Mint | Our PLI schemes are in need of a coherent trade policy

The recent spat between former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan and electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw over the former’s criticism of the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for semiconductors and other manufacturing sectors is part of an ongoing debate on India’s manufacturing policies. Rajan argues that PLI schemes alone do not add value to electronics and semiconductors, even though value addition is a key objective of the ministry’s 2022 vision document. It aims to increase India’s electronics exports to $300 billion by 2025-26 from $25.3 billion in 2022-23, and deepen integration with global value chains (GVCs). Read the full article here.

Hindustan Times | A road map to propel US-India chips push

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi will travel to Washington DC on June 21 for his first official State visit. A prominent item on the agenda is technology cooperation. In May last year, the two governments elevated their strategic partnership by announcing an initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET). During this visit, the two sides will aim to announce concrete steps under this initiative. This article proposes a way forward on one of the main pillars of iCET: Resilient semiconductor supply chains. iCET’s readout explicitly mentioned enhanced cooperation in three areas: Supporting the development of a semiconductor design, manufacturing, and fabrication ecosystem in India; promoting the development of a skilled semiconductor workforce; and encouraging the development of fabs for mature technology nodes and packaging in India. Using iCET’s vision, we propose cooperation options in the three archetypal stages of the semiconductor supply chain: Design, manufacturing, and Outsourced Assembly and Test (OSAT).

Nikkei Asia | The Quad should have its own biomanufacturing hub in India

Biomanufacturing, which uses microorganisms and cell cultures to produce molecules and materials on a large scale, is rapidly rising in importance for Indo-Pacific nations. The world's response to COVID-19 depended on the rapid production of new vaccines through biomanufacturing. Countries with preexisting manufacturing capabilities became the gatekeepers of vaccine supply. Scaling up biomanufacturing in India will be fraught with challenges, however, but these can be overcome with external support. The Quad group in particular is ideally placed to collaborate and boost India's efforts.

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Interstellar | US-China Chip War: What Might The Future Hold?

The US-China geopolitical fault lines in high technology have become sharper than ever, and nowhere has it been more significant than semiconductors. Semiconductors are critical to advanced computing and artificial intelligence (AI) that will form the core of the next-generation industrial revolution. They also have significant implications for advanced and precision weaponry and consumer tech.

Read more here.

StratNews Global | U.S. Seeks To Deny China Access To Key Semiconductor Technologies

The U.S.-China geopolitical fault lines in high technology have become sharper than ever and nowhere has it been more significant than in the domain of semiconductors. Semiconductors are critical to advanced computing and artificial intelligence (AI) that will form the core of the next-generation industrial revolution. They also have significant implications for advanced and precision weaponry in addition to consumer tech. The deepening of U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry has rendered the widely distributed global semiconductor value chain susceptible to disruption and choking. Consequently, their value as a critical tech has led to an increased securitisation of the domain.

Read more here.

News18 | Globalising India's DPI for a Common Digital Future

As the current chair of the G20, India has an opportunity to showcase and advocate for the global adoption of its world-class digital public infrastructure (DPI), which could lead to global standards, best practices, and innovation trickling back to India

Read the full article here

ASPI Strategist | The Quad should commit to a biomanufacturing hub in India

A biological revolution is underway in global manufacturing. Products produced from genetic engineering and biomanufacturing techniques are replacing many chemical, industrial and farm-based products. These include biological therapies, alternative proteins, plant-based oils, bioplastics and super strong threads, and more products such as bioconcrete are in development. The upcoming leaders’ summit in Sydney is an opportunity for the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to take leadership in manufacturing this critical technology.

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Mint | We have a historic opportunity to shape tomorrow’s world order

It is easy to feel disoriented amid the increasingly intense debates over artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy transition, autonomous vehicles, platforms, genomics, quantum computing and other technological marvels of our times. Over the past six months, technology policy has overtaken China and the Indo-Pacific as the primary topics that foreign visitors to Takshashila want to discuss. Over a decade ago, I escaped from the tech policy world into what I thought was the more exciting world of geopolitics and international relations. Today, I find it hard to distinguish the boundaries between those disciplines.

Read more here.

Missing in India’s AI growth plan is private investment

On artificial intelligence (AI), the government appears to be moving at a frenetic pace. This month, plans were announced to make large public datasets available to Indian businesses. The government also wants to embed AI in different parts of India Stack, and fund three centres of excellence for AI, housed within leading academic institutions.

Let’s insist on full disclosure and consent for AI and algorithm use

One of the many recent mysteries is why hundreds of extremely intelligent and rich people think that a moratorium on further development of artificial intelligence is feasible, or that a six month hiatus is sufficient for us to figure out what to do about it. Technology development is a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ with millions of competing participants making it impossible to get everyone to cooperate. Top-tier competitors are more likely to cheat on the moratorium in the expectation that others will do so, which will render such as moratorium useless, and worse, drive the industry underground.

