A K ANTONY, ANIL AND THE DEFENCE BETRAYAL

Questions On a Defence Portal

Anil K Antony, according to business sites, is a Venture Architect, Technology Evangelist and Social Entrepreneur. He is the Executive Director of Cyber India (www.cyberindia.org), a think tank in cyber security and surveillance technologies and the Vice President and a member of the board of trustees of Navoothan Foundation (www.navoothan.org), a non-profit focusing on healthcare and empowerment of women. 

It doesn’t end there-Anil is the son of former Union Minister for Defence, A K Antony, and he is the Convener of the digital cell of the Congress. Something very curious happened after the emergence of the Sprinklr controversy in Kerala. Anil K Antony’s name was taken off the website of Cyber India.

But any number of internet searches will tell you he is its executive director. Cyber India has its primary office in California, and it has offices in New Delhi and Bengaluru.

Cyber India website

Why his name was taken off?

Just going to the site of Cyber India will reveal the truth: four high-placed Americans are there on the board of Cyber India. They are: General Wesley K Clark
Retired four-star general, US Army., Former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, NATO., and Former Democratic U.S. Presidential Candidate (2004 Primary).  James Lee Witt, Former White House Cabinet member, Michael McNerney, Founder of Efflux, and N MacDonnel "Don Ulsch.

Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr. is a retired general of the United States Army. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master’s degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the U.S. Army, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Wesley Clark

Clark commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.

Clark joined the 2004 race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a candidate in 2003, but withdrew from the primary race in 2004, after winning the Oklahoma state primary, endorsing and campaigning for the eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry. Clark leads a political action committee, “WesPAC”, which he formed after the 2004 primaries and used to support Democratic Party candidates in the 2006 midterm elections. Clark was considered a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but, on September 15, 2007, endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Clark endorsed the then-presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. 

Clark served as a co-chairman of Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, and is on the board of directors of BNK Petroleum. Between July 2012 and November 2015, he was an honorary special advisor to Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta on economic and security matters.

James Lee Witt, Former White House Cabinet Member and Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Bill Clinton, has strong relationships and is respected across the aisle, by both Democrats and Republicans.

Anil Antony

Witt was born in Paris, Arkansas, and was raised in Dardanelle, in Yell County, Arkansas. He and Clinton met as boys in Little League.[He founded a construction business in 1968. At 34, he was elected County Judge of Yell County. Witt was re-elected to the post six times and was recognized by the National Association of Counties for his work. Witt was a charter Board Chairman of Child Development Inc., which works to advance Head Start programs.

In 1988, shortly after being reelected county Judge, an administrative position he had held for ten years, Witt was appointed by then-Governor Bill Clinton to be the head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. 

James Lee Witt

There he reorganized the state’s emergency management process. Clinton subsequently moved the new Fire Protection Services Program to OES, including the board and the grant program, which was administered in conjunction with the state Insurance Department.

When Clinton was elected President, he appointed Witt to head FEMA, for which Witt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 1993. In 1996, FEMA was given cabinet rank. 

Michael McNerney, Co-founder and CEO of Efflux Systems, a cybersecurity startup focusing on post-breach analytics and incident response.

Michael is a technology entrepreneur and military veteran with a primary focus on cybersecurity. He currently works as the Chief Operations Officer of cybersecurity insurance startup Arceo. Previously, he led the threat intelligence business at Arbor Networks and was the Co-founder & CEO of Efflux Systems, a cybersecurity startup focused on advanced network analytics (acquired by Arbor Networks).

McNerney

Mike has also served as a Cyber Policy Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he drafted and negotiated key pieces of federal legislation through the congressional process and worked with the defence industry, internet service providers and tech companies to develop cybersecurity programs. Prior to that position, Mike worked in the U.S. State Department, where he pioneered rule of law and economic development programs in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Mike is an affiliate at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Chair & Co-founder of Technology for Global Security, and a Board Member of Vets-in-Tech. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, and earned his J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law.

Don Ulsch has decades of experience in the fields of cyber forensics, cybercrime, national security, cyber risk, regulatory compliance and stress testing, cyber geopolitics, and cyber insurance. He is Principal, MacDonnell Ulsch Cyber Advisory LLC, Guest Lecturer on Cyber Warfare, US Military Academy at West Point.

He provides executive cybersecurity risk management advisory and strategic research services to clients on cyber warfare, cyber espionage, cyber insurance, and defensive measures to reduce the impact of cyber attacks from hostile nation-states and transnational organized crime. The Firm’s clients include law firms with cybersecurity and privacy practices, Artificial Intelligence and cyber security companies, as well as Fortune companies.

Ulsch

As a consultant, he served as Chief Executive Officer at Cyber 20/20 Inc., a technology company specializing in Machine Learning and Deep Learning enabled cyber threat hunting. Cyber 20/20 provides advanced Artificial Intelligence cyber threat hunting capabilities to the US military and US national security organizations, and to the commercial sector.

Previously, he was Senior Managing Director of Cybercrime and Cyber Insurance at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and was the Chief Executive Officer at ZeroPoint Risk Research LLC. He has conducted cyber investigations in 70 countries and was the past co-chair of the American Bar Association Privacy Committee.

These four people are big shots in the US. 

And, the Chairman of Cyber India is former Chattisgarh Governor Shekhar Dutt. He was Defence Secretary for one year while A K Antony was the Defence Minister. Prior to that, he was Joint Secretary of the Department of Defence Production. In July 2007, Dutt retired as Defence Secretary and was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor for a two-year term. On 23 January 2010, he assumed the office of the Governor of Chhattisgarh, the post to which he served till his resignation on 18 June 2014. Antony was Defence Minister during 2006-2014.

Executive Director of the firm, Vishal Verma is a Senior General Partner at Edgewood Ventures, LLC. and their group companies. Edgewood is an investment fund focusing on the United States and India. Another team member Srinivas Moramchetty has close to 2 decades of experience in Information Technology and IT Regulatory Compliance and holds a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Shekhar Dutt

Cyber India was known as a start-up ventured by Anil Antony. The company, according to its site, is a platform for some of the pioneering organizations and individuals working in the field of cybersecurity solutions, collaborating with a common mission of keeping our digital landscape secure. Cyber India team provides strategic insights, technological solutions, training and educational programs, and policy solutions, and acts as a knowledge resource to private and public sector organizations including the defence sector, with the primary motive of enhancing our cyber readiness and resilience at any level – be it local, regional, or national.

So, according to them, they act as a knowledge resource to even the defence sector. 

I am not casting doubts here that they are able to provide defence solutions, because A K Antony was the Defence Minister or Anil Antony came into contact with Wesley Clark, the NATO Commander through the defence channel. I am not alleging that Indian defence data leaked through Cyber India to the US.

But Anil Antony and his father A K Antony should answer the nation, why they are in the company of US defence personnel. And why Anil’s name has been withdrawn (maybe temporarily) as executive director.

I hope leaders like Shashi Tharoor will train their guns against Cyber India. Data is not only important, but they are also sacrosanct.

© Ramachandran