As the Biden administration looks to strengthen its connections with Asian allies and offset China’s dominance of cutting-edge technologies, India and the United States agreed, on 1 February, to expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing, semiconductors and other high-tech fields, as the Biden administration looks to strengthen its connections with Asian allies and offset China’s dominance of cutting-edge technologies.
The agreements followed two days of high-level meetings in Washington between government officials and executives from dozens of companies, the first under a new dialogue about critical and emerging technologies that President Joe Biden and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced in Tokyo in May 2022.
The partnerships announced include an agreement between the US and Indian national science agencies to cooperate on artificial intelligence and advanced wireless technology, as well as in other areas.
The countries also pledged to speed up their efforts to jointly produce and develop certain defense technologies, including jet engines, artillery systems and armored infantry vehicles. The United States said it would look to quickly review a new proposal by General Electric to produce a jet engine with India.
Both countries would work together to facilitate the build-out of an advanced mobile network in India and look for new cooperation in semiconductor production, including efforts to help India bolster chip research and production that would complement major investments in the industry in the United States.
The new dialogue would include efforts to work through regulatory barriers, as well as visa restrictions that have prevented talented Indians from working in the United States, the countries said.
The initiative also includes a joint effort on space and high-performance quantum computing.
The two countries also established a quantum technology coordination mechanism and agreed to set up a task force with India’s Semiconductor Mission, the India Electronics Semiconductor Association (IESA) and the U.S.
Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) to promote the development of semiconductor ecosystems.
India’s space program will work with NASA on human space flight opportunities and other projects, the Indian statement said.
NSAs Meeting
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his US counterpart Jake Sullivan discussed aligning India and the US’s strategic, commercial and scientific approaches specifically in the field of technology on 1 February.
Sullivan and Doval, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with senior officials from both countries at the White House, on 31 January, to launch the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies. Sullivan and Doval participated in a Chamber of Commerce event with corporate leaders from Lockheed Martin Corp, Adani Enterprises and Applied Materials Inc.
Jake Sullivan said that the goal was for technological partnerships to be “the next big milestone” in the US-Indian relationship after a 2016 agreement on nuclear power cooperation. He described the effort as a “big foundational piece of an overall strategy to put the entire democratic world in the Indo-Pacific in a position of strength.”
“The larger challenge posed by China – its economic practices, its aggressive military moves, its efforts to dominate the industries of the future and to control the supply chains of the future – have had a profound impact on the thinking in Delhi,” Sullivan said.
Biden and Modi are also propelling closer US-Indian cooperation in efforts to build out the industrial and innovation bases of their countries.
Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET)
With the launch of the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), India and the United States have elevated their strategic partnership. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden had announced the US-India initiative on iCET in May 2022. The aim was to elevate and expand strategic technology partnerships and defence industrial cooperation between India and the US.
On the defence front, iCET aims to expand India-US cooperation in fields like artificial intelligence and military equipment. The iCET announced a new bilateral defence industrial cooperation roadmap that will be intended to accelerate defence technology cooperation.
There are other items in the defence bucket as well, such as launching a new innovation bridge to connect the US and India.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, on queries whether iCET was to effectively counter China, said even though the geopolitical context cannot be ignored, this initiative is not about any one country. “It truly is about something bigger than that,” she said, adding that the US will continue to strengthen its partnership with India.
NSA Jake Sullivan had also acknowledged the geopolitical dimension of the initiative saying, “The competition with China has been a feature of the US-India relationship now for more than a decade.”
Both Biden and Modi are also propelling closer US-Indian cooperation in efforts to build out the industrial and innovation bases of their countries, Sullivan said.
General Electric Co, meanwhile, is asking the U.S. government for permission to produce jet engines with India that would power aircraft operated and produced by India, according to the White House, which says a review is underway. New Delhi said that the U.S. government would review General Electric’s application expeditiously and that the two countries would focus on joint production of “key items of mutual interest” in defense.
China Irked
It is noteworthy that iCET has no explicit reference to China but the new initiative has irked China, with the state-run Global Times calling iCET a microcosm of “same bed, different dreams”.
China believes India is willing to ramp up its ties with the US to advance technology and attract more funding to replace its position in the global industrial and supply chains.
“As for Washington, to rope in India, on the one hand, it has to cater to what the country wants. On the other hand, it can promote an agenda that puts India as part of “friend-shoring,” and then India can become a supply-chain alternative to China,” Liu Zongyi of Shanghai Institutes for International Studies was quoted as saying by the Global Times. It also noted that the initiative is part of the US’s “wishful thinking” but is unlikely to bear fruit as India is unlikely to follow the US’s playbook, as per the Global Times report.
“The US wants to kill two birds with one stone by luring India to join its initiative to contain China’s tech rise,” a Chinese official told Global Times.
India’s Russia Connection
India’s frequent purchases of Russian military equipment and close ties with Russia also present another wrinkle to the planned partnership. But Biden officials said they believed that the cooperation could accelerate India’s move away from Russia, to the benefit of its relationship with the United States.
New Delhi has frustrated Washington by participating in military exercises with Russia and increasing purchases of the country’s crude oil, a key source of funding for Russia’s war in Ukraine. But Washington has held its tongue, nudging the country on Russia while condoning India’s more hawkish stance on China.
Comments
The agreements will be a test of whether the Biden administration can realize its proposal for “friendshoring” by shifting the manufacturing of certain critical components to friendly countries. Biden officials have expressed concerns about the United States’ continued heavy reliance on China for semiconductors, telecommunications parts and other important goods. In recent months they have clamped down on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China, in an effort to stymie an industry that the White House says could give China a military advantage.
Many companies have found it difficult to obtain the factory space and skilled workers they would need to move their supply chains out of China. India has a highly skilled workforce and a government that wants to attract more international investment, but multinational companies seeking to operate there continue to complain of onerous regulations, inadequate infrastructure and other barriers.
The US hopes that the partnership with India will help the countries compete against China on military equipment, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. But the White House faces an uphill battle on each front, including U.S. restrictions on military technology transfer and visas for immigrant workers, along with India’s longstanding dependence on Moscow for military hardware.
Experts felt that India would need to continue to reform its permitting and tax system to lure more foreign manufacturing companies. And the United States would need to reform restrictions on transferring defense-related technology outside the country, they said, if it hopes to work with India to produce jet engines and other advanced weapons.
Analysts also noted that many of the technology partnerships would hinge on new connections between the countries’ private sectors, meaning that the agreements could go only so far.
India has traditionally been known as a difficult partner for the United States in trade negotiations. In the talks that the Biden administration is carrying out in Asia, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum, India bowed out of the trade portion of the deal, though it has continued to negotiate in areas such as clean energy, supply chains and labor standards.
Although India is part of the Biden administration’s signature Asian engagement project, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), it has opted against joining the IPEF trade pillar negotiations.
But analysts said the Indian government was far more motivated on national security matters, and particularly tempted by the prospects of working with the United States to cultivate cutting-edge tech industries.
