The world is getting accustomed to navigating choppy geopolitical waters. We have stepped into a new world. It feels normal to wake up and smell Truth Social. It feels normal for our discourse to no longer extol the virtues of free trade or globalisation, but to include threats of mass annihilation.
We have accepted that we will be overtaken by AI. China was merely a strategic challenge that could be managed by a like-minded group of countries. The US, as a 'free radical', appears to have made space for China at the summit of global power, leaving its friends scrambling for cover. The world's most unnecessary war has taught us that nuclear weapons are cool again, the only proven deterrent against external invasion.
India used to be ahead of the curve in many respects. Not any more. It's either spinning the steering wheel away from comfortable arrangements, or desperately playing catch-up. All the while, its external challenges are metamorphosing before our eyes. Here are 3 core areas:
Hormuz fees: The world will end up paying some version of Hormuz fees, no matter what Truth Social says. It's a handy piece of geopolitical leverage gifted to Iran by the US. The global oil economy is flowing again, until the next military crisis. India has done well in diversifying its energy sources to 41 countries in the last few months. We're playing catch-up on strategic reserves and battery storage, and that's fine too.
On geopolitics, the Gulf is splintering. That's a whole new challenge for India. New Delhi's emerging geopolitical play appears to be bookended by its relations with the UAE and Israel, with Qatar and Oman close behind. Saudi Arabia will remain a commercial-economic relationship, but not much else. Iran has moved back into centre stage, and New Delhi has had to recalibrate its ties with Tehran. Whether or not the Chabahar project is revived, Iran will become a more important source of oil, as will Iraq.
Can Iran use its Hormuz leverage to constrain India's relations with Israel? India should anticipate that possibility.
Renaming of the US command from Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPacom) to Pacom shows a clear strategic intent to dilute its interest in the region. It will be India's responsibility, along with Japan's and Australia's, to keep the Quad going, even with a disinterested US in the room. There is a sound logic to the Quad, notwithstanding Trump.
India needs to step out and be counted. It should build the Great Nicobar Island Development Project as soon as possible, and double down on security partnerships in the Indian Ocean. Another Quad foreign ministers' meeting should happen later this year, and India should push for a summit around Republic Day.
Sovereign AI: For critical functions, India should focus on building sovereign AI models with known and reliable data, weights and sovereign compute. That is no longer negotiable. The US may have opened access to Anthropic's frontier models largely because Chinese models are seen to be as good, and US companies losing trust and market share. The former will be hard to build back in the sectors that matter.
Trouble is, many in India believe that once they have access to Fable or Mythos, it's a happily-ever-after story. It isn't. India has failed to recognise that while AI is a tech, hardware and energy tool, it's foremost a geopolitical tool. The US, by weaponising it at the start, has drawn a line in the sand for tech powers like India.
Yes, there is a case for India becoming the shopfloor for AI deployment and diffusion. But for more sensitive applications, Indian entities will want control over proprietary knowledge. Interestingly, Britain, among others, is also thinking the same way.
This week, Palantir CEO Alex Karp blew the lid off global concerns when he said, 'Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country [the US] to the consensus view in Silicon Valley? That is effing insane.' We need to get over the idea that we cannot function without US AI models.
Pak pain point: Pakistan deserves greater attention by India. You can almost smell a Pakistani campaign in the air. There are debates around track-2 dialogues, social media exhortations of restarting talks with Islamabad, and Pakistan's own campaign on the Indus Waters Treaty. Asim Munir is at the pinnacle of his powers, and has Trump's stamp of approval to prove it.
After the Iran war, Munir feels confident he can get greater leeway. A big ask from the US as reward for his role in the Iran-US MoU could be to pressure India on the Indus Waters Treaty. The campaigns don't come out of nowhere. There is even one floating around asking India to 'end' Op Sindoor. For those with longer memories, these are classic red flags. This time, Pakistan would imagine India to be on the backfoot, given its current difficulties with the US.
In the last year, India has appeared tired and enervated. Yes, there have been problems, many due to our own shortcomings. We should turn the page.
