Dr.Raj Reddy, now an American citizen enjoying the highest security clearance of the
Pentagon, graduated in engineering from the Guindy Engineering College (now called the
Anna University) of the Madras University in 1958 and then went to Australia where he
obtained the Mtech from the University of New South Wales in 1960.
After having worked in Australia for three years as an Applied
Science Representative of the IBM Corporation of the US, he went to the US in 1963 to
study Computer Science in the Stanford University, obtaining his doctorate in 1966. He
worked there as an Assistant Professor for three years.
In 1969, he joined the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of
Pittsburgh as an Associate Professor of Computer Science and was promoted as a full
Professor in 1973 and as a University Professor in 1984. He was named as the Simon
University Professor in 1992.
In 1979, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation gave a grant of US
$ 5 million to start a Robotics Institute at CMU. The CMU made him the founding Director
of the Institute in which post he continued till 1991.
Dr. Reddy's hopes of making Pittsburgh the Robotsburgh of the US
were partly belied despite close collaboration with the US Energy Department in respect of
robots for nuclear power stations and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration
(NASA). The highly (in retrospect) optimistic expectations of demand for robots from
industries were not fulfilled. Despite the inadequate commercial results, it continues to
work on many US Government projects.
In 1991, he became the Dean of the School of Computer Science of
the CMU, of which the Robotics Institute is a part, and continued in that post till last
year.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Reddy was reported to have helped
Dr.V.S.Arunachalam, Scientific Adviser in the Ministry of Defence of the Government of
India who was associated with research and development of a sensitive nature and who was
the predecessor of Dr.Abdul Kalam, secure a job in the CMU. Dr. Arunachalam left
Government service and joined the CMU to become a Distinguished Service Professor in the
Department of Engineering & Public Policy, Materials Science and Engineering of the
Robotics Institute.
In February 1997, the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, appointed
Dr. Reddy as a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee
(PITAC), which has a one-billion dollar budget to promote multi-agency research and
development under the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. The Act requires the
President to appoint an Advisory Committee to provide advice and information on
high-performance computing and communication to the Office of Science and Technology
Policy.
Mr.Bill Joy, founder and chief scientist of the Sun Microsystems,
and Mr.Ken Kennedy, Director of the Centre for Research on Parallel Computation of the
Rice University, were appointed by Mr.Clinton as the first co-chairs for two years and
they were replaced in August last by Dr.Reddy and Mr.Irving Wladawsky-Berger, General
Manager, Internet Division of the IBM Corporation.
Before his appointment, Mr.Kennedy had taken the initiative in
the formation of the Houston Area Computational Science Consortium (HACSC) to incorporate
high performance computing and virtual reality into the next Internet and to increase the
bandwidth capabilities so that full-motion video and new applications can be transferred
in real time.
After his appointment, Mr.Kennedy said that one of the aims of
the PITAC would be the development of the Next Generation Internet (NGI). In a press
interview, he explained the difference between Internet II and NGI as follows:
"Internet II is a consortium of US universities that have joined together to
establish high-speed connections to one another. It has no formal relationship to the NGI,
which is a federal research initiative to establish the technology infrastructure that
will be needed to bring the current Internet to bandwidths (amount of information that can
be transferred in a second) to 100 or even 1000 times what it is today."
He added: "The Internet II consortium may benefit from the
NGI's proposed support for a testbed that would interconnect 100 or more research labs,
especially those at universities. However, the NGI support would pay only part of the cost
of establishing connections that are needed for the testbed; significant costs would fall
on the universities themselves. "
Another important task of the PITAC is to advise the President on
the defensive as well as offensive aspects of the information infrastructure security. The
defensive aspect is about preventing the penetration of the US' information infrastructure
by foreign intelligence agencies and hackers. The offensive aspect is about developing a
capability for penetrating the information infrastructure of foreign countries.
It is believed that Dr.Reddy's inclusion in the PITAC is partly
because of his expertise in this subject, which has received special attention in the
research faculties of the CMU's School of Computer Science under his stewardship. In fact,
the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) of
the Pentagon functions in the CMU's School of Computer Science, which is the recipient of
regular grants from the Pentagon for research and development in this field.
Published reports of October, 1995, had identified Mr.Dain Gary
as the head of the DIA's CERT in the CMU. It is not known who presently heads it. Dr.Bruce
Berkowitz, Adjunct Professor of Strategic Studies at the CMU, served in the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1978 to 1985 and then as an aide in the Senate Staff
Committee on Intelligence from 1985 to 1987.
In a written testimony before the Senate Sub-committee on
Communications on March 8,2000, Dr.Reddy explained the measures required for strengthening
the information infrastructure security in the US. The testimony had thanked a number of
members of the PITAC and others for their suggestions on this subject. Dr.Arunachalam was
one of them.
Apart from his two hats as an academic and as an advisor on
information infrastructure security to the US intelligence community and the Pentagon, Dr.
Reddy wears a third hat as a participant in business ventures. He used to be, and probably
still is, the Chairman of the Board of the Carnegie Group Inc. and a member of Microsoft's
Technical Advisory Board. In 1995, he became a member of the Board of Directors of
Industry.Net, a company that was merged in 1996, with the AT&T's New Media Services
Unit to form Nets Inc, with Dr.Reddy continuing as a member of its Board of Directors.
