Shadow Warrior by Rajeev Srinivasan

As the greatest investment bubble in economic history in happening right in front of our eyes, with the distinct possibility of a godawful bust in the not too distant future, and persistent memories of promising technologies that crashed and burned, it is necessary, and urgent, to consider how India should play this game of generativeAI now and into the future, whether that future is boom or bust for the technology.

What adds criticality to this matter is the serious but hidden concern about three things: epistemology, values, and national security. The vacuuming up by Big Tech of Indian data gratis (hey, what happened to “data is the new oil”?) as well as the increasingly sophisticated manufacturing of narratives are at least as important as the threat to traditional knowledge systems that India has preserved more or less, under duress, for millennia.

Is there a bubble?

Irrational exuberance almost always ends up in grief, or at least that has been the experience in past cycles. We may be reminded of the Dutch Tulip Mania of 1634, as described in the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, wherein tulip bulbs were sold at enormous prices based on speculation about increasing value, which turned out to be baseless.

Those of us with moderately long memories will also remember the 1999-era Internet bubble, where just having a web site and a cool online retail idea was enough to generate speculative investment. The net result was a huge bust, but there was a good outcome: the infrastructure left on the ground by bankrupt investors was useful in other ways in later iterations of the internet, which proved to actually generate value.

But there indeed is irrational exuberance regarding generativeAI. The Wall Street Journal noted that Anthropic seems to believe its Total Addressable Market (TAM) is an eye-watering $30 trillion. For comparison, that was roughly the US’ GDP in 2025. Goldman Sachs goes one step further: it estimated in July 2025 that the global TAM may be as much as $40 trillion.

In any case, The Economist magazine estimates that the current generativeAI mania is the daddy of all speculative bubbles in western history, surpassing others in the last few centuries.

The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be enough revenue and profits being generated to justify the literally trillions of dollars that are being ploughed into capital investment by the likes of Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, i.e. US Big Tech. The Economist magazine, again. Sorry, folks, there does not seem to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The bottom line is that at least at the moment, there is a fair chance that there will be the mother of all busts from generativeAI. This is not investment advice, of course, but I’d say caveat emptor.

The two potential business outcomes: the Linux way vs. the Windows way

I am fundamentally an operating systems guy, having spent years working on UNIX internals at Bell Labs. I have observed how that market has evolved over the last forty years, and I believe there are good lessons to be learned from the experience. For, the OS is perhaps the most critical software on any machine, and strangely enough those who focused on it may have made either no money whatsoever, or lots of money.

The “no money” category belongs to UNIX and its descendants, Linux, Android, Apple iOS etc. UNIX was developed at AT&T Bell Labs, and was given away for free to universities and other companies for complicated reasons having to do with AT&T’s status as a regulated monopoly. UNIX is now ubiquitous, running everything from data centers to smartphones to Internet servers through its progeny. Alas, AT&T made absolutely no money from it.

I know this because I moved to Sun Microsystems from Bell Labs, and I was product manager for Sun’s UNIX OS Solaris. If I remember right, I suggested the name ‘Solaris’ in homage to Stanislav Lem. I was active in AT&T and Sun’s attempt to unify the slightly different variants of UNIX (HP-UX, IBM AIX, DEC Ultrix etc.) that had proliferated because experimentation and enhancements on especially the BSD (UC Berkeley) version of UNIX was very easy. We failed in this unification attempt in the “UNIX wars” of the late 1980s/early 1990s.

The result was that UNIX lost a tremendous opportunity to be the desktop/laptop OS, because rival Microsoft was able to do disruptive innovation (see Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail) and capture the customer base that these firms had earlier served through mainframes, mini-computers and engineering workstations. Before the mid 1990s, Microsoft Windows had relatively little market share.

What is really interesting is that Microsoft then proceeded to “make lots of money”, the second business outcome alluded to above, by realizing that Windows was not just an OS, but a distribution channel for third-party applications. At Sun, I knew this too, but basically as hardware companies, Sun, IBM, etc. didn’t think much of the OS. Apple figured it out, and has made good money off the App Store.

I make a direct analogy between the OS and LLMs. Both are core software in that they both have a clear impact on the hardware requirements, and that they are part of a stack in which many things can be written in layers above. In my opinion, the LLM, just like the OS, could possibly become either background noise (like UNIX/Linux) or the main thing (like Windows).

It appears to me that Anthropic, OpenAI, the hyperscalers et al hope to make their own LLMs the inevitable choice (like Windows), whereas the Chinese are on the way to, intentionally or otherwise, making LLMs immaterial (like UNIX and descendants). This, incidentally, fits into the standard operating procedures of the respective countries: the US likes to use overwhelming force (the metaphor here is American football), whereas the Chinese use scale, overproduction, and crashing prices to destroy the competition.

From India’s point of view, in either case, this dictates that pursuing foundational models is the wrong game to play. If American Big Tech wins, they become money-minting machines like Microsoft and Windows, and resistance is futile; if Chinese Tech wins, the foundational models become commodities. Therefore, the right place to compete would be on the layers above, that is vertical applications for real problems faced by real people.

India could emulate a major Big Tech company that has taken a similar approach: Apple. Instead of jumping headlong into the LLM race, and spending billions like Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Meta (owner of Facebook and Whatsapp), Apple has preferred to stay on the sidelines, perhaps seeking out market niches or waiting for an LLM winner to emerge. There is a chance that Apple may emerge the victor, intact after the possible bloodbath.

Sovereign AI and dancing with elephants

What, then, does AI sovereignty mean for India? In my humble opinion, India needs to find the “white spaces” that neither G2 giants (i.e. the US and China) are attempting to occupy. Therefore, India should look at areas of the overall stack that are open to it, and which it can profitably involve itself in.

Even though the most obvious thing that comes to mind when you talk about sovereign AI is a Made-in-India foundational model or LLM, that is overkill considering the enormous expense it would entail, literally in the billions of dollars. It’s also something that has been done already by both American and Chinese players, so there’s nothing novel about it.

On the other hand, unique applications that take into account peculiarities in the Indian environment, and provide real value to Indian consumers/businesses may well be of considerable value. Once again, there is an analogy: the India Stack, which has not only provided us with the wildly successful UPI, but also ONDC, and various other applications, such as Account Aggregator, FASTag, UMANG, Government e-Marketplace.

Here we have a stack that is building domain-specific applications atop a standard backbone, e.g., Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. That is where the value addition for India as a nation may come. One example, already explored by Sarvam AI, is that of multi-lingual capability. This could have a revolutionary impact on mother-tongue education, for instance if school textbooks are seamlessly translated by AI that would likely improve early-education comprehension.

Just as the 10-year-old UPI, imagined for Indian conditions, has revolutionized payments, there surely are applications, most importantly in such areas as public health, jurisprudence, and governance, that will have a massive payback if implemented.

Furthermore, there is the layer below, which is the hardware/computing infrastructure. Even though there are concerns about the availability of power and water, the fact that there is both less expensive skilled labor and increasing amounts of solar power, and the significant amount of opposition to them in developed nations, may well make India attractive to hyperscalars and others. Keeping a lot of Indian data on Indian soil is a good idea, too. Bonus: In case of a bust, all that infra will be available at big discounts.

By the way, here’s a graphic I found on X, from an investor named Himanshu Sinha. He’s a little pessimistic, and his diagram shows the layers in the opposite direction from me, but it captures the entire stack concisely. The question, of course, is how well India can do in the applications layer and the “AI infrastructure” layers according to Sinha.

It may be a question of glass half-full, but I believe India can play in the white spaces of applications and infrastructure.

The goodies generativeAI may bring

Every day brings new news about advances based on generativeAI: humanoid robots that can run as fast as Usain Bolt, Andrew Ng’s new plans to build a custom one-on-one tutoring system, and news of agentic AI escaping from its sandbox and roaming about unhindered, as in the case of OpenAI agents’ exploits on HuggingFace. Now comes the ‘proving’ of the Navier-Stokes equation by OpenAI, amidst allegations of IP theft from NYU/Anthropic researchers.

There are clearly things to marvel at, but also to worry about. One of the big concerns is the massive hoovering up of Indian data by Big Tech, with neither compensation nor respect for copyright. This means both large-scale current financial, health and other data, but also the troves of Indian Knowledge Systems that may have precious, untapped knowledge in them.

Big Tech is cavalier about knowledge, treating it as free for it to plunder. There was a recent story about how Anthropic was buying up old and rare books, cutting up their bindings, speed-scanning, and then pulping them. We can expect similar treatment of Indian data.

Similarly, the OpenAI habit of offering its products free to researchers, and then apparently monitoring what they did with them – which is the point of contention between them and Tristan Buckmaster (NYU) and Levent Alpoge (Anthropic) in the Navier-Stokes case – is also an interesting analogy with the classic “first hit for free”. You get my drift.

Wait, there’s more: an allegation of straight IP theft by OpenAI in yet another case. As Goldfinger said memorably, “Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action”.

Then there was Jensen Huang of Nvidia posting that OpenAI has reached Artificial General Intelligence.

We certainly live in interesting times. Too interesting, perhaps. India has a lot to lose if genAI turns out to be the panacea its boosters claim it is, if India is not invested heavily enough. On the other hand, we have seen this movie before: unrestrained cheerleading for new technologies that disappointed (virtual reality, crypto currency etc). India needs to hedge its bets to ensure it can survive whichever version of reality finally materializes.

1970 words, Sept 9, 2026

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-chanakya-to-ai-india-needs-its-own-management-model-14038647.html/amp

If you interpret the term ‘management’ broadly, that is, to include not only the day to day running of companies, but also the bigger picture of governance, leadership, strategy, geoeconomics, and even civilizational survival, the clear answer is that there indeed is a unique Indian style of management.

