Social media – A possible threat to national security in Sri Lanka

In January 2014, The Nation published my viewpoint article, “Social media – A possible threat to national security in Sri Lanka” (Sunday, 26 January 2014, page 10). At the time, most people in Sri Lanka saw social media as a marketing tool or a place to socialise online. The idea that it could be used to organise, steer and mobilise large groups of people was, for most, only a concept.

When the Aragalaya protests reached the mainstream in 2022, I was reminded of what I had written eight years earlier. The way people were brought together, organised and messaged through social media followed the patterns I had described back then: online communities deliberately built and grown, direction that was not always visible, and young, highly active users at the centre of it all.

Today, the influence of social media on politics and public opinion is widely recognised around the world. In 2014 it was still an idea most people dismissed. I am republishing the original article below exactly as it was printed, unedited, so readers can see what I was warning about at the time.

Original Article:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140201061048/http://www.nation.lk:80/edition/news-features/item/25204-social-media-a-possible-threat-to-national-security-in-sri-lanka.html

Social media – A possible threat to national security in Sri Lanka

• By  Saptha Wanniarachchi
• Sunday, 26 January 2014 00:00

The balance between estate military and electronic/cyber power has become a questionable and valuable fact on national security. Thanks to ethical hackers and cyber security experts who has taken this topic to the market, so that we are aware of the situation where cyber security is also a critical element in national security.

Since war has ended and the country is moving towards its development, many organizations and groups have taken steps to prevent the country from making its progress. As a country, we experience many external attacks sponsored and organized by Diaspora, politicians, NGOs, etc. Most of them are visible and we can practically take an action to defend them. But despite the visible threats, the latest weapon they took in hands is electronic media.

There are multiple forms of cyber threats where it can be a targeted attack or an organized influence attack. Most of us are aware of cyber attacks and the preventive actions taken by respective organizations. Unlike hacking incidents, social media provides the facility to organize a larger and much more powerful attack using the power of users. Social media provides more sophisticated way to influence the general public to develop trends and direct the force towards society. This country has been vulnerable to many attacks and it is not advisable to take any more chances in the area of any form of threat.

According to wiki social media definition, social media refers to “Interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks”. Majority of people are under the impression that social media falls under the expert level of IT, and technical expertise is must to utilize social media for business. To some extend the statement is correct, where IT skills are required to have optimal and extreme performance of social media. But for small or medium level businesses, skills like motivation, language and marketing are more than enough to handle social media.

Social media is new to most of the countries. Nowadays, social media is also used for lobbying and to spy on prominent personalities and to generate threats which can be from small scale to very large organized crimes. Power of people is always stronger than any government or military force. Traditional way of collecting and developing groups has been outdated and the latest tool has become the social media to get people connected and united. Traditional groups are more transparent and leadership is visible but electronic groups organized through social media can be more risky where leadership and direction can be hidden or faked. Certain organizations and groups who are against the development of this country have taken some serious and harmful steps using internet to bring this country down, which are invisible to the common view.

Workshops

A few years ago an invitation was sent via one of the active IT communities of Sri Lanka to attend a workshop titled “Why Social Media for Marketing?” A few things made me interested; since it was organized by US Embassy in Sri Lanka and the title was ‘Social Media for Marketing’ sound valuable. Social media is an essential tool for marketing. Since both go together I sent an application and was lucky enough to get an invitation to American Center located in Sri Lanka. Expecting to get additional knowledge on social media for marketing, I made it to the workshop on time. Since it was organized by US embassy and event was shared through local community, I did not pay any attention on speakers. When it commenced, the speaker Susannah Vila and one other guy initiated the workshop as friendly and active discussion forum rather than speech.

First she collected typical information like who is active on twitter, who uses facebook pages/groups and who is more active, etc. After that, it took me only a few minutes to come to a conclusion that she or her buddy does not talk anything related to social media for marketing and they all talk about getting more users to social media and how to make them more active. She made it very clear that having a strong online community means a very valuable asset. Till the end, the entire discussion was regarding getting united under social media and to make it more active in Sri Lanka.

 Assuming not many people were curious like me, they all had a great time and left the American Center. Later when I did some online search on her profile, it made me clear that my curiosity was correct and she has been working closely with developing or promoting Online Tools for Activists, By Activists, even work closely on Egyptian revolution.  Helping the revolution is her choice and the question here is why did US Embassy invited such person who actively worked for the propaganda of US government, to conduct social media workshop and titled it as ‘Social Media for Marketing’ and discussed developing social media network in Sri Lanka. After the deadly war, this country is trying hard to develop its infrastructure and still we are having major issues to develop the country than concentrating on social media. It is very clear that the intention of US embassy isn’t only about Social media or marketing.