We mustn’t let young minds live in constant fear of an apocalypse

Prominent ‘tech bros’ are now predicting a catastrophic financial crisis in the US leading to hyperinflation and apocalypse. It’s funny how people who took zero interest rates for granted, made fantastic predictions about techno-utopias but failed to plan for something as predictable as changes in interest rates are now forecasting the end of the world as we know it. They are not alone.

For India’s AI ambitions, the time to act is now

On May 17, 2017, AlphaGo, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system built by Google’s DeepMind, defeated Ke Jie, China’s leading player in the board game, Go. In his book AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee cites this as the seminal moment in China’s AI awakening. Considered the hardest game to master, Go’s dominance by a computer roused the government into action. Within a few months, Beijing announced plans to dominate AI by 2030.

Driving Big Tech out of India would be a mistake

When two senior government ministers launched India's first homegrown mobile operating system at a ceremony last month, they hailed the project for its potential to bust monopolies without mentioning any particular one. They did not have to. While most attempts at creating a new mobile operating system fail, the government's clear intention was to put Google on notice by championing an unproven local alternative. The search giant, whose Android software powers more than 95% of smartphones in India, has been facing increased scrutiny in one of its largest markets.

Challengers of Big Tech’s sway on the internet won’t have it easy

Writing about competing visions for the future of the internet in a column at the turn of 2022, I argued that two of the much-hyped contenders, the metaverse and web3, appeared far fetched. It is hard to imagine everyone wearing virtual-reality goggles to engage with the internet, crypto is too complicated, and both are costly ways to access the global network. Last year was somewhere between a wake-up call and a devastating setback for promoters of 3-D metaverses and crypto services, with lower profits, higher interest rates and scandals delivering the due reality checks.

Why we shouldn’t copy-paste EU’s ‘one nation, one charger’ policy

A common mistake in public policy is the inability to confront trade-offs. Every government policy seems well-intentioned, nice-sounding, and welfare-enhancing. The union consumer affairs ministry’s recent moves towards a ‘one nation, one charging port’ for all electronic devices (except for wearables) demonstrates the need to be wary of intuitive solutions to complex policy problems.

India is following the European Union example here, which has banned all chargers except USB-C from 2024. The intent is two-fold—reducing consumer inconvenience because of multiple chargers. And two, reducing e-waste. Lofty goals. Who could say these aren’t problems that need to be solved?

Technological power in today’s world is much too concentrated

You don’t have to be a Luddite to have serious misgivings about brain implants. There certainly are beneficial uses, but once brain-computer interfaces become commercially available, we can neither predict nor control what they will end up being used for. There is a risk we will rapidly and thoughtlessly end up changing what it means to be human. With only an indirect interface to the human brain, social media networks have profoundly transformed human society. We are still discovering how pervasive information networks influence human cognition, but we already know enough to be concerned about the impact on rational thinking and collective opinion formation.

Theatre commands to defence university, why Indian security interests need a political push

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call for Atmanirbhar Bharat in May 2020 made self-reliance a policy goal for the Ministry of Defence. Despite decades of effort, India’s defence industrial ecosystem has failed to achieve substantive progress and indigenous research, development and production capabilities remain a challenge. Time will reveal whether the slogan has been matched by accomplishment. However, even if Atmanirbhartha is accomplished to any acceptable degree, India’s military effectiveness will require the fulfilment of two other crucial reform initiatives – defence university and theatre commands.

India must dominate the game of chips - through its Human Resources

Washington’s wide-ranging sanctions on China’s semiconductor industry will go far in containing the US’s geopolitical rival. Not only will they set China’s chip makers back by years, but also restrict the country’s progress in several areas, from personal computers to data centres, from artificial intelligence (AI) systems to hypersonic missiles. This may well be America’s most consequential move in the ongoing contest among global powers.

An ‘everything’ app is a nightmare for our freedoms

Monopoly, the board game, is often held up as a demonstration of capitalism, teaching us how business works. Actually, it does more than that. While it is true that a budding capitalist’s goal is to grab as large a market share as possible, the game shows that allowing a player to do so is bad for society as a whole. Now there is nothing wrong in a business person seeking a monopoly. It is for society—through its political institutions—to protect its broader interests and check monopolistic tendencies through public policy.

Securing India’s Cyberspace from Quantum Techniques

Last month, there were reports that the Indian Army is developing cryptographic techniques to make its networks resistant to attacks by systems with quantum capabilities. The Army has collaborated with industry and academia to build secure communications and cryptography applications. This step builds on last year’s initiative to establish a quantum computing laboratory at the military engineering institute in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh. With traditional encryption models at risk and increasing military applications of quantum technology, the deployment of “quantum-resistant” systems has become the need of the hour.