Opinion: Shaping India-US tech ties

Technological breakthroughs and their deployment will outline the engagements between New Delhi and Washington

By Monish Tourangbam

America’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan recently landed in New Delhi to engage in a high-level discussion with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval and review the progress of the India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) that they had launched last year. This was the first high-level visit from the Biden administration after the inauguration of Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister for a third term.

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Around the same time, a diplomatic irritant currently gnawing India-US strategic partnership hit the headlines. A group of prominent Democratic Senators in the US pressured the Biden administration for a “strong diplomatic response” to allegations of the Indian government being involved in a foiled attempt to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the leader of a US-based Khalistani separatist group and US citizen. This also comes at a time when Indian national Nikhil Gupta, who has been at the centre of the allegations, was extradited by the Czech Republic and pleaded not guilty in a US court in the alleged murder-for-hire case.

Temporary Distraction

The bizarre trail of events in this case, starting with Canada’s blatant allegations that the June 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist and Canadian citizen, was carried out at the direction of Indian authorities has created an avoidable public display of diplomatic tensions. However, that such a temporary distraction was going to derail the strategic embrace between New Delhi and Washington was clearly put to rest with the positive aura surrounding Sullivan’s meeting with Indian leaders, including the Prime Minister.

Jake Sullivan’s recent visit to India emphasised the growing impetus among major powers to ride the wave of new technologies for cooperative ventures

A cursory examination of the ‘Joint Fact Sheet: The United States and India Continue to Chart an Ambitious Course for the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology’, released on June 17, shows the serious vision and intent of both sides to shape the future of India-US technology partnership. The emerging landscape of critical and emerging technology undergirds a broad spectrum of cooperative ventures between the two countries spanning across defence, commerce and development. The iCET, for instance, will unlock “a combined $90 million in US and Indian government funding over the next five years for the US-India Global Challenges Institute.” This entails partnerships in areas including “semiconductor technology and manufacturing; sustainable agriculture and food security; clean energy; healthy equity and pandemic preparedness, and other critical and emerging technologies” between Indian and US institutions.

Talking Technology

The iCET is a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach, involving multiple agencies from both sides and a comprehensive framework of innovation clusters, aiming to create a synergised ecosystem. With the exponential expansion and sophistication of new technologies and the geopolitical competition taking sharper turns in different regions of the world, it is becoming imperative for like-minded countries such as India and the US to work towards ensuring secured and trusted technologies.

Sullivan and Doval, during their meeting, “underscored the vital importance of adapting our technology protection toolkits and resolved to prevent the leakage of sensitive and dual-use technologies to countries of concern.” They also emphasised the progress and significance of the Strategic Trade Dialogue “to address long-standing barriers to bilateral strategic trade, technology, and industrial cooperation, including in the commercial and civil space sector.” Advances in dual-use technologies have been a permanent component of national capabilities and changing balance of power through the 20th to the 21st centuries. From nuclear to outer space and new-age digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), the blurring lines between technologies of war and peace have become a constant feature of inter-state competition and cooperation. Subsequent bilateral meetings between political leaders and working groups concerned, in addition to strides made with like-minded partners in groupings like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), New Delhi and Washington have shown the growing realisation that technological breakthroughs and their deployment for military and civilian uses will shape the future terms of engagements.

Defence Ecosystem

The recent release of the US National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) clearly emphasised the growing impetus among major powers to ride the wave of new technologies in managing the competition, cooperation, contestation and confrontation of geopolitics in the 21st century. Building a defence industrial ecosystem in concert with like-minded countries is at the heart of such a strategy, and New Delhi’s drive of ‘atmanirbharta’ (self-reliance) in defence equally requires leveraging the benefits of robust defence partnerships like the one emerging with the United States. India and the US have already signed four foundational agreements, increasing the level of technological and tactical interoperability between the two militaries. The move to go beyond buying and selling defence equipment to co-development and co-production has started to “walk the talk.” Initiatives in areas such as outer space and AI show that both countries are ready to jointly leverage the potential, and create synergies unlike anything seen before, involving private sector entrepreneurial spirit. New Delhi and Washington have moved to the second edition of the India-US Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X) summit held earlier this year, and the announcement of major drives for creating a synergised ecosystem, including an INDUS-X Investor Summit later this year in Silicon Valley and awarding of generous seed funding for research to India and American companies. They are aimed at creating cutting-edge technologies with real-world impact, including among others, space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). In terms of vision and mission, the US is clearly emerging as the major defence, development and commercial partner of India in leveraging the benefits of critical and emerging technologies not only for national power and growth but also for the greater good. The iCET is the answer to the call of a future that will be shaped by the exponential growth of technologies and their all-encompassing impact. The world is undergoing a significant geopolitical, geo-economic and technological transition, carrying significant opportunities and risks. Who acquires the new technologies and who shapes their uses will remain an enduring question for political leaders, policymakers and entrepreneurs across the world.

Therefore, how these two democracies engage in a joint effort of vision and capabilities to help navigate the implications of this new technological landscape forms a central pivot of this partnership.

(The author is Director at the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies. He is a regular commentator on International Affairs and India’s Foreign Policy)