Whether it has been uniquely successful in the past is an open question, and given the ravages of invasion, one may be tempted to say it hasn’t been; similarly whether, or how, it is appropriate for today’s and tomorrow’s needs is another good question.

But it is useful to identify what may in fact be the factors underlying such a style of management, and there are likely three reasons: civilizational, cultural, and practical.

Civilizational

The first is perhaps the idea of Bharatiya exceptionalism: that is to say that Bharat exemplifies a singular civilizational thread that goes back to the ancient four-fold Hindu idea of purusharthas: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. It is a holistic approach, perhaps most evident in the Bhagavad Gita, with its emphasis on ethical leadership and nishkama karma.

It is certainly influenced by the topography and geography of the land, Jambudvipa, which has natural boundaries marking its extremities: Bharat, the land between the mountains and the sea.

The climate and the rivers and the vegetation reflect a reality of natural abundance: what Rajiv Malhotra referred to when he spoke of the ‘religions of the forest’ versus ‘the religions of the desert’. Bharat, in general, had a tropical cornucopia of food, and perhaps that was reflected early in a certain tolerance for not only for other humans, but also for all life.

It is notable that among all the lands that were populated early, Bharat was the one that retained its megafauna the best. All other human settlements saw the rapid extinction of large animals. Sustainability, a key mantra these days, was built into the Bharatiya outlook all along.

This same generosity was seen in trade patterns in the Indian Ocean as well: from 5,000 years ago, Bharatiya sailors executed cross-oceanic voyages, eastward during the southwest monsoon and vice versa during the northeast monsoon. The trade benefited everybody, as valuable goods were exchanged, in an illustration of the theory of comparative advantage.

The infrastructure for trade was brilliantly executed: not only the building of ocean-going ships that plied the Spice Route, and the ability to defend them from pirates, but also the subtler aspects: the “multi-protocol switch” that allowed trading guilds along the peninsular coasts to facilitate trade between say, Romans, and say, Chinese, who had different languages and currencies. Bharatiya traders smoothed the transactions.

Furthermore, the venture capital and banking services for the trading guilds were provided by Hindu temples.

Pax Indica was benign; for instance, 1,001 years ago Rajendra Chola dispatched a large fleet to open up the Straits of Malacca for trade when the Srivijaya Empire interfered with it. The contrast with the current standoff in the Straits of Hormuz is salutary. Yes, it is necessary to ensure freedom of navigation, and the commons, with deadly force if need be.

There was a very real notion of the ‘common good’. For instance, perhaps the greatest intellectual contribution of Bharat was innovation and the creation of Intellectual Property, and then making it freely available to all: not hoarding it for individual benefit.

The model was that scholars and intellectuals were frugal, that the State (king or temple) provided for their basic needs, and in return, they produced masterworks over which they, unlike patenting in the western sense, did not claim any rights.

Thus you have intellectual giants such as Brahmagupta with his invention of the zero, Panini with his context-free grammar, Madhava with his infinite series for trigonometric functions, and much later Ramanujan who wrote down his extraordinary theorems for all, and JC Bose whose seminal wireless communication discoveries he refused to patent, on principle. In fact, one could argue that the entire idea of “open-source” is a Bharatiya invention.

The natural resources of the Indian subcontinent along with the industriousness of its residents allowed for the creation of tremendous wealth; but in the “Guns vs Butter” dichotomy in economics, Bharat neglected to build the guns; which meant that often invaders with guns were able to capture the butter

.Management theory suggests that there are only three sustainable business strategies for long-term viability: 1) customer intimacy, 2) cost leadership, 3) innovation. Bharat historically chose innovation, and its native genius may result in the flowering of an intellectual revolution as the effects of impoverishment by conquest begin to recede.

Cultural

It is interesting to note that Bharatiyas are different from both Occidentals, (e.g. the Anglosphere) and Orientals (e.g. East Asians) culturally. The stereotypes (with good reason) is that Occidentals are highly individualistic and that Orientals are highly group-oriented. Bharatiyas fall somewhere in between, being fairly individualistic, and gregarious, yet only moderately group-oriented.

This has implications for governance. A highly individualistic society needs powerful laws that control individuals, including their tendencies for mischief. Thus, for example, the US is a highly regulated society, and their police are quite capable of unleashing deadly force. A highly group oriented society like Japan has norms that mean children clean after themselves in schools, and that discipline carries over into adulthood as well.

Bharatiyas are neither; the net result is that there is a distinction between public spaces and private spaces. While people may keep their homes spotlessly clean, they have no problem littering anywhere or throwing trash just over their walls onto the public street. They also have no problem breaking traffic rules. “The tragedy of the commons” is rife.

There is also the cultural memory of shortages and deprivation. Since people have grown up in a shortage economy, there is a tendency to hoard, cut corners, to pay bribes, to find any way of getting a slight advantage over others. Thus the unnecessary pushiness on roads, the inability to queue up anywhere, and especially the unwillingness to let people exit a lift before you enter.

This applies to groups as well, as is seen in the “race to the bottom” in the case of the backward, the most backward, and the extremely backward designations intended for government largesse.

There is also the unfortunate feeling that a contract is just a mere annoyance, not something that is to be followed to the letter. Punctuality is a small indicator of this: Bharatiyas on average feel justified in being late and casually making excuses. In contrast, both Anglosphere people and many East Asians (especially the Japanese) are punctual, and they can be trusted to deliver absolutely whatever they promise, whenever they promise.

Interestingly, Chinese, like Bharatiyas, do not have integrity in terms of keeping promises, which is a problem in doing business with both. In Bharat, there is also extreme reluctance to deliver bad news until the very last minute, for instance the day before something is due to be delivered. This can be very difficult for partners to deal with.

Perhaps all this makes Bharat a low-trust society. As a result of all this, doing business in Bharat takes twice as long, and managers need to have contingency plans, and to do intrusive ongoing audits to ensure that things are on time.

But there are inspiring counter-examples of community action and high trust. One is the re-greening of the Aravallis with the support of the Tarun Bharat Sangh and Rajendra Singh: a few villages built simple check dams based on traditional knowledge, bringing back an extinct river.

Practical

In addition to the refined heights of the civilizational perspective, Bharat also excelled in the theories of tactical management and even realpolitik. Even though there is a tendency in certain circles to lionize Machiavelli, von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, it is likely that Chanakya outdid all of them in the single-minded pursuit of strategy and governance, and he wrote his masterwork a millennium before them.

Chanakya’s ideas of statecraft are notable for their cold realism. He focuses on the creation of leverage and thus power for the sovereign. Speaking of leverage, or competitive advantage, we have seen how China has turned its control of the rare earths supply chain into a weapon; similarly the US has its technology (the recent denial of Anthropic Mythos to all foreigners) as well as its control of the SWIFT network of financial transactions. These can be coercive.

Another of Chanakya’s supremely rational assumptions is that your neighbor is likely to be your enemy, if not today, maybe tomorrow, simply because of proximity and the resulting irritants. Thus it becomes useful to make common cause with their neighbor.

Taking this one step further, you arrive at the Mandala theory of statecraft: a series of concentric circles (for convenience of depiction), where you cultivate your neighbor’s neighbors, and also the Far Emperor or udasina (indifferent power), a player outside the immediate neighborhood, but powerful, and who can have a significant impact on your local power politics. Clearly Indian foreign policy has looked upon the US as a Far Emperor; similarly Indian firms may look upon Big Tech companies as Far Emperors in their local struggles.

Chanakya does not shy away from the harsh realities of power politics. Matsya nyaya, where big fish eat little fish, is a crystal-clear exposition of the idea that might is right: which we see in contemporary affairs, both business and international relations, on a daily basis. In addition, he recognized that information is the key to advantage (as Big Tech demonstrates today), and as such, he made it a priority to collect data, including through a network of spies. This leads to intrigue, infiltration, and the creation of internal dissent among the enemy.

Chanakya’s four classic stages of competition are notable: sama, dana, bheda and danda. Of these, possibly the one that is most widely practised today is bheda,the exploitation of internal fault lines within the enemy. With the “million mutinies” in India, such as farmer protests, CAA riots, and the recent ‘cockroach’ riots, it is clear that there are “toolkits” in play. There is much information warfare, as seen in relentless bot attacks on Bharatiyas on social media.

In modern management terms, India should learn from the successful business models of the G2 powers. The US as a nation, and its big firms, typically use overwhelming force (financial, technological or military, as the case may be) to overwhelm their foes. The metaphor is American football: massive force is a major factor, though tactical misdirection is also widespread.

China uses a different tactic. It goes for cost leadership by using state-guided industrial policy to build massive over-capacity in selected areas; with fierce internal competition, this leads to plummeting costs. Then by flooding export markets with cheap products, they are able to destroy local players in those markets. A case in point right now is the explosion in cheap generativeAI Large Language Models (LLMs) that are undercutting US firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Thus both powers are using their standard operating procedures in generativeAI: US firms are pouring in hundreds of billions of dollars in an effort to corner the market; Chinese firms (and the state) are collapsing the prices in the market.

What should India’s business model look like in this context? Instead of going head-on against these large economies, India should find ways to thrive around them: for example, look for ‘white spaces’ that are not in their gunsights. But these open areas will change rapidly: an example is IT services, which was an opportunity for 20+ years, but not any more.

In generativeAI, a sound Bharatiya play might be to avoid over-investment in foundational models, use (Chinese) open-source models and modify them, for example with multi-lingual capabilities; invest in other areas of the stack such as in vertical applications, for instance in agriculture, or medicine, or governance, or jurisprudence. Bharat can use ‘distillation’ techniques to reduce the need for data, and also create Small Language Models (SLMs) in narrow domains, e.g. in Indic Knowledge Systems.

