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By: Muhammad Asim Saddiqi
In digital age, ideas travel faster than bullets and words wound deeper than weapons which made Pakistan to stand at a perilous crossroads. The term digital terrorism itself has slipped beyond the corridors of technical jargon and has entered the mainstream discourse of national security. It no longer describes itself as a mere cyber hack or data theft—but as a silent and sophisticated war of narratives, misinformation and manipulation. Digital terrorism, in Pakistan, works as a multifaceted hydra that emerges as the defacement of government portals, phishing operations preying upon civilians, deepfake propaganda targeting national institutions and meticulously engineered misinformation campaigns flooding social media feeds. It is a war where keyboard replaces the Kalashnikov, and the hashtag becomes a grenade. As former Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan once said, “Knowledge is power; information is liberating.” Yet in this distorted mirror of freedom, information often becomes the very weapon of enslavement—crafted to confuse, divide and conquer.
The year 2025, has proven itself a watershed as cybercrimes in Pakistan have surged by 35 percent amid national push for cryptocurrency legalization, preparing fertile ground for digital predators. Ransomware attacks have multiplied, targeting hospitals, banking systems and critical infrastructure, while cross-border digital incursions are targeting defence and telecom networks. The National Cyber Emergency Response Team (NCERT) has issued repeated advisories and warnings against ransomware infiltrations, which as per reports were orchestrated by hostile foreign actors. A report aptly described this dilemma as “cracks in Pakistan’s digital armour”—cracks that adversaries exploit with surgical precision. The blurred boundaries between cyber and physical warfare have intensified Pakistan’s security vulnerabilities.
During a tense Indo-Pak digital standoff earlier this year, several defence-linked networks faced denial-of-service, attacks traced to offshore servers. The intent was not theft but destabilization—to erode confidence, distort perception and weaponize confusion. Modern conflicts no longer begin with the rumble of tanks but with the whisper of a viral post. To its credit, the Government of Pakistan has begun awakening to this invisible war. The National Cyber Security Policy 2021, has laid the groundwork for digital defence and recent actions by the FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing and National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency have yielded significant victories. Dozens of orchestrators of fake news networks and online terror cells have been arrested. As the current Interior Minister of Pakistan Mohsin Naqvi has remarked earlier this year, “Our enemies have traded guns for gadgets; our defenses must evolve accordingly.” Yet, much of the state’s approach remains reactive—more akin to a firefighter dousing infernos than an architect preventing sparks. What Pakistan requires now is not mere cyber policing but cyber foresight. Artificial intelligence-driven threat detection, rapid-response cyber task forces and dedicated digital courts could transform the reactive into the proactive. Without these, the nation risks becoming a castle built on data sand—grand in appearance, fragile at the base. The regional dimension deepens this dilemma, as in the broader South Asian theatre, digital terrorism has become the new proxy war. As conventional borders are now heavily guarded, virtual borders are breached daily. The Indo-Pak rivalry has entered the cyber domain, where the fight for influence is waged through manipulated images, synthetic videos and fabricated communiqués. Analysts believe that such attacks “Aim not to destroy infrastructure, but to fracture faith.” Indeed, the battle for hearts and minds is now unfolding through fiber-optic veins instead of frontlines.
Internationally, Pakistan’s predicament echoes as a universal truth, that no nation is immune to this invisible insurgency. From Russia’s misinformation machinery to Western ransomware syndicates, the world is ensnared in the same web. Still Pakistan’s mixture of political volatility, weak digital literacy and hyper-partisan media serve as a catalyst for a perfect storm of cyber manipulators. In such a climate, journalism itself becomes a double-edged sword, capable of enlightening, yet equally capable of inflaming. To counter this, the state must move beyond censorship toward cultivation—nurturing a digitally literate society that recognizes manipulation when it sees it. Cyber awareness programs, curricula focused on information ethics and national alliances with technology innovators could together create what might be termed “digital patriotism.” The private sector, too, must shoulder its part; data sovereignty can no longer rest solely in bureaucratic hands. Perhaps most importantly, Pakistan must confront its moral vacuum in which misinformation thrives. When truth becomes blurry, the society itself becomes hackable. In this scenario, a revamped code of conduct for media, along with rapid-response fact-checking units, can help stem the tide. As rightly said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Ultimately, digital security is not only about defending systems—it is about defending sanity. Firewalls can protect data but only wisdom can protect minds in an age where pixels can provoke wars and tweets can topple truths. The battlefield of tomorrow lies not on borders but in bandwidth, not in territory but in trust. To guard its digital frontiers, Pakistan is not merely securing networks, it is safeguarding its narrative, its truth, its voice and its soul.
The author is Researcher based in Islamabad.
