#300 Words Have Meanings
India-Pakistan Narrative Warfare and the Four Notions of Technological Sovereignty
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India Policy Watch #1: Yahaan Fog Chal Raha Hai
Insights on current policy issues in India
—RSJ
Amidst the chaos we have witnessed in the past couple of months, last week offered a rare pause where calmer heads prevailed and a semblance of normalcy returned. India and Pakistan held on to the ceasefire, and the US and China began their trade negotiations and put their reciprocal tariff war on the back burner. A beginning, however small, was made on Russia-Ukraine peace talks at Istanbul.
Trump did his best to be at the centre of decision-making in all three. Maybe this is what we need to get used to during Trump 2.0: a chaotic few months of announcements and executive orders, followed by a few weeks of random negotiations to win some concessions, which can then be sold to people as his art of the deal.
Markets seem to have bought this. The equity markets have recovered losses incurred since the ‘liberation day’, and the bond markets have also taken the uncertainty in stride and stabilised. No one can be sure if all of this was part of Trump's grand strategy to get everyone to the table to do bilateral deals. Or was it a quick realisation that the US economy can’t take such disruption in global trade? In any case, it is useful to dig deeper into these pauses that we saw last week. We will pick up the India-Pakistan ceasefire in this edition and take up the other two in future as things get clearer.
A week into the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, there’s better visibility of the post-Operation Sindoor strategic landscape beyond the fog of war, the usual rhetoric from armed forces of both sides and the mindless media circus. A clear-headed analysis of satellite images, news