 Events

“TweetupSL” is four years old and it continues to grow with the objective of meeting twitter users offline face-to-face. It used to be a social hangout but they have been adding more activities and offering awards to top twitter users in different categories. Each year the event is organized by group of social media experts and is funded by few commercial organizations. Assuming the commercial organizations do have marketing advantage over the sponsorship, it turns to be strange when US Embassy made its presents as a sponsor for TweetupSL. I was lucky to make my presents to the event before the speech by the US Embassy representatives. It was very clear from the US Embassy representatives short speech that they wants more twitter users, they need our community to express our views, feelings, news locations to be shared and get more people involved and to build the social media community bigger.

 Training

Social media also falls into the same tip of the iceberg theory where general public find it very simple but building up strategy and utilization needs talented professional skills and that’s where social media training hit the market. Many commercial vendors offer social media training and a few organizations offer training and workshops free of charge. Except commercial organizations a few organizations were here for good, doing almost the same type of training for years. One of the leading organizations is “Sarvodaya-Fusion” which is listed as non-profit organization.

Training is essential tool develop skills and it can be used for good or evil. It is very important to study and analyze what is the objective of the organization and who will influence the objectives. When I spoke to Fusion, they made it clear that social media is only an element of the training they offer and it is well connected with essential Microsoft office and basic applications and they are committed to develop proper IT workforce rather than having more social media junkies who will act according to hidden movements. It has become critical point to consider why such organizations are so interested in getting more people trained to develop social media skills.
US Embassy has recently announced that it is conducting free social media courses through its own Social Media Lab. Why specifically US is interested in opening social media lab? Opening comprehensive IT training center or support any NGO or training organization would have been made it easy for United States to support our nation to develop tech skills without opening its own training lab. The US government and many American organizations are already here providing training and aid for long time in history. In my opinion of view US Embassy is paying a big attention on specifically promoting social media in Sri Lanka.

Propaganda

According to the above author, the question is “Why did they took this initiative and is that critical and urgent support they could deliver to my country?”, which is an obvious question anyone with right mind can ask. Having all the problems behind, is it really essential to open a Social Media lab rather than addressing the common issues we face as a developing country in this very important era. Recent survey shows that the computer Literacy rate of Sri Lanka is around 35% currently and will reach 75% by 2016. More than social media, we need to build the basic computer literacy where many organizations are committed to help. But in this case we can clearly see the very strong connection between the US government and building social media connection in Sri Lanka.
Same like internet and computers, social media can be utilized for good or bad, with all the marketing and social advantages we should consider a risk that could develop. At the moment we do not have clear evidence or technical findings to document any bad movement, in case there is one it’s government responsibility to crackdown and mitigate the risk. By looking at the patterns of things happening here we could build some valuable hypotheses and come to logical conclusion that some people working against the nation. Having more social media junkies means huge advantage for propaganda builders. Main objective is promoting social media is to collect BIG DATA. Commercial organizations do such promotions for marketing where they can do better sales with market insights. Other than commercial value it is questionable why some organizations are so interested in big data.

Expose

Although, currently I don’t think there are enough people interested in doing anti-government or anti-Sri Lanka related activities in this country, like USA or any other organizations use for their propaganda.
But I think they are planning it in a long run, in case if there is a situation like Syria or Libya ever arises in this country. Then these social media soldiers will be ready to do their propaganda work and by then there might be enough people.
Due to the community scale in Sri Lanka movements, such movements never reached its audience. Best example is “Occupy Colombo” and also few wannabe hackers were exposed by Rukshan and IPV10 “Rooting the Anonymous.”

However, majority of the people who are prominent on social media and who are the “super users” on Twitter from this country are directly or indirectly have connections with organizing social media events or have connections with the US Embassy.
Also there are prominent online people who are ‘TECH’ people in their description have anti-Sri Lankan propaganda in their back. Setting up and maintain blog or online newspaper become an easy task where they can publish or share any propaganda and hide behind internet as keyboard heroes. Majority of social media users in the country are young people, and they can made to do anything like most of the social media marketers are doing right now.

Time has reached its peak to alert the and take an preventive actions than awaiting to happen, there might be consequences in the future where there will be an army of social media workers waiting to do foreign propaganda work against our own mother land. It is also our responsibility to stand against these threats and face it wisely.

