India’s Internal Security Risk Landscape 2025: Five Emerging Threats Policymakers Aren’t Preparing For

India’s internal security landscape in 2025 is far more complex than it was even a decade ago. While the longstanding challenges of terrorism, insurgency and cross-border tensions continue, a newer generation of threats is quietly shaping the country’s vulnerabilities in ways that do not always attract headlines. These risks stem from fast-moving technology, growing climate strain, smarter criminal networks, and deepening social pressures.

What makes them particularly troubling is that India’s security institutions were built for an older world and are still catching up with these shifts. As a result, policymakers often find themselves reacting after damage has already occurred. To understand India’s evolving security picture, it is important to examine these emerging threats as separate, distinct themes, while also recognising that together they form one interconnected ecosystem. 

1. Drone-Enabled Cross-Border Smuggling

One of the most striking developments in recent years has been the rise of drone-enabled smuggling along sensitive borders, particularly the India–Pakistan frontier in Punjab. Earlier, smugglers relied on human couriers, tunnels or creatively concealed vehicles. Today, cheap, commercially available drones with GPS guidance and the ability to fly low allow traffickers to bypass fences, checkposts and patrols with alarming ease.

The quantities of heroin, methamphetamine and synthetic opioids recovered after drone drops have increased steadily. In some instances, dismantled weapon components have also been transported using the same method. A recent example is the BSF report from November 2025, which confirmed that 255 Pakistani drones were neutralised this year, many carrying heroin or weapon parts across the Punjab border.

The security challenge is not just about narcotics entering Indian cities but the way these flows fuel organised crime, strengthen local gangs, and create potential channels for more serious cross-border operations. The low cost of drones and their easy availability online make them accessible to anyone with modest resources.

The worry among security officials is that the method could be repurposed to deliver explosive devices, espionage payloads or even facilitate surveillance of sensitive installations. What complicates the situation is that counter-drone technology is expensive, heavily urban-centred, and still evolving. Many districts do not have dedicated detection systems, leaving forces dependent on manual monitoring or occasional interceptions.

2. Cyberattacks on Critical Infrastructure

While drones threaten the physical frontier, cyberattacks pose an equally serious challenge to India’s invisible but vital infrastructure. The expansion of digital services, the push for smart grids, and the integration of operational technology into everyday functioning have brought efficiency, but they have also exposed critical systems to remote sabotage. Power utilities, water treatment facilities, hospital networks, and transportation control systems all rely on interconnected digital frameworks.

A successful cyber intrusion into these networks can trigger disruptions that spill far beyond the digital realm: prolonged blackouts, halted metro lines, contaminated water pipelines or paralysis of hospital records. This trend has already shown up in data: a November 2025 PwC survey found that one-fourth of the Indian firms faced cyber-related losses, including disruptions to power and service-delivery systems. 

Cybercriminals no longer work alone; they operate through global ransomware groups, dark-web marketplaces, hired intrusion specialists and, in some cases, proxies linked to hostile state actors. These actors exploit vulnerabilities like outdated software, weak login practices, unmonitored servers, or unsecured endpoints in third-party vendors. What makes this threat particularly worrying is the skill gap between attackers and defenders.

India’s cyber talent is world-class, yet government departments, small public utilities, and local bodies often lack trained personnel, updated systems or a clear understanding of security protocols. The country is digitising faster than it is securing itself, leaving a widening gap for adversaries to exploit.

3. Deepfakes and Disinformation Ecosystem

A quieter but equally disruptive danger is emerging through the rapid spread of deepfakes and disinformation. The line between authentic and fabricated content is blurring at a pace that the average citizen, and sometimes even officials, struggle to recognise.

High-quality manipulated videos, cloned voices, fake political speeches, and doctored clips can circulate widely on social media within minutes. In a diverse and emotionally charged society like India, such content can spark local tensions, communal flare-ups, or panic before fact-checking teams even begin their work. For example, on 10 November 2025, a fake video of Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi went viral on Pakistani channels and social media, falsely claiming he said that “non-Hindu” or “lower caste” soldiers would be removed from the Army. Fact-checkers later confirmed that the video was AI-generated, and the Army officially dismissed it as fake.

During tense moments like a natural disaster, a sensitive arrest or an election, such fake content can spread so quickly that it drowns out official messages. The problem isn’t just the confusion it creates in the moment but in the way how it slowly chips away at people’s trust. When citizens can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, false information turns into a tool that can weaken institutions. State police forces often lack specialised digital forensic units, and responses depend heavily on platform cooperation, which varies in speed and quality.

