{"id":11687,"date":"2025-03-11T16:50:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T08:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/?p=11687"},"modified":"2025-03-11T16:57:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T08:57:46","slug":"total-defence-project-against-threat-to-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/communities-and-engagement\/total-defence-project-against-threat-to-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Total Defence Project Against Threat to the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u2190 Back to Story Listing<\/a><\/div>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Total Defence Project Against Threat to the Community<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Maximilian OH Yangzhi, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Hi! I am Maximilian Oh, a Year 3 undergraduate from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, majoring in Political Science and taking a minor in Philosophy. My academic interests are in comparative politics, political theory, and ethics.<\/p>

I decided to register for GEN2002 Total Defence Project Against Threat to Community as I have always been passionate about the security of our country. During my National Service, I served as an Army Technician at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic while also volunteering as a mask distributor with Team Nila. As time passed, it was clear that the pandemic was not something that could be fought with firepower or diplomacy alone, and required the effort of the entire Singapore community. This highlighted the importance of Total Defence and Singapore\u2019s vulnerability to hybrid threats, i.e. actions conducted by state or non-state actors, whose goal is to undermine or harm a target by combining overt and covert military and non-military means, which inspired me to register for the course.<\/p>

First and foremost, GEN2002 Total Defence Project Against Threat to Community is about acknowledging that the threats facing sovereign states today have evolved rapidly to bypass traditional security measures. In a cosmopolitan and digital world, even a strong military force or world-class cyber defence capabilities can fail to provide a sufficient defence against hybrid threats. Secondly, it is recognising that the state and non-state actors carrying out hybrid attacks do not just target government officials or military assets \u2013 ordinary citizens will be targeted and are potential victims. Lastly, it is about how the answer lies with us, the community. Defending ourselves against hybrid threats involves the efforts of our whole society, through the six pillars of Total Defence; Military, Civil, Economic, Social, Digital and Psychological Defence.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Image from Freepik: low-angle-view-of-helicopter-flying-with-singaporean-flag-against-sky<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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An interesting experience I had during the course was when we were coming up with ideas of what we considered as hybrid threats. As my course mates came from diverse backgrounds, with some from Computer Science and some from Life Sciences, many of them came up with different examples of hybrid threats that I would not have thought of myself. This also provided ample opportunity for debate over what counted as a hybrid threat \u2013 while some felt that fake news was not a hybrid threat, others brought up how false information about a racial incident could target both Singapore\u2019s social fabric and economic prospects, making it a hybrid threat.<\/p>

Taking GEN2002 Total Defence Project Against Threat to Community has broadened my perspectives when evaluating case studies that I learn about, especially in the context of my other courses within the political science discipline. For example, during my course on Singapore Politics, we approached studying the \u2018AWARE saga\u2019, an attempted religious takeover of the non-governmental advocacy organisation, by evaluating the state of civic participation in Singapore, as well as the government\u2019s approach towards maintaining secularism. However, given my experiences from GEN2002 Total Defence Project Against Threat to Community, I thought keenly about how society itself could play a role in preventing religious groups from taking over secular civil society groups. An overseas non-state actor could abuse religion as a way to destabilise Singapore, and our community can remain resilient against such a threat through societal efforts.<\/p>

To juniors who are planning on taking this course, I would advise that one should keep an open mind and embrace doing something different from your regular course work. My group\u2019s project was a website that features acts of kindness done by everyday Singaporeans, as a way to build social resilience in the community against hybrid threats. As GEN2002 Total Defence Project Against Threat to Community is a year-long course, the workload is manageable and provides for a well-needed break from the usual quizzes and essays. One should also recognise that such a course is important in this day and age, considering the rapid development of threat actors and their capabilities. Combating hybrid threats in the present and future would require individuals with diverse skillsets, and any one of us could be the crucial factor in defending Singapore.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u2190 Back to Story Listing<\/a><\/div>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GEN2002 student Maximilian OH Yangzhi shares his team\u2019s journey to presenting at the Total Defence 40 (TD40) Convention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":11401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11792,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions\/11792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nus.edu.sg\/nuscares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}