There is also the salutary example of the operating system, which is arguably the most important piece of software on any machine, because it controls the entire functioning of the system. But Unix, possibly the most capable operating system ever, was open-sourced as Linux, and is freely available and ubiquitous. On the other hand, Microsoft realized its OS, Windows, was a tremendous distribution channel for third-party applications, and has made its trillions based on it. This is what Anthropic, OpenAI et al are betting on.

Will the future of LLMs be Unix/Linux (open source) or Windows? Nobody knows at the moment, and therefore it may be best to avoid that battle, and focus on other layers of the stack, such as applications (higher layers) or hardware and GCCs (lower layers).

Nimbleness and innovation are key when you are dancing with elephants. Direct confrontation is a bad idea, as in the metaphor of the tree and the cane from the Mahabharata’s Santi Parva, where Bhishma comments on the dialogue between the Ocean and Ganga. He suggests that as canes bend to the river, but trees do not, it is best to yield tactically to superior force.

Bharat therefore has to evolve a business model of its own that is sustainable in the long run, and based on its own capabilities. At the moment, a good test case is generativeAI. Another is aerospace, where as soon as ISRO began to offer niche markets to the private sector, there has been a virtual explosion in startups doing interesting things.

Conclusion

Tradition and ancient texts give Bharat a set of management practices and principles that may have within them the basis for a unique business model that can outperform the competition, which at the moment consists of American-style private capitalism and Chinese-style state-controlled enterprises.

2300 words, 4 August 2026

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-old-quad-is-dying-time-for-a-new-quad-14030966.html

The Quad, a 2007 partnership broadly intended to contain China’s hegemonistic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, was a brainchild of then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. It makes sense: China is rampaging in its neighborhood, and gives every sign of wanting to either grab territory that belongs to others, or bully them into acquiescence and tributary status.

The belligerence that created the current Chinese empire, that is the forced absorption of Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria into the core Han coastal heartland, is part of a harking back to ancient Chinese empires. Xi Jinping, perhaps even more than Mao, embodies a hankering to be the almighty King-Emperor of the erstwhile Middle Kingdom

The US unwittingly allowed China to rapidly de-industrialize it post joining the WTO, and to come up with a business plan that calls for massive over-production and the resultant price collapse, which is a template they use to rape and pillage industry after industry. A recent casualty is Germany’s prized automobile industry: bellwether Volkswagen has been forced to lay off 100,000 workers, brutalized by a tsunami of Chinese electric vehicles.

However, as Utpal Kumar points out in an insightful essay, all is not well in Xi’s kingdom: e.g., the debt mountain, paranoia as seen in regular purges of military brass, and propaganda that conceals all bad news (did you hear of a small plane hitting a tower in central Beijing? Yes, a mini-9/11. But the information was blanked out). Continuing rural poverty is also censored, although Indians on x.com posted images of extreme filth and poverty, far from the glossy high-rise, bullet-train image that Chinese propaganda projects.

Paradoxically, that is precisely what makes China yet more dangerous: it will probably lash out in external adventurism to preserve legitimacy internally.

Thus the need for sober containment of China’s destructive power. The US, which has been the natural candidate for reining in this rogue power, has now demonstrated that it is retrenching. It has, for instance, demonstrated that it is no longer willing to indefinitely support its NATO allies. The “nuclear umbrella” that it has offered Japan may also be getting a little threadbare.

It is likely that President Trump invaded Iran with the good idea of denying China oil both Iranian and Venezuelan oil, as retaliation for China’s squeeze on rare earths. Alas, that has turned into a fiasco, creating collateral damage for innocent bystanders such as India. In game-theoretic terms, if an isolationist “Fortress America” mood has descended on the US, then a “G2 condominium” with China may be the simplest option, as I said several years ago.

If the US has indeed acquiesced to China being the hegemon in its sphere of influence, namely the Indo-Pacific, then there is good reason for the jilted Quad members (Japan, Australia and India) to enter into bilateral agreements amongst each other to look after their own national interests, including but not limited to Sinophobia. And in fact they have done so.

It is true that the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May 2026 in Delhi produced some agreements on critical minerals (clearly a US priority) and surveillance collaboration, but I get the feeling that this is mostly a matter of keeping up appearances. Therefore it is worth pivoting to Japanese PM Takaichi’s recent visit to India, and PM Modi’s trips to Indonesia and Australia.

Japan and India are obvious partners, because their economies are complementary: one is resource- and technology-rich, and labor-poor, and the other is the opposite. There is also an old civilizational link between the two, going back to Bodhidharma from Kanchipuram who embarked from Muziris circa 500CE and established the Zen school of Buddhism in Japan.

There are also clear civilizational links between India and Indonesia. Hindu Bali is obvious; but Java, until the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire was defeated circa 1500CE by Muslim kingdoms (encouraged by the Chinese empire of the time), was also heavily Indianized. As someone who has traveled in both Japan and Indonesia, I was delighted to see Devanagari inscriptions on the Great Bell at Hiroshima, and the Ramayana Ballet at Prambanan temple.

विपुलप्रभ अतुल्यनन्त नाथ

Japan and India signed a series of agreements, including an investment target of Yen 10 trillion (about $66 billion) in areas such as critical minerals, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. They agreed upon a new focus on Artificial Intelligence and quantum technologies and in energy self-reliance, including hydrogen and biogas.

They also reaffirmed support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (let us note that on June 16th the US renamed its Indo-Pacific Command to just “Pacific Command”, a telling admission of retreat. The US may well be abandoning the Indian Ocean just when it is becoming the focus of trade.)

The Indonesia-India agreements were significant: they included, for instance, Brahmos and Astra missile systems (which, in conjunction with other ASEAN purchases of Brahmos missiles, creates a potentially integrated sea-denial mechanism against persistent Chinese maritime aggression).

Pointedly, there will be joint development on Indonesia’s deep-water Sabang Port in Aceh, which is on the Malacca Straits just 90 nautical miles away from India’s upcoming Great Nicobar dual-use port.

The two ports can form a defensive shield that could deny transit in Malacca to hostile ships and submarines (read Chinese). Since two-thirds of China’s trade and energy imports pass through Malacca, this is a potent threat, especially as we have just seen what the siege of Hormuz did to global trade. Let us also remember that, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a large fleet to open up Malacca when the SriVijaya Empire closed it.

There were also agreements on critical minerals (e.g. nickel for EV batteries, as Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves, cobalt, etc.), steel, maritime security, and technology cooperation.

Let us also remember the trilateral Japan-Indonesia-India naval exercises in the Andaman Sea in February 2026.

PM Modi’s visit to Australia is the most problematic. Earlier, under Kevin Rudd, a Sinophilic PM, Australia exited the Quad in 2008, effectively making it moribund. Besides, Australia for decades refused sniffily to sell India uranium, despite India being a committed non-proliferator. This may also have had something to do with the UK’s (Whitehall’s) deleterious influence on Australia.

But days ago, Australia committed to supplying uranium to India, in support of the latter’s quest for energy security. Oz has apparently learned that cozying up to China is not good for its own economic health.

Thus, the quadrilateral of US, Japan, Australia and India may well morph into a quadrilateral of Japan, Indonesia, Australia and India, all united in their concerns about China. The US has a choice: either continue to be the anchor of the Quad (Pentagon?), or be left behind if it insists on retreating into its shell. The former option would be better for all concerned.

1150 words, 11 July 2026

A version of this essay was published by firstpost at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-indo-pacific-to-pacific-delhi-must-prepare-for-strategic-loneliness-14024528.html

I refer, of course, to the (in)famous newspaper headline which said, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in 1975 when then-POTUS Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City during a financial crisis.

It appears to be the same sentiment now with POTUS Trump regarding India. The end of India’s fond hopes of a strategic alliance came not with a bang, but with a whimper: the Pentagon announcement, right in the middle of the G7 conclave in France, that the US has reverted its Indo-Pacific Command to the “Pacific Command”, which had been the name before Trump changed it in 2018.

What this means is clear: the US has turned its back on the Indian Ocean, on India, and on the vaunted “strategic partnership” that Indian policymakers had long assumed would be a corollary of that presumed bedrock of Indo-US relations: the mutual need to contain a rampaging China.

Coming on top of the remarkable cavalierness about the murders of three Indian merchant-navy sailors, and numerous other slights, we see a pattern of indifference at best, or disdain at worst. The US is signalling that they don’t need India. India, in other words, has no leverage.

I am not amazed, to be honest: I wrote in 2023 that in an era of relative decline, it made sense for the US to downgrade its aspirations from sole hyperpower to first among equals: that is, a “G2 condominium” with China. This is, in principle, the same as the Vatican-brokered Treaty of Torsedillas in 1494 that divided the world into Portuguese and a Spanish spheres of influence. Interestingly, that didn’t end up well for either party, but we shall let that pass.

Let us connect the dots: there is a ‘Donroe Doctrine’ whereby the US is asserting its hegemony in the Americas, its sphere of influence. Trump has ejected China from Venezuela, and is in the process of kicking them out of the Panama Canal zone; although the Pacific-to-Atlantic railway project in the Brazilian rainforest, and its terminus, the deep-water Port Chancay in Peru, remain.

The disastrous Trump foray into Iran was predicated on denying China easy access to that country’s hydrocarbons. But the MoU after 100+ days of war suggests that the US has received a bloody nose, and is withdrawing, retired hurt. The shrinking of ambitions away from the Indian Ocean as in the reversion to the ‘Pacific Command’ suggests that the US is ceding the continent, including West Asia, to China.

