ISLAMABAD    -    President Dr Arif Alvi has said India was carrying out its disin­formation campaign against Pa­kistan in full swing and stressed that the propaganda needed to be countered by acquiring ‘cy­ber strength’ by Pakistan.

“India had not learnt the les­son even after the EU Disinfo Lab had exposed its network of propaganda against Pakistan,” the President said this while addressing the convocation cer­emony of Air University here yesterday. He said Pakistan needed to ‘intellectually’ count­er the propaganda by acquiring ‘cyber strength’ besides other conventional modes of security.

The President highlighted the need for the world’s fifth pop­ulous nation to gain knowledge in contemporary fields particu­larly artificial intelligence, cy­berspace, and data-driven tech­nology. Alvi said Pakistan had achieved professional prowess in traditional and convention­al defence such as a nuclear deterrence, however, stressed that gaining a strong foothold in cyberspace was also vital for survival. He pointed out that in the last year’s global cyber ranking, Pakistan was placed nowhere on the list. The sit­uation, he said, demanded an overhaul in choices of career pathways besides a major shift in the retrogressive mindset.

He said cyber knowledge was one of the best tools to equip the country’s big youth bulge with contemporary skills.

He mentioned that a huge quantum of data based on pat­tern recognition was available in the world that needed the skill of artificial intelligence to quantify and analyze it.

The president called for de­cision-making on impart­ing the youth requisite knowl­edge about quantum computing and artificial intelligence as the world witnessed an unprece­dented transformation in these fields. He emphasized the impor­tance of carrying out thorough research on job markets by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and said that it would pro­duce a skilled human resource to match the demands of na­tional and international organi­zations, thus aptly addressing unemployment in the country