4. Climate Change as a Security Multiplier

Beyond the domain of technology, climate change is quietly reshaping India’s internal security dynamics. As extreme heat waves, erratic rainfall, recurrent flooding and groundwater depletion become more frequent, the pressure on local resources intensifies. These stresses manifest in ways that are not immediately labelled as security issues: failed crops, rural distress, migration from drought-hit regions, competition over shrinking water sources, and rising food prices. However, the cumulative effect can destabilise fragile districts, fuel protests, or increase crime as livelihoods collapse.

A clear example is the September 2023 Cauvery water dispute, when Karnataka saw widespread bandhs, road blockades and clashes after water-release orders. The protests directly linked resource stress with law-and-order challenges.

In regions already marked by historical grievances or communal fractures, climate stress acts as a catalyst.

For instance, in rural areas where water is scarce, neighbouring villages can get into serious conflicts over access. In coastal regions, rising sea levels push people out of their livelihoods, and this economic stress is often taken advantage of by criminal groups involved in trafficking or illegal fishing. While disaster management agencies prepare for cyclones and floods, the long-term security implications of climate change such as resource conflict or migration-driven tensions, remain insufficiently embedded in governance and policing frameworks.

5. Online Radicalisation and AI-Driven Echo Chambers

Parallel to these structural challenges is the growing phenomenon of online radicalisation, which has acquired new dimensions because of algorithm-driven platforms and generative AI. Earlier, extremist groups struggled to create multilingual content or tailor messages to specific emotional triggers. Now, AI models make it easy to translate, customise and mass-produce persuasive material. Many young users, especially those dealing with isolation or everyday pressures, can slip into online echo chambers within a short time. A recent illustration of this pattern is the D-6 terror case uncovered in November 2025, where young recruits were first drawn in through online networks before being linked to foreign handlers.

Encrypted chat groups, gaming communities and anonymous platforms give radical influencers quiet spaces to connect with them, shape their views and slowly draw them in. The transformation from passive consumption to active involvement is quicker, quieter and more fragmented than in previous decades. Small, self-radicalised clusters, sometimes without direct organisational links are harder for intelligence agencies to track. Even when one set of accounts is taken down, new ones reappear with fresh identities, making enforcement feel perpetual and incomplete. This challenge is not limited to any one ideology; it includes separatist messaging, violent extremism, hate-driven mobilisation and foreign-influenced propaganda.

Structural Gaps in India’s Security Setup

What ties these emerging threats together is the set of structural vulnerabilities within India’s internal security architecture. Coordination between central and state agencies remains uneven, especially when threats cut across jurisdictions or involve new technologies. Procurement rules for advanced equipment, whether cyber tools or drone detection systems, often move slowly due to administrative layers. This has been visible in the slow rollout of anti-drone systems despite repeated requests from border forces over the past few years. Most district police units, who form the frontline of internal security, remain understaffed and overburdened with routine law-and-order duties, leaving little scope for specialised training. 

The legal framework governing drones, data protection, AI content, cyber incident reporting and platform accountability is evolving, but gaps persist. Meanwhile, private companies, responsible for much of India’s digital infrastructure, are not always integrated into threat-sharing networks, even though attacks on their systems can have national implications.

Yet the situation is far from hopeless. India has the institutional experience and talent reservoir to address these challenges with the right strategic focus. Countering drone smuggling, for instance, does not always require the most expensive technology; even low-cost acoustic sensors, coordinated patrol grids, and community alerts can improve detection significantly.

Cyber resilience can be strengthened through mandatory security audits for critical infrastructure, standardised reporting protocols, and better incentives for utilities to disclose vulnerabilities without fear of penalties. Tackling deepfakes requires a combination of quick forensic verification units, platform-level tagging for synthetic content, and public education campaigns that teach basic digital hygiene.

Climate-related security stress can be mitigated by integrating water governance and livelihood support into district-level security planning so that early signs of resource conflict are addressed before they escalate. Likewise, tackling online radicalisation isn’t just about enforcement. It also means staying engaged over the long term, creating counter-messages in regional languages, involving credible community figures, and offering rehabilitation pathways that help at-risk youth find a sense of purpose again.

Ultimately, India’s internal security concerns in 2025 require a change in approach. These threats are hybrid, overlapping and constantly evolving, and they require a more adaptive, coordinated and anticipatory approach. The strength of the Indian state will lie not in how fast it reacts to crises, but in how effectively it builds resilience before those crises reach the surface.