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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).<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c(National security)<\/span> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr Balakrishnan was speaking at this year\u2019s Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers, which was attended by more than 70 national security practitioners, experts and scholars from 21 countries.<\/span><\/p>\n “Today, because globalisation is being repudiated, because interdependence is being weaponised, it means the attack surface area has expanded into multiple domains \u2013 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “In sum, the concept of security now encompasses defence against a full spectrum of disruption, division and coercion.”<\/span><\/p>\n In the military domain, countries have to deal with grey-zone tactics, which fall below the threshold of a traditional attack but are designed to have an impact.<\/span><\/p>\n “They are designed to be difficult to attribute, and similarly, to cause dilemmas in how to respond proportionately,”<\/span> he said, pointing to the example of drone incursions over civilian airports last year, which resulted in significant economic costs.<\/span><\/p>\n Turning to the technological revolution, he said the rapid evolution of digital technologies has transformed how information spreads.<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than creating a more unified global community, the internet has instead enabled an opportunity for the \u201cglobal mobilisation of toxic tribalism\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n “No matter how crazy or repugnant your views today, you will find someone else on the internet to affirm you. You will find avenues to mobilise people who believe wrongly in those crazy, repugnant ideas,<\/span>\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr Balakrishnan took aim at social media companies\u2019 role in promoting outrage, anger and emotionally charged content.<\/span><\/p>\n “These companies know that what drives eyeballs is not highfalutin, inspired ideas. The easiest way to drive eyeballs is outrage, incitement to anger, triggering tribalism,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n He added: “It is a bit like smoking and the fact that the tobacco companies knew long ago the harm, but they also knew they had an addictive medium, and they were optimised to maximise revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n “Actually, the same phenomenon has occurred now, and governments all over the world are still struggling to come to terms with how you regulate, rationally and sensibly, a new technology which is addictive, which is mediated by companies who are motivated by profit maximisation, and yet has got such pernicious effects on our social cohesion.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nTECH ENABLING TOXIC TRIBALISM<\/span><\/h2>\n