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Outsourcing to Sri Lanka: A Practical Guide for Australian Businesses

Sri Lanka is one of the most underrated outsourcing destinations for Australian businesses. It has 175,000 tech and business-services professionals, a time zone close to ours, and an industry built for export.

Across Australia, from Perth to Brisbane, I hear the same thing from business owners. Hiring is slow, wages keep climbing, and good people are hard to keep. Most still treat outsourcing as something only banks and telcos do. That’s no longer true.

When Australians think offshore, they usually think of the Philippines or India. This article makes the case for looking at Sri Lanka too: what it does well, what to watch out for, and how to choose a partner.

Why Sri Lanka

The numbers show a mature, growing industry, not an experiment.

The gap between the two export figures matters. Some Sri Lankan firms book revenue through Singapore or Dubai, so the official number undercounts the real industry.

Beyond the numbers, four things stand out for Australian buyers.

• Time zone. Colombo is 2.5 hours behind Perth and 5.5 hours behind Sydney in daylight saving. A team starting at 6am in Colombo is online from 8:30am in Perth and 11:30am in Sydney.
• Finance talent. Sri Lanka has long been described as having the largest pool of CIMA-qualified accountants outside the UK (Daily FT). That makes it a strong fit for bookkeeping, accounts payable and management reporting.
• A built-in bridge. More than 130,000 Sri Lanka-born Australians understand both business cultures. Many offshore teams have Australian-based leaders or account managers because of it.
• Cost. Skilled Sri Lankan professionals cost a fraction of an Australian hire, which puts a dedicated team within reach of SMEs, not only enterprises.

What Australian businesses outsource to Sri Lanka

The best candidates are well-defined, repeatable tasks that don’t need to be done on site.

You don’t need to be big to start. A regional accounting practice or a family-owned distributor can begin with one or two dedicated people. A good partner supplies the recruitment, office, equipment and supervision.

Run a pilot first. Pick one function and run it for 90 days with clear measures, such as turnaround time, error rate and hours saved. Then decide whether to scale.

Keep a local owner. The setups that work best keep one person in Australia who owns the relationship and the process. The offshore team does the work; the local owner sets the priorities.

Two examples of Sri Lankan firms doing it well

There are hundreds of capable providers in Colombo and beyond. These two show different ends of the market.

The Connect BPO: managed outsourcing across functions. The Connect BPO runs dedicated teams for IT support, software development, QA, data analytics and back office work. Clients get fixed-scope pricing, defined SLAs and a named account manager. It’s part of the stable large finance organisation called Kanrich Group, a Sri Lankan group with more than five decades of history. It works with businesses of all sizes, from enterprises to small regional operators.

RNRobots: Microsoft Dynamics 365 specialists. RNRobots focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 development, implementation and ongoing support. That suits Australian businesses that need ERP or CRM expertise but can’t justify a full in-house Dynamics team with over 40 developers and functional and support consultants working 24 hours.

One is a generalist and one is a specialist. Most businesses will need one or the other, and sometimes both.

The risks, and how to manage them

Offshoring doesn’t remove your responsibilities. It changes where you manage them.

• Privacy. If your offshore team handles customer or staff data, Australian Privacy Principle 8 applies. You must take reasonable steps, usually an enforceable contract, so the overseas provider handles that data to the same standard. Under section 16C of the Privacy Act, you stay accountable if they get it wrong (OAIC). Ask any provider how they meet the APPs, not just GDPR.
• Economic stability. Sri Lanka went through a serious financial crisis in 2022 and has been recovering since. Choose a partner with solid financial backing and fixed pricing in Australian dollars, so currency swings are their problem, not yours.
• Staff turnover. Ask about retention rates, career paths and what happens to your work if someone leaves. A dedicated team with documented processes protects you.
• Working hours. Standard Colombo office hours finish at 7:30pm Perth time and 10:30pm Sydney time. Agree the shift pattern in the contract, not after go-live.
• Hidden costs. Get one monthly price that covers people, equipment, office space and management.

Seven questions to ask any offshore partner

1. Is the team dedicated to my business, or shared with other clients?
2. What does the monthly price include, and is it fixed?
3. How do you meet Australian Privacy Act obligations, including APP 8?
4. What are the SLAs, and who is my named account manager?
5. What hours will my team work, and how much do they overlap with mine?
6. What is your staff retention rate, and how do you handle handovers?
7. Can we start with a 90-day pilot on one function?