America-watchers have noticed this strange attitude to Asia before. Evan A. Feigenbaum, a former advisor to US Secretaries of State, wrote about this in 2011:

For Washington, the problem is at once intellectual, strategic, and bureaucratic. Intellectually, the United States still has three separate foreign policies in Asia—one for East Asia, another for South Asia, and a third for Central Asia (which it scarcely regards as a part of Asia at all). As Asia reintegrates, then, the United States is too often stuck in an outdated mode of thinking ...

Asia is being reborn, and remade. Yet, the United States is badly prepared for this momentous rebirth, which is at once stitching Asia back together and making the United States less relevant in each of Asia’s constituent parts. Asians are, in various ways, passing America by, restoring ancient ties and repairing long-broken strategic and economic links.

Well, this is also the end of the “pivot to Asia”, even though it was probably half-hearted at the best of times. Then-POTUS Obama started using the term in 2011, but was himself guilty of ‘awarding’ “South Asia” to Chinese overlordship on a visit to that country. Now that the US is dumping its European allies, it should not be surprising, in view of the ‘Fortress America’ tone of the National Security Strategy of 2025, that India is also being thrown under the bus.

A US official, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said this bluntly in Delhi at the Raisina Dialog 2026: India should understand that we’re not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying oh you know we’re going to let you develop all these markets and then the next thing we know you’re beating us in a lot of commercial things.

Landau is right from a short-term US perspective. The US blundered, presumably taken in by Chinese propaganda, and allowed itself to be stripped of its industrial prowess. They have learned a lesson: squash potential competitors when you can. This is a back-handed compliment: it suggests that the US is aware that India can be a challenger, and make the G2 a G3. India is literally the only power that’s large enough to make it to Great Power status: Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, etc. have too many problems.

No incumbent power wants an insurgent power to challenge its hegemony. The so-called “Thucydides Trap” predicts that chances are that they will go to war: a kinetic war or an economic war or both. India is simultaneously facing Thucydides Traps from both the US and China, those G2 buddies. I wrote about this as an “Abhimanyu Syndrome” for India: splendid isolation. I hasten to add that though Abhimanyu died, his side did win convincingly.

So it’s time for India to be pragmatic, and develop its own self-reliance, both in military power and economic/trade power. The existing G2 are looking for vassals, not allies. The equation between them is also interesting. It is clear that the US is in gentle relative decline; but it does have deep resources, and can survive as a continent sized economy, even if it turns its back on the rest of the world, as it has done several times in its 250-year history.

But Trump did kowtow to Xi on his May trip to China: he looked like a supplicant paying tribute to the emperor.

China, if you look at its 3000-year-long history, is volatile and unstable. A pattern repeats, again and again: there are periods of prosperity and power under a strong imperial center, followed by collapse and utter chaos. An unwinding of the Chinese empire, much like the implosion of the Soviet empire, is probably only a matter of time.

If you look at Indian history, the nation was mostly stable, though its prosperity invited invaders. As far back as 3000 years ago, India was the center of a lucrative Indian Ocean trade, based on Pax Indica in the region. With a deep water navy, a massive manufacturing push, and self-reliance, India can regain its past glory. Military power breeds respect from others. Economic power makes others want to trade.

1100 words, 18 Jun 2026

AI-generated slideshow courtesy notebookLM.google.com:

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/world/india-will-collapse-without-digital-sovereignty-and-pax-indica-lessons-from-hormuz

By now it is clear that the Iran War (or West Asia War) has been a disaster to all concerned, including the principals as well as assorted passersby. The massive amounts spent by the US (at last count $25 billion) are at least articulated; the bill for the enormous infrastructural and human suffering inflicted on Gulf states, in the theater of war, must be greater, by definition.

The collateral damages suffered by the rest of the world from the cessation of trade through the Straits of Hormuz will presumably run into the trillions of dollars. As one of the worst affected, India, which imports 90% of its hydrocarbons from the Gulf, not to mention other essential items such as urea (for fertilizer), sulfuric acid, helium, etc., is on track to take a massive hit. As an article in The Economic Times said, “India must brace for broad-based economic shock”.

Indian exports of up to $50 billion are also affected, especially agricultural products including perishable foodstuffs, but also gems and jewellery, electronics, textiles and garments. Some of this can be diverted via Oman and the UAE’s Fujairah port, but much of it passes through the Straits of Hormuz and is potentially blocked and/or stranded at sea.

The Hormuz closure is a body blow to India’s economy. What can and will India do about it? The Indian State has a habit of rising to the challenge only when there is a crisis, while vegetating otherwise. The 1991 economic crisis is a case in point; the sanctions following “The Buddha is smiling”, and the denial of cryogenic rocket engines and supercomputers are other examples where the nation rallied. So were covid vaccines. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

Turning a threat into an opportunity

If I were to be an optimist, I could say that the current crisis is actually an opportunity. In fact, a major opportunity. My reading of the Iran War is that it is President Trump’s strategic tit-for-tat against China for denying him rare earths and cutting off soybean purchases. In return Trump decided to deny China access to oil by closing access to Venezuela and Iran. Whether this will work, or whether the G2 condominium (read ‘surrender’) will prevail, is unclear.

But that is, in a sense, background noise that needs to be managed. India needs to focus on its own issues, of which I see several as critical, and the solution in general is to become Atmanirbhar, self-reliant, and from that, to create an Anti-Fragile nation:

* National security/defense

* Food security

* Energy security

* Digital security/narrative control

* Trade security

The first three do not need an explanation: they are obvious. Internal and external security are pre-requisites for any successful society. If India’s hard-won food security can be threatened by external threats, then there needs to be some deep introspection. Energy security means diversification, both of hydrocarbon sources, and of types of energy, including renewables, nuclear, biomass, coal-based, and so on.

Malign narratives and digital sovereignty

Narrative control is something that the Indian State has failed at so far; it is laughably easy to create hate speech against Indians and India (as has been demonstrated freely by any number of players, starting from the MAGA crowd, to Audrey Truschke to a”Cockroach Janata Party” and some nitwit Norwegian journalist in just the last fortnight) and there are no consequences to the culprits. It’s enough to make me pine for Lee Kuan Yew’s aggressive legal battles against the media.

It’s one thing if it were only a problem with foreigners, but with the massive spread of social media, and in particular generativeAI, it is becoming a serious domestic issue. Since India is an avid consumer of social media, and because generativeAI is trained on things like Wikipedia, X, Whatsapp and Google content, biased and motivated material becomes ensconced as The Truth. I have written about narrative warfare and manufacturing consent.

This used to be a one-way tsunami of (mis)-information by legacy media, but now there is also the opposite: the wholesale and free vacuuming-up of Indian data (whatever happened to “data is the new oil”?). The “Great Firewall of China” both kept out foreign BIg Tech applications and prevented their plundering Chinese data: is that the way to go?

Manufactured narratives are intended for regime change: all the color revolutions today are hatched with massive bot-farms funded by some combination of Deep State, CCP, ISI, Qatar etc. (for example the alleged Gen-Z uprisings that rocked Nepal, drove Sheikh Hasina out of Bangladesh). Thus muzzling malign narratives, and ensuring data security, are imperative.

Even Singapore is not immune: it had to block anti-India narratives that likely originated from Chinese sources.

A particularly striking example of narrative warfare is the virtual hate speech inducted into Wikipedia by deeply prejudiced anonymous editors. Ashley Rindsberg, who exposed the mighty New York Times’ biases in his book The Gray Lady Winked, provides many examples of this.

Of note to Indians and Hindus is his recent substack titled “Wikipedia’s India War” where he identifies just four editors as having created most of the content condemning the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in ‘Wikivoice’, i.e. the allegedly neutral perspective of Wikipedia. They are, on the contrary, shown to be highly one-sided.As Rindsberg mentions, Wikipedia being central to generativeAI, the damage is baked into the world-view of all AI applications. Truly Orwellian. Says Rindsberg: “four… anonymous accounts can have an enormous impact on what millions of people believe to be the truth.” “Over four years (2021-2025), editors systematically erased HAF’s identity as an American civil rights group, transforming its Wikipedia page into a heavily curated dossier of accusations.”

Trade, and how the Spice Route was far superior to the Silk Road

Finally, something that is becoming increasingly important: ensuring freedom of trade. This is more than just freedom of navigation, although I find it instructive that Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a huge fleet 1,001 years ago simply to open up the Straits of Malacca. India can make an active attempt to regain primacy in Indian Ocean trade, the whole Pax indica idea.

Here is another example of the power of narrative: we have been led to believe that the Silk Road to China was some major highway of commerce between ancient Rome and ancient China, but it was a term coined only in 1877 by the German Ferdinand von Richthofen. There was no highway. A large caravan might take six months, and with 500 camels traversing treacherous deserts and braving bandits, it might carry a maximum of 100 tons. That is puny.

In comparison, on the Spice Route, a single stitched ship from Muziris could carry 400 tons of ivory, pepper, silk, tigers and elephants; and the historian Strabo around 1 CE talks about fleets of 250 ships going from Alexandria to India on a six-week monsoon-powered journey. That is 100,000 tons of merchandise. No wonder Pliny the Elder complained that Rome’s treasuries were being emptied of gold by India.

Simple question: where are hoards of ancient Roman coins found in Asia? Answer: not along the Silk Road. The hoards are in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

Today, it is possible for India to aspire to port-led development of trade, especially with the major ports at Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Maharashtra (Vadhavan), and Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay). The underlying ‘software’ of India’s millennia-old trade competency was a ‘multi-protocol switch’ as I pointed out, and today’s India Stack can replicate that. Then there is the need for a blue-water navy: muscle to provide security on the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes.