He is also the Chairman of SEEC.Inc of which Mr. Ravindra Koka is
the CEO and has reportedly a link-up with the Satyam Infoway.
On August 10, 1998, Dr.Reddy and Dr.Arunachalam prepared the
first draft of their proposal for a National High Speed Inter-University Data Network for
India to be called the Sankhya Vahini, or the River of Knowledge. They explained their
objective as follows: "To establish a very high bandwidth all-India national data
network and enrich it with educational, healthcare and other knowledge oriented multimedia
applications for the technical and economic growth of the nation. Named Sankhya Vahini,
this network will be primarily a data network forming the National Backbone, and will
initially connect at least 10 metropolitan centres and over 100 universities, institutions
of higher learning and research centres. As the speed of the network will be more than
1,000-10,000 times the speed currently available in the country, it will not only be able
to meet the research, teaching and learning requirements of educational institutions, but
also the high bandwidth data communication needs of other organisations in the commercial,
manufacturing and financial sectors….. More than meeting the immediate and fast
growing requirements of the country, Sankhya Vahini will also provide the testbed for
developing and proving multi-giga bit technologies that will soon become the norm
throughout the world in the next decade."
They also said that the network would be set up in phases with
the first two phases consisting of the creation of a National Internet Backbone and then a
series of Urban Data Networks to be linked to the National Backbone. Their draft also
envisaged that this national network be linked to an inter-university high speed data
network of the US through the CMU. To start with, they suggested that the Indian Institute
of Information Technology of Hyderabad, the Indian Institute of Science of Bangalore and
the Indian Institutes of Technology of Chennai and Mumbai become partners of this venture.
Their proposal was approved in principle by the Information
Technology Task Force of the Government of India on September 5,1998, and a Memorandum of
Understanding was signed in Washington on October 16,1998. The project has since run into
controversy on procedural and national security grounds. This paper would restrict itself
to some observations having a bearing on the national security aspects only.
The US intelligence community was totally taken by surprise by
India's nuclear tests (Pokhran II) of May 1998. An enquiry ordered by the Clinton
Administration attributed the failure of the intelligence community to detect the
preparations for the tests
to misjudgement of the BJP's determination to have the tests
carried out, over-reliance on satellites to detect the preparations, lack of penetration
capability in India and successful concealment techniques of Indian scientists.
Intriguingly, within a few weeks of the submission of the enquiry
report, this proposal for an US-aided data network in India to be connected with a data
network of the CMU surfaced. Since the School of Computer Science of the CMU works in
collaboration with the CERT of the DIA of the Pentagon, all its foreign collaboration
projects are subject to prior clearance by the Pentagon. This project was apparently
cleared without any delay seeing from the rapidity with which the MOU was signed.
After Pokhran I in 1974, Washington has imposed severe
restrictions on sensitive technology transfers to India. In the fit of anger after Pokhran
II, Washington added to these restrictions, vastly expanded the black list of Indian
entities with which co-operation without prior permission was prohibited, refused or
cancelled visas to many Indian scientists invited to seminars in the US and issued
informal advisories to American scientific institutions freezing interactions with their
Indian counterparts,
Since 1974, all projects for sensitive technological
collaboration with Indian institutions are subject to security vetting by the US
intelligence community followed by a careful examination by an inter-departmental
committee, resulting in long and painful delays even in the clearance of legitimate
projects of a non-sensitive nature, as one saw from the experience of the Indian
Meteorological Department in the 1980s.
When inordinate delays have thus been the norm in all such
projects since Pokhran I, the Clinton Administration and its intelligence community do not
appear to have created any hurdles or delays in respect of Sankhya Vahini. On the
contrary, despite the then prevailing fit of anger over Pokhran II, all clearances in
respect of this project seem to have been given in a jiffy between August and October,
1998..
It would be reasonable to infer from this that the US agencies
are interested in a quick implementation of this project for their own national security
reasons and the only possible reason for this could be their calculation that the US
involvement in this network could facilitate their penetration of India's information
infrastructure.
The US intelligence community always looks for opportunities for
the penetration of the information infrastructure of not only potential adversaries like
China, but also allies like the member-countries of the European Union, Australia etc. In
1995, the Australian Navy ordered a temporary suspension of the use of Microsoft software
in its establishments following suspicion that the Microsoft was collaborating with the
DIA for the penetration of the information infrastructure of the Australian Navy.
The same year, an enquiry ordered by President Jacques Chirac of
France into the penetration of the information infrastructure of the French Navy
reportedly concluded that the penetration had been done by the Americans. The French
authorities alleged that the US intelligence community tried to mislead their
investigators by planting false information on them that the penetration was by the
Russians.
And, one had seen the recent allegations by the EU countries
about the joint Echelon project of the US and British intelligence, not only for telephone
tapping, but also for penetrating the information infrastructures of the EU countries.
Against the background of this, the national security
implications of the Sankhya Vahini project do not seem to have received the thorough
attention they deserved. We may have to pay a heavy price for this one day in the form
interference with and distortion of the information infrastructures of our nuclear,
missile and other sensitive defence projects by the American experts associated with this
project.
For causing such distortions, they don't even have to come to
India. They can do so from Pittsburgh by taking advantage of the inter-connectivity
between the Indian network and that of the CMU.
(5-5-00)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai, E-mail: corde@vsnl.com)
