a broader and more integrated approach to security.
“(National security) used to be primarily about defence. But actually, the evolution of geopolitics and the technological revolution since then have meant that national security has to go far beyond the traditional focus purely on conventional defence,” he said.
Dr Balakrishnan was speaking at this year’s Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers, which was attended by more than 70 national security practitioners, experts and scholars from 21 countries.
“Today, because globalisation is being repudiated, because interdependence is being weaponised, it means the attack surface area has expanded into multiple domains – whether it is climate change, public health, frontier technologies, geoeconomics, supply chains, trade; all of these have become the concern of national security,” he said.