So there is a vision. How can India get there? This is where policy matters, as I discussed with policy expert Anuj Gupta. Policy, especially industrial policy, has had a bad reputation in certain circles because it was deemed to violate the virginal purity of classical capitalism. However, in a recent U-turn, even the World Bank admitted that industrial policy may not be all that bad, after all: the success of Japan, the Asian Tigers, and China can’t be ignored.

That leads to the question of why policy in India has produced mediocre outcomes, what is different now, and where the best use of policy might be.

Industrial Policy: What went wrong in the past?

There are many problems here. To begin with, the Soviet model, which Nehruvians swore by, was, in hindsight, a dead end. Second, there is the problem of governance: post-Independence bureaucrats have awkwardly borne the legacy of imperial hauteur and the needs of a developing society. Third, until recently, the bare necessities (food, electricity, road access) were not available to many citizens, and GDP growth was not their priority.

There is also the culture of jugaad: of clever ways in which you overcome constraints through frugal improvisation and seat-of-the-pants making-do. This is fine for one-off things (e.g. converting a tractor trailer into a makeshift transport vehicle because your truck broke down), but it does not make for efficient and replicable industrial products. As The Economic Times said recently, it is time to junk jugaad. Quality has to become ingrained in people’s minds.

The issue of governance is significant: the bureaucracy and the judiciary have both under-performed, politicians, as everywhere, have been venal. It is said that China’s growth can be attributed to the fact that its babus are engineers, and therefore with engineering ruthlessness move in straight lines. The US’ babus are lawyers, and India’s are humanities graduates. Well, engineers are not very good at second-order effects (eg. China’s lurch from one-child policy to demographic collapse), but a little bit of ruthlessness is probably good.

What is going reasonably well?

There are a few modest success stories: for example, in electronics manufacturing or assembly. The PLIs (and DLIs) have produced the desired effort, with clusters of excellence where global suppliers have also set up shop (as they did earlier for the automobile industry in, say, Sriperumpudur). The fact that a lot of iPhones in the US are now imported from India is laudable, even though it may be derided as “screwdriver jobs”. That’s where one starts the move up the value chain.

The current semiconductor policy is a big hope, especially after the landmark agreement by the Dutch firm ASML with Tata Electronics in Dholera, Gujarat. Given that ASML has a near-monopoly position in Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV) this is a major boost to India’s chip ambitions. My recent conversation with AMD CTO Suraj Rengarajan went into India’s chances to realize its ambitions.

A recent announcement from Trivandrum-based fabless startup NetraSemi (a recipient of DLI) of the commercial availability of its edge AI chips is a landmark.

Next is the newly announced plan for energy security revolving around both coal gasification and intensive offshore exploration. These fall squarely into the Atmanirbhar category: India simply cannot afford to have its energy held hostage by distant nations. It also needs distinctly Indian innovation.

The Samudra Manthan initiative is also showing some promise. At least one out of three deep-water wells in the Andaman Sea (SriVijaya Puram-3) are reported to be showing the availability of natural gas, although it will take 5-10 years for this to be commercially available.

What should the future look like for India’s Industrial Policies?

This of course is the hard question. Here is my personal perspective, and I accept that reasonable people may disagree. I think three areas need to be focused on, and will pay large dividends.

* Drones and swarming software

* Social media and AI stack

* Maritime Trade and Blue-Water Navy

I admit that these are not the only worthwhile industrial policies. Another is for copper, which would reverse the catastrophic effects of the closure of the Sterlite plant in Thoothukkudi, as the metal is an increasingly important component in electronics, data centers, etc., and far from being self-sufficient earlier, India now imports 50% of its needs. Another area of interest in quantum computing.

There are also failures from which the right lessons need to be learned. The policy for EV batteries has apparently failed: according to Swarajya magazine, India has not been able to escape from near-total dependence on imported Chinese batteries.

Drone swarms

I wrote recently that drones may well herald a step-change in warfare. For the moment, though, they are searching for their niche in offensive/defensive warfare. Drone hardware is already a well-trodden path with Chinese and other nations dominating it, although with IdeaForge, Paras, Garuda, IoTechworld Avigation etc., India is also making progress there. And India is indeed buying the hardware, $2 billion-worth, according to the Economic Times.

But I believe the real game is in drone swarms. AI-based control software (similar to HiveMind) that would allow an entire swarm to act autonomously, just like a murmuration of starlings, would be the gold standard to aim for. Such a self-managing swarm would be virtually impossible to defend against, and I think India should put in place a PLI to support it, leveraging software capability in the country.

Of course, drones are not just for military purposes, but also for commercial uses including things like logistics and agricultural use, such as precision delivery of fertilizer and pesticide to crops (as Garuda demonstrates). An Indian initiative that supports both drone hardware, and especially drone software, would be a potential winner.

Digital Sovereignty: Social media and AI stack

There is a raging battle over which part of the AI stack India needs to invest in. As an old Unix hand, I believe the foundational model is not where the differentiation is. In analogy with Linux (the open-source Unix variant that was popularized by Linus Torvalds and an army of volunteers), there is little value in re-writing the operating system, but one can differentiate by building on top of it, or by judiciously choosing certain modules of it.

Besides, the cost of building an entirely new foundational model would be astronomical and would consume the entire budget of IndiaAI Mission.

Thus, my personal opinion is that the foundational model (especially when, it is believed, there are more or less open-source models available for free, e.g. Llama, DeepSeek) is not where India should expend its precious R&D resources, but on the layers of the stack above it. It is the data that matters, as Larry Ellison apparently suggests too.

But there is the interesting counter-example of Sarvam AI which is producing its own sovereign model: multi-lingual and presumably otherwise tuned to Indian needs. The question is whether this can survive when hundreds of billions worth of capital investment are going to the US Big Tech companies and their Chinese rivals. The sad history of Koo, a Twitter rival, comes to mind. So does Arattai, a Whatsapp rival, whose popularity has waned. .

A well-thought-through industrial policy on generativeAI is therefore essential. The status quo ante is unsustainable; given the fact that Sarvam has also found it difficult to raise funds in the US, it is worth pondering whether a China-style massive subsidy is the answer. And where should it go, into foundational models or into the layers of the stack above it? The answer is “both”, but with priority to the latter.

Here is where I would prioritize investments, in order:

* Vertical applications in specific domains: e.g. defense, healthcare, agriculture, governance (particularly in the judiciary and in ease of doing business in the bureaucracy)

* Fine-tuning and customization: for the needs of the Indian context, e.g. multi-linguality under Bhashini

* Compute infrastructure: GPUs, sovereign and protected indian datasets

* Sovereign Small-Language Models such as Sarvam AI

As mentioned above, at the moment India’s data is being sucked up for free by US Big Tech. In addition, there is the real danger that Indic Knowledge Systems will be mined and digested, as has happened to yoga, pranayama, etc., which have been given Western analogs and nomenclature, as in Pilates, ‘coherent breathing’ etc.

These two problems are connected, and both need to be tackled in parallel. Social media is being weaponized against India, and this is magnified by the legacy media in a positive feedback loop. Three examples: one was the rage against Adani based on the dubious research of Hindenburg, which then went under; the second is Bloomberg’s reckless accusation about gold reserves being sold by the RBI, which they were forced to retract, but social media and Wikipedia will remember it; the third is the meteoric (media) rise of the Cockroach Janata Party.

Trade using major ports, Digital Public Infrastructure and a blue water navy

Using trade for competitive advantage is an age-old tactic. The trade tiffs between the US and China are examples of this: we are witnessing war by other means. Many nations are getting into this act, and India does have some advantages, partly based on geography. Maritime trade is likely to continue to be the key, which makes naval chokepoints the big story, but not the only story to watch out for.

The major aspects of maritime trade include infrastructure, the digital “multi-protocol switch”, and security. On the one hand, India is developing not only major container ports, and the road/rail links to get to them, and the industrial goods to ship out through them, but also a serious shipbuilding industry, which was one of India’s historical strengths. Then it used to be stitched wooden ships (teak beams lashed together with coconut rope). Now it’s modern steel ships.

There are the big, efficient new ports, which can now turn ships around with Singapore-like efficiency; the proposed third aircraft carrier group which will make it possible to patrol the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal at the time; the Air-Independent Propulsion diesel submarines and nuclear submarines that can monitor (and if necessary, deny) narrow straits; the sale of supersonic Brahmos cruise missiles to the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia (and Cyprus) that create ship-denial zones: all this is muscle.

And the final piece, the ‘software’ for trade, the “multi-protocol switch”. This last is complicated. Its value is underestimated by many. But this is what enables friction-less transactions between various unrelated parties. The India Stack and the Digital Public Infrastructure can be utilized to provide such a facility. But it is complex enough to need significant study as to what is possible, and how to roll it out.

Second-order effects

In closing, it is worth considering some of what the (unintended) consequences of these proposals may be. Let us note that the G2 has no interest in allowing India to grow and make it a G3. They will do everything in their power to kneecap India, by all means possible.

There is also a certain derision for India in some circles. Here is a generic western opinion on why China got rich, and India didn’t. Well, the author doesn’t consider the second-order effects of the wholesale destruction of Chinese civilization: that is a tradeoff Indians may not prefer for themselves. We all know how China’s well-intentioned One Child Policy turned into demographic collapse within a few years. Besides, as The Economist asks, “China is innovative. Its economy is a mess. Which will win out?”

This is why I think planning for these second-order effects is important. We tend to ignore them because they seem counterintuitive or unlikely, but Nassim Taleb has sensitized us to how low-probability Black Swan events can have grave consequences.