A good provider answers all seven without hesitation.

The bottom line

Sri Lanka isn’t the answer for every business. But if you need skilled people in IT, software, Dynamics 365, finance or back office, it deserves a place on your shortlist. That’s true whether you’re an ASX-listed company or a five-person firm in regional WA.

Are you already working with an offshore team? I’d like to hear what’s worked for you and what hasn’t.

#OutsourcingSriLanka #OffshoreStaffing #AustralianBusiness #SmallBusinessAustralia #Dynamics365 #ITOutsourcing #OffshoreDevelopment #BPO #ManagedServices #DigitalTransformation

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From Engineering to Emotion: What Chinese EV Brands Are Still Missing

Australia is in the middle of a silent transformation.

Electric vehicles are no longer a “future” conversation—they are parked in our driveways. Brands like BYD and Zeekr have entered the market with a speed that has left legacy manufacturers breathless. Their innovation is undeniable, their pricing is disruptive, and their technology is often two steps ahead.

But as a long-term automotive enthusiast, I’ve noticed a growing void.

While the software is seamless and the acceleration is brutal, something vital is being left behind in the race for market share. For those of us who view cars not just as appliances, but as an extension of our identity, the gap is impossible to ignore.

🚗 A Car Was Never Just a Car

For most of my life, I have been a Mercedes-Benz loyalist. My relationship with the Three-Pointed Star wasn’t just about the metal; it was about the ecosystem.

From owner events and dealership hospitality to being part of a Guinness World Record Mercedes pageant, ownership was synonymous with belonging. You weren’t just buying a vehicle; you were joining a lineage. You felt respected by the dealership, recognized by the brand, and welcomed by a community.

Most importantly, the car made you feel something every time you turned the key.

The EV Pivot: Logic vs. Life

When I decided to move into the EV space here in Western Australia, I did my due diligence. I tested the Kia EV range, explored BYD, and ultimately landed on the Zeekr Performance model.

Let’s be objective: the Zeekr is an incredible piece of engineering. It is fast, technologically dense, and offers value for money that legacy European brands struggle to match. It represents the pinnacle of modern mobility.

But the experience? That’s where the story changes.

From the first handshake, the process felt transactional. The delivery was procedural rather than an “occasion.” The conversations were about megapixels and kilowatt-hours—not feelings or lifestyle. Once the paperwork was signed, the relationship felt over. It felt less like joining a prestigious brand and more like unboxing a high-end smartphone.

The Strategic Blind Spot

Chinese EV manufacturers have mastered the “Hard Power” of the industry:

• Battery Chemistry and range efficiency.
• Software Integration and UI/UX.
• Production Speed and price competitiveness.

However, they are significantly under-investing in the “Soft Power”: the human experience. In the long run, cars aren’t just judged by their 0–100km/h time; they are judged by how they integrate into a person’s life and how they build loyalty over a decade, not just a sales quarter.

What “Car People” Actually Care About

For many Australians, driving is a culture. It’s the weekend drive along the coast, the “Cars & Coffee” meetups, and the pride of showing a car that says something about who you are.

When the emotional layer is missing, the product—no matter how many screens it has—feels incomplete.

⏳ The Opportunity: From Transactions to Traditions

Right now, Chinese brands are winning on Logic. But logic has a shelf life. Eventually, technology equalizes, features become standard, and price gaps narrow. When that happens, the only thing left is Connection.

If brands like Zeekr and BYD want to truly dethrone the likes of Mercedes-Benz, they must evolve beyond the factory floor and invest in:

1. The Ownership Milestone: Making the delivery and after-sales feel like a premium membership, not a retail checkout.
2. Community Architecture: Organizing owner drives and brand ecosystems that foster real-world connections.
3. Culture-First Dealerships: Training staff to be brand ambassadors who understand storytelling, not just technical specifications.
4. Driving Character: Moving beyond “fast” to find a unique “soul” in the driving dynamics.

Final Thought

The future of cars is undoubtedly electric, but the future of car culture must remain human.

Chinese EV brands have proven they can build exceptional machines. Now, the real question is: Can they build exceptional experiences? Because that is what turns a one-time buyer into a lifelong believer.

#CustomerExperience (CX) #BrandLoyalty#CarCulture#LuxuryExperience#ThoughtLeadership #EVsAustralia#GenesisGV60#ZeekrAustralia #EVInvestment#AutomotiveStrategy#ChineseEVs#GeelyGroup#FutureOfMobility#MarketDisruption