STRATEGIC AUTARKY FOR THE AI AGE

Balancing sovereignty and innovation becomes the central task. India cannot afford to remain dependent, but it also cannot smother its own technological growth. India’s new AI Governance Framework addresses this balance directly.

- KARTIKEYA SHARMA

Seven guiding principles of India's AI governance framework. Image courtesy: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology handbook.

(Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology)

For decades, the world has tapped into a single digital backbone. Cloud infrastructure, social platforms, semiconductor supply chains, and cutting edge Al systems are overwhelmingly controlled by the United States.

From hyperscale cloud providers to the chipmakers powering modern computation, American companies hold the central levers of the global digital economy. This dominance delivers convenience, but it also concentrates control in ways that can create vulnerabilities for countries plugged into these systems.

India is part of this interconnected world. Our rapid digital rise has been remarkable, yet the infrastructure supporting it often lies outside our borders. The essential silicon for Al compute still comes from firms like Nvidia, Intel, and AMD. The cloud resources running everything from banking to governance are hosted on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Even the AI models used across industries are built and trained on foreign servers. These dependencies do not weaken India, but they do reveal an external exposure we cannot ignore.

Strategic vulnerability is not hypothetical. In 1999, during the Kargil conflict, India sought precise GPS coordinates from the United States. The request was declined. That moment showed how reliance on a foreign digital layer could shape battlefield realities. India responded by creating NAVIC, our own navigation system. NAVIC is proof that national capability can emerge the moment a country decides to build for itself.