As an example, attempting digital sovereignty may have unwelcome side-effects: Big Tech have the first-mover advantage and network effects and there are increasing returns to scale. They will surely make it hard for a new player to break in. Besides, the large investments in data centers and GCCs that they are making in India would make it very difficult for them to be ejected with a “Great Indian Firewall”.

Even taxing their capture of Indian data will be complicated; not to mention that they have demonstrated that they can happily violate copyright laws with no consequence; therefore they will find ways to chew up and spit out Indian Knowledge Systems, and essentially re-colonize India. Digital colonialism is not a threat, it is a reality today, and it is a consequence of the relatively open Indian system.

In addition, there is a malign group, the “barbarians within” as Arnold Toynbee once put it, who are ready to sacrifice Indian sovereignty for a pittance.

Given all this, it will be very difficult to put in place serious measures to gain digital independence; and the narrative-peddling is likely to gain further momentum: just consider the caste allegations that have haunted BAPS in the US (despite the cases being dismissed by the US DoJ), the Cisco Systems case where, again, the case was dismissed, but the narrative continues, and the persistent efforts in various US states to turn caste into a weapon to bludgeon Indians.

Another sensitive issue is that of the multi-protocol switch for trade. While from an Indian point of view, it eases trade and harks back to a Golden Age of Indic maritime commerce, but that will be viewed elsewhere very differently, for instance by the US as an attempt to de-dollarize. The US has jealousy guarded – with very good reasons that we will not go into here – the dollar’s reserve currency status.

We have also seen what happened to those who attempt to hurt the dollar’s primacy: in 1985, the Plaza Accord devalued the dollar, and that was a body blow to Japan’s economy, which has not recovered its mojo to this day. Later, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi both had ideas about replacing the petro-dollar with, respectively, the Euro and a new pan-African gold-backed currency. We know what happened to them.

If the India Stack multi-protocol switch is perceived as an alternative to the US dollar, there may be grave consequences. Therefore, it should be conceived and deployed only as an adjunct to it and to the almighty SWIFT settlement system.

Conclusion

India is at a crossroads now. Even though the Hormuz closure is a serious problem, if it plays its cards right, adversity can be turned into opportunity across a variety of perspectives. The key is Atmanirbhar, self-reliance. If India can now implement a crash program of industrial policy, and at the same time overcome an ingrained Third-World tendency to cut corners, it can finally break free of the years of underperformance, what I called the Nehruvian Penalty in 2004.

It is possible, but there are caveats: unforeseen consequences. Hic sunt dracones. Here be dragons. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

3700 words, 7 June 2026

This is episode 192 of the Shadow Warrior podcast. Here is a companion AI-generated slideshow. (Note that the borders of India are not necessarily depicted correctly here, because it is generated by an AI, notebookLM.google.com)

Episode 5: May 17th, 2026: Shri Anuj Gupta, B Tech Mechanical 2003, Managing Director of Policy Consulting Firm BowerGroup Asia, former Govt of India policy expert, and former Chief of Staff to the Commerce Minister .

Policy expert Anuj Gupta on how India Governs and why it matters for Business

* The government has moved sharply toward outcome-orientation — targets, dashboards, PRAGATI reviews. What does that mean for how you sell to, partner with, or contract with the government?

* The government operates with a clear priority stack — Swachh Bharat, Ayushman Bharat, PLI, ONDC. Reading that stack correctly seems like the most underrated business intelligence exercise in India. How do you read it?

* if you knew exactly how a reform-oriented government thinks, decides, and executes, how would you run your business differently?

This is a fireside chat hosted by the IIT Madras Alumni Association featuring policy expert Anuj Gupta, who examines the evolving relationship between the Indian government and the private sector. The discussion highlights how the state has transitioned from a mere regulator to a primary shaper of market structures, utilizing industrial policy and digital public infrastructure to drive rapid economic change. Gupta emphasizes that modern governance in India prioritizes outcome-oriented execution and scale, as evidenced by massive initiatives in electrification, poverty reduction, and the India Stack. Business leaders are encouraged to move from a reactive compliance mindset to an anticipatory strategy that aligns with state-driven goals like competitive federalism and technological innovation. By understanding the structural logic of current reforms, entrepreneurs can better navigate emerging opportunities in sectors like green energy, space technology, and logistics. Ultimately, the sources advocate for a collaborative partnership where businesses leverage government-built foundations to foster national growth and wealth creation.

Brief Profile of Anuj Gupta

Anuj Gupta is the Managing Director of Policy Consulting firm BowerGroupAsia. BowerGroupAsia is present in 30+ countries in the World and helps Fortune 500 companies enter or expand in a country and operates at the intersection of policy and business.

Anuj previously was a Vice President at TataSons and spent a decade in the Indian and Abu Dhabi governments, where he shaped flagship policies across trade and industry, energy, finance, technology, infrastructure and startups. As chief of staff to Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, he was instrumental in India’s recent economic, trade and supply chain realignment.

He has worked in 10+ Ministries with experience ranging from energy, mining, transportation, industry, trade and food.

Anuj holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a BTech (ME, 2003) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is also an alumnus of Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. In his spare time, he enjoys reading more than 100 books an year and exploring ideas at the intersection of policy, innovation and global development.

Here’s the AI-generated audio podcast based on the conversation:

Here is also a brief AI-generated video summary:

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/gulf-war-crisis-why-india-will-take-a-huge-hit/20260511.htm

In the heat and dust of elections, many of us have forgotten that there is a war going on. But the PM’s warning about sacrifices and conservation reminds us that this essentially unwinnable war, and the on-again, off-again negotiations to bring it to a closure, are going to hit every one of us in our wallets.

On 30th April, the Pentagon announced that the US had so far spent $25 billion on the West Asia war. This is a staggeringly huge number, and I was startled because I had casually thrown around this number as the ultimate cost of the war for all parties. Clearly I underestimated the damage, if this is the US’ cost alone. Add the other frontline states, and then the untold misery and cost imposed on all of us innocent bystanders. And it’s not over yet by any means.

Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war (self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it, they changed the name from secretary of defense, and lo! they went to war immediately thereafter) bristled at the idea of a quagmire, according to The Economist. But I am old enough to remember Vietnam, and then Afghanistan. These forever wars are easy to get into, but hard to get out of.

Indeed, the war has become not only an impasse, but also a charade. Even considering how the narrative gets bizarre from all sides during every war, this one seems especially messed up. So much so that there literally is no point in paying attention to the day-to-day events, because they don’t seem to make much difference. Except of course, when the price of Brent crude hits $120, as it did on April 30th, twice what it was before the war. Ouch! And Hormuz is still closed.

India is reeling under a heatwave, and we live under the Damocles’ sword of power cuts. Kerala announced a half hour of rolling cuts (anodyne euphemism: “load shedding”) every night, but they will not tell you when or where the cuts will be. This is like the Malayalam proverb: “the guy who got hit by lightning was then bitten by a snake”. Incidentally, there’s been a number of deaths from snakebites in Kerala as the reptiles enter houses seeking cooler temperatures.

If this El Nino weather holds up, India’s assumptions about load (maximum 270 GW) will be challenged: we hit a record on April 25th of 256 GW peak demand, and the fact that the grid didn’t collapse is admirable, but being so close to the maximum is worrying. In Kerala, the grid cannot absorb the solar electricity produced by many households during the day because the Electricity Board did not purchase enough storage batteries: so much for on-grid.

I am also fairly confident that once the elections are over, the government will be forced to increase fuel prices. Petrol has held steady at pump prices of Rs. 107.45/liter for a few years, but as crude oil prices have doubled, I see an inevitable rise not of Rs. 28 or so as speculated, but Rs. 50-100 based on how much inflation the Reserve Bank is willing to tolerate. In passing, I remember seeing somewhere that petrol prices have reached Pak Rs. 500/liter in that country.

Therefore I have stopped paying much attention to the daily press releases and JUST IN, BREAKING NEWS types of ‘analysis’ (some of the most prominent of these are clear AI slop, possibly manufactured by Chinese troll farms). The big picture is that the Straits of Hormuz remain blocked, the amount of oil and gas coming from the Persian Gulf remains diminished dramatically, and recovery may take months, if not years, even if the strait is unblocked.

The chances are increasing that this will become a protracted war, as the principals are standing by their maximalist positions, where this is little reason to believe they will be able to arrive at a via media and a lasting ceasefire.

It is not business as usual. This is the biggest energy shock since 1973, and as always, it is developing countries that will be most seriously affected. India is going to take a large hit, with inflation rising by, say, 2%, and GDP growth falling from 7+% to 6%.

There are several things India needs to do urgently:

* Strive for self-reliance (“Atmanirbhar”) in a variety of areas

* Diversify its sources of hydrocarbons to other geographies eg. Africa, South America, Central Asia (through Chabahar), and accelerate exploration of its own (offshore and onshore) blocks as Mumbai High and Assam fields are aging rapidly

* Pursue other forms of energy:

* Renewables

* Coal, including carbon sequestration

* Biofuels

* Nuclear (both SMR and FBR)

* Shift households from LPG to LNG, including tapping Krishna Godavari wells, coal gasification, biomass

Especially at a time when electricity demand for new industries (eg. generativeAI data centers, semiconductors) is ramping up, it is important for India’s manufacturing rise to ensure that this does not become a constraint. From a consumer perspective, increased affluence brings increased electricity demand.

In addition, the Indian migrant worker population of about 10 million in West Asia, and their inward remittances of some $40-$50 billion per annum (total of $120 billion globally) may be increasingly under pressure if oil/gas production does not go back to pre-war levels.

There is one more factor: India needs military muscle. As I said about Pax Indica, the Indian Ocean needs a strong, impartial facilitator of trade in the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes, and India is best placed to do this, harking back to Rajendra Chola re-opening Malacca in 1025 CE. But this requires three things:

* Major container ports: Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Vadhavan, Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay)

* The ‘switch’ to ease multiparty, multi-protocol trade: the India Stack

* Security: three aircraft carrier groups, two dozen SSBNs, SSNs, AIP diesel submarines

This is the time for India to plan forward fully, with the goal of Atmanirbharata, and energy security. The Persian Gulf is no longer a reliable source. The war is indeed a quagmire.

950 words

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-need-for-pax-indica-malacca-was-blocked-1001-years-ago-hormuz-is-choked-now-14005673.html

In 1025 CE, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent an armada (probably the largest fleet in history before the advent of steam) 4,000 kilometers clear across the Indian Ocean. It was on a mission strangely familiar to us in 2026: open up a critical strait that was being choked by a littoral state. The thalassocratic SriVijaya Empire of Sumatra was closing the strait and imposing tolls, as well as winking at a little piracy.

The strait in question then was Malacca. The Chola goal: to reopen Indian trade with Southeast Asia and China. Remarkably, the Cholas were not interested in territorial conquest, only in freedom of navigation.

It is ironic that today, it is again a question of free trade, that shibboleth that has been waved about for decades (although that was a euphemism for ‘managed trade that benefits the West’).

The difference between then and now? The salient fact is that Rajendra Chola was able to open Malacca with his wooden ships. With all his aircraft carriers and F-35s and missiles, President Trump is unable to open Hormuz. This must mean something, although reasonable people may differ on what that is. My claim is that it means India has the opportunity, in fact the need, to step into the breach.

Maritime trade is severely disturbed today, and it is increasingly a disaster for innocent bystanders bereft of oil and gas. And it is increasingly the Indian Ocean that matters: specifically the sea-lanes from Hormuz to Malacca, which handle a significant portion of both oil/gas trade and goods trade globally.

Geo-politics and geo-economics, Mahan’s and Spykman’s theories

It is a reasonable conjecture that the locus of power has shifted over the centuries: in the 19th century, the Atlantic was supreme; in the 20th century, the Pacific; and in the 21st century, the most important ocean is the Indian Ocean. Asia has returned to center stage. In support of this assertion, see how the economic center of gravity of the world has returned to the vicinity of India, after the European colonial interlude.

It is therefore appropriate to ask what it would take for India to regain its former keystone role in the Indian Ocean. Of course geography offers it to the country on a platter. From both Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory of naval power, and from Nicholas Spykman’s Rimland theory, India could be, or should be, the dominant power in the region: it is almost literally India’s ocean.

Mahan’s ideas, updated for today, suggest that a strong navy should protect a large merchant marine fleet, manage trade, and control choke-points. The preferred hardware may have changed from battleships to aircraft carriers and especially nuclear submarines these days, but the basic idea remains: speak softly but carry a big stick with a force-projection navy.

Spykman’s Rimland theory seems more appropriate in current circumstances than the Heartland theory popularized by Halford MacKinder. The Eurasian land mass may well be subject to control by a coastal hegemon or an alliance that controls the sea lanes and choke points. Despite pipelines and rail-borne containers, maritime trade still dominates.

Spice Route >> Silk Road

A stark reminder of this is the comparison between the fabled ‘Silk Road’ and the ancient ‘Spice Route’. Despite all the breathless propaganda about the Silk Road, it is abundantly clear that sea-borne trade was an order of magnitude greater, because a caravan of 500 camels, braving deserts, bandits and so on across central Asia couldn’t possibly carry more than 100 tons of goods; whereas an ocean-going stitched teak ship, like a single uru from Beypore, Kerala, could easily carry 400 tons. And the monsoon winds provided predictable, seasonal propulsion.

India’s prowess was built on the monsoons. By mastering the seasonal winds, Indian mariners turned the ocean into a highway. This made India the supreme trading power. Merchants from Rome and Egypt traded with Chinese and Southeast Asian counterparts on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, leaving behind troves of coins as evidence.

The Switch

The remarkable thing is that these merchants did not even need to meet each other physically, because India provided the “multi-protocol switch”: translating their diverse needs and offering the conveniences of an entrepot, while also itself producing coveted, high-value products such as black pepper. For example, a Greek buyer could buy something from a Chinese seller, and settle the transaction using Indian credit.

And how did India do it? By providing the “switching fabric”, such as the ports, the credit systems, and the security, that allowed these disparate worlds to exchange products and wealth without ever meeting.

This is much like what a network gateway such as TIBCO does for packets of different kinds of data (in passing, how appropriate that TIBCO was founded by an Indian-American, Vivek Ranadive!). Hardware switches, eg. from Cisco Systems, have been around for a while, but TIBCO abstracted that functionality in software to connect those with different protocols.

India already has many of the ingredients of the switching fabric in the India Stack. Using protocols like UPI, e-KYC, Account Aggregation, Central Bank Digital Currency, and ONDC, especially along with distributed-ledger blockchain-based Smart Contracts, it should be possible to provide end-to-end transparent and reliable multi-party trade support which complements the SWIFT payment system. Complement, not necessarily replace.

The same pattern held with India’s age-old trade system. The ports were on the Malabar Coast, such as Muziris; on the Coromandel coast, such as Arikkamedu; and on the Konkan Coast, such as Bharuchcha. The credit systems were run by temples which acted as both bankers and venture capitalists for the trading guilds. The security: well, that’s what Rajendra Chola demonstrated in 1025 CE.

Alas, medieval India lost its maritime focus. So did China. Both became insular, and were overwhelmed by invaders, including Turkics and Europeans. In India’s case, the Turkic invaders were land-focused powers, although there were isolated maritime attempts (e.g. the Maratha Navy, Travancore defeating the Dutch in an amphibious battle at Colachel in 1741, etc.)

Now, however, there are new ports. The most interesting is the Port of Trivandrum (Vizhinjam). This deep-water container transhipment port is only 10 nautical miles away from the Hormuz-Malacca sea lanes, and now when Dubai is closed, it reportedly has a backlog of a hundred container ships waiting to be berthed. Then there is the upcoming Vadhavan container port in Maharashtra, and the Galathea Bay container port in Great Nicobar, which overlooks the mouth of Malacca.

Pax Indica today

The modern idea of Pax Indica borrows from both perspectives: hard power and a switch. An Internet search brings up the fact that it was my friend Bapa Rao and I who first started talking about it in terms of India being the benevolent hegemon in the Indian Ocean, way back in the 1990s.

Later, Shashi Tharoor wrote in his 2011 book Pax Indica that it could be “a peace system based on cooperation, stability, and rule‑based order in Asia and beyond, in which rising India helps shape the rules of the road rather than impose its will through hegemony.” That is, along roughly the same lines as the “multi protocol switch” or entrepot concept.

Pax Indica is not an empire; it is an ecosystem. There are three aspects: military power, the full exploration of the multiprotocol switch, and the port-led development policy. Bapa Rao and I will consider these in a future article. Briefly, though, here is what these entail.

* Project Power: Use a 3-carrier, 18-24-submarine navy to ensure no single power can close the ocean’s gates.

* Enable Trade: Use the Digital India Stack to act as the “Multi-Protocol Switch” for a fragmented world, plus super-ports like Vizhinjam (Trivandrum).

* Secure the Choke Points: Be ready, like the Cholas, to act decisively when a “Srivijaya-style” blockade threatens the common good.

Hard power needs to come through the acquisition of a blue water navy: at least three aircraft carrier groups, one for the Arabian Sea (Hormuz), one for the Bay of Bengal (Malacca), and one in maintenance, refit and upgrades.

Even though drones and missiles have rendered them less dominant than in earlier times, carrier groups are still important for air superiority and power projection. But an ever-more critical factor is “area denial” by nuclear attack submarines (SSBN) that can launch second strike nuclear missiles as part of the “triad”, of which India should have at least three to four. In addition, there should be at least a dozen silent AIP-equipped diesel-electrics for securing straits, and at least 6-12 SSN (possibly leased) to enhance blue-water reach.

“The IOR must become an Indian lake,” said General Raj Shukla on X. I agree: Not as a territory of conquest, but as a sanctuary of trade, where India sits at the center, as the protocol provider that makes world trade work again, as in millennia past.

1500 words, 27 Apr, 2026

Here’s the notebookLM.google.com AI-generated video about this article:

This is a fireside chat hosted by Rajeev Srinivasan of the IIT Madras Alumni Association, featuring Dr. Suraj Rengarajan, MD and Principal Technologist, Applied Materials India. The discussion centers on the current renaissance of India’s semiconductor industry, highlighting how favorable government policies and shifting global geopolitics have created a unique window for domestic manufacturing. They discuss how supportive government policies, shifts in global geopolitics, and a massive domestic consumer market are creating a unique opportunity for India to establish a manufacturing ecosystem. The dialogue emphasizes the necessity of developing specialized talent and hands-on training to move beyond semiconductor design into actual fabrication. Dr. Rengarajan highlights the potential of AI-driven manufacturing and predictive analytics to improve production efficiency and material discovery. He also explains the critical need to build a supporting ecosystem of suppliers, specialized power, and ultrapure water around newly announced fabrication plants. He emphasizes that while India possesses significant design talent, the country must now focus on hands-on technical training and leveraging AI for manufacturing efficiency. The conversation also addresses the challenges of competing with established global players and the importance of niche applications in the domestic market. Ultimately, the source portrays a hopeful yet realistic outlook on India’s journey toward becoming a global electronics manufacturing hub over the next decade.

Here’s a brief profile of Dr. Suraj Rengarajan:

Dr. Suraj Rengarajan is the Managing Director and Principal Technologist at Applied Materials India, Bangalore. In this role he drives strategic engagement between Applied Materials India and external technology ecosystems, including universities, research institutions, the start-up eco-system and industry forums. He serves as a key spokesperson for Applied Materials in technology-related events and manage programs that foster innovation, collaboration, and talent development.

Suraj started his career at Applied Materials, Santa Clara in 1997, where he held different roles ranging from process engineering, technology, program management, and product marketing for thin film deposition and metallization for interconnects silicides and novel memories.

He moved to India in 2007 to head the SunFab group for Applied Materials in India. Later he headed the engineering group for dielectric deposition. As the India CTO, he worked on materials engineering driven inflections to develop and commercialize new technologies. As Semiconductor Products Group India head he drove SPG strategic objectives in India, planning and growing a customer focused organization, building local leadership talent, enabling collaboration across India & Asia region, and strengthening university and ecosystem partnerships.

Suraj holds a B. Tech from IIT Madras in Metallurgical Engineering and earned his M.S and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Materials Science. Suraj holds over 15 US patents and has more than 20 publications.

The following are courtesy Google notebook LM.

Audio podcast (a good summary of the conversation with some AI masala):

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-drones-are-the-new-tanks-time-for-india-to-catch-up-13998019.html

The most important lesson (of many) from Gulf War 3 may have been foreshadowed by the Ukraine War and other conflicts: that a combination of a step-change in warfare (military strategy) and disruptive innovation (business strategy) could rewrite the rules. If so, we may need to rethink the value of much expensive hardware. Moreover, nations such as India may need to seriously revamp their arms procurement: to small, cheap, local maybe?

The most disturbing aspect of this scenario is that it reduces the human factor, and human control, over warfare. It leads to the specter of robot warfare, of Skynet, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where autonomous intelligences may take rational decisions that have grave consequences for humans, inflicting collateral damage on innocent bystanders in ways that nobody quite understands. We need a real-life version of Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”. But then humans too inflict unthinking collateral damage..

Step-change in warfare, and disruptive innovation

There have been numerous instances where a settled and standardized war tactic was suddenly overturned by a new invention, rendering old military assets impotent. One or two examples will suffice: one was the eclipse of heavy cavalry after the invention of massed archers using longbow volleys to mow them down with thousands of synchronized arrows raining down, also inducing panic in their horses in mid-charge.

Another example is how battle tanks overwhelmed the previous model of trench warfare. (Ironically, in turn, tanks are now being rendered sitting ducks by drones.)

In both cases, long-held assumptions had to be rewritten practically overnight, and entirely new mechanisms had to be put in place. It is a good question (on which reasonable people may differ) as to whether the arrival of drone-and-missile-based warfare is rendering air power, including fighters, bombers and aircraft carriers, essentially obsolescent.

Clayton Christensen articulated the theory of disruptive innovation in business, where an entrenched incumbent can be overthrown in short order by an insurgent attacking them from an unexpected direction, often based on lower-cost options. One example is that of Kodak and the film-camera business. Cheap and convenient digital photography dislocated Kodak et al practically overnight.

I personally experienced this disruption in the 1990s when I had a key role in operating system strategy for Sun Microsystems, the runaway leader in engineering workstations and servers, which used the Unix operating system. Despite our best efforts, Microsoft+Intel coming in from the low end (as Windows systems became more capable) rapidly captured the key resource, which is third-party software vendors. This caused end users to desert in droves.

There were other reasons, too: internecine warfare among firms using Unix, such as IBM, HP, Sun, AT&T, Toshiba, et al. While they bickered, Windows systems became more powerful. Lesson: the ecosystem has to be managed carefully, including supply chains.

Putting these three together (step-change, disruptive innovation, and the ground realities of the Gulf War 3) one can speculate that future military doctrine will be vastly different. Here is Iran’s military doctrine, for reference, from the substack NotesonGeopolitics (Disclaimer: I am neither endorsing it or criticizing it, just offering it as an example).

The US is adjusting to this reality. There is a book titled “Project Maven”, based on 200+ interviews chronicling the US military’s shift to AI-driven warfare, starting with a 2017 Pentagon project to automate drone footage analysis amid overwhelming data volumes.

Project Maven evolved from error-prone early tools (such as misidentifying school buses as threats) to supporting autonomous systems like Goalkeeper drones and Whiplash naval units, now used in conflicts from Ukraine to the Caribbean by 25,000 personnel across 32 companies.

Speaking of disruptive innovation, it is ironic to see the US reverse-engineering Iranian Shahed drones, and the Russians doing the same to Ukrainian drones: incumbents learning from insurgents.

This is only the beginning, of course. There is a nightmare scenario: murmurating, autonomous drone swarms with a hive mind. A flock of starlings flying in perfect synchrony is a thing of beauty: they do not collide with each other, the entire swarm changes direction instantaneously, and there is emergent intelligence in the swarm, much greater than the intelligence of the individual bird. The same is true of beehives and ant colonies, too.

A company called ShieldAI in fact has a product named Hivemind that does precisely this.

Imagine a murmurating drone swarm of 1,000 or even 10,000: and since they cost so little make, this is not unrealistic. The enemy may shoot down 90% of them, but the 10% that gets through, especially if they are kamikaze drones fitted with explosives, can cause real damage. There is the old joke about quantity: “What do you do when you invade China? First day, you take 10,000 prisoners. Second day, you take 100,000 prisoners. Third day, you surrender!”

But we don’t have to go that far: just take two instances where inexpensive drones were able to penetrate the defenses of heavily secured military airports. The first was in Russia in June 2025. Using 117 low-cost drones, Ukrainians struck several airbases at once. There is video footage of FPV drones landing on Tu-95 bombers, destroying them. These are strategic long-range nuclear bombers from the Cold War era, and will be difficult to replace.

And then, just last month: at Barksdale Air Force Base in the US, where B-52 nuclear bombers are deployed, there were repeated drone swarm overflights (of 12-15 drones) between March 9th and March 15th, 2026. They couldn’t be jammed, and displayed “non-commercial signal characteristics”, although they did not actually attack the planes. Reconnaissance, it must be assumed. Superpower militaries are unable to contain them.

Electronic warfare like jamming may be ineffective anyway as swarms self-repair. But it is true that there are air defense weapons that can shoot down the majority of drones. There are interceptors (but they are much more expensive than the drones themselves). Then new Directed Energy Weapons (including both lasers and high-powered microwaves) are in development. Rail guns, I understand, are overkill for them.

Where is India in this arms race?

India finds itself left behind in this transition, and remains committed to legacy platforms such as tanks, fighters, and other imported systems. It is true that there were battlefield successes in Operation Sindoor, where X-25 drones (towed on a 100 meter optical cable) emitted the radar signatures of Rafale fighter jets, thus drawing enemy missiles to themselves, without harming the planes. But these were Israeli products; also British-origin Banshee drones were used for spoofing Su-31 and Mig-29 signatures..

Indigenous drone efforts lag China by 3-5 years in scale, AI integration, and mass production; reliance on Chinese components persists despite bans. It does not have to be this way: India should create Production Linked Incentives for drones and missiles, and harness Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at scale.

India needs to promote this as a cottage industry, so that many individuals will get involved, as in the following post by a Ukrainian drone-maker, with a hashtag #MadebyHousewives. That country produces as many as 4.5 million cheap drones a year, often using 3d printing.

While Ukraine and Iran improvise hive-mind swarms under fire, India’s northeast and border regions face asymmetric threats from low-cost systems. The recent mercenary scandal in the Northeast illustrates the peril.

Mercenaries, the Northeast and a new Christian enclave?

The March 2026 arrests by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) expose how this drone proliferation directly endangers the Seven Sisters. Six Ukrainians and American mercenary Matthew Aaron Van Dyke were detained across Indian airports. They had repeatedly crossed from restricted Mizoram into Myanmar since 2024, training ethnic insurgent groups in drone assembly, operation, jamming, and electronic warfare.

They smuggled European drone consignments through India for insurgent networks, some linked to proscribed Indian groups operating in the northeast. This is no abstract threat: drones enable precision strikes on security forces, surveillance of remote terrain, and supply drops. These capabilities could ignite or sustain insurgencies in India’s volatile borderlands.

In the background is former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s explosive 2024 warning. Hasina alleged a “white man’s” conspiracy to carve out a new “Christian nation” (akin to East Timor or South Sudan) from Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin regions, and India’s Northeast. She cited foreign eyes on the Bay of Bengal and ethnic fault lines.

Hasina’s claim was dismissed as paranoia then; today, Ukrainian-American actors arming Myanmar’s rebel groups lend credence to a broader destabilization playbook. A hive-mind-enabled drone campaign could empower separatists and create a Christian-majority enclave, exploiting Christian tribal demographics and porous borders. This is hybrid warfare at its most insidious: mercenaries as force multipliers for great-power proxies.

If these insurgents can leverage drone swarms to close the Siliguri Corridor or target regional infrastructure, they can create a fait accompli on the ground for India.

Conclusion

The drone-missile age demands urgent adaptation. Nations must invest in AI swarm doctrine, resilient EW, decentralized deployment, and indigenous mass production ecosystems. For India, the wake-up call is clear: clinging to legacy investments while insurgents import hive-mind precursors risks not just military irrelevance but territorial integrity. The Tu-95 pyres and B-52 overflights are warnings. The northeast drone pipeline is a direct threat. Warfare has changed; those who fail to swarm will be overrun.

Here is the AI-generated audio podcast about this essay:

1570 words, Apr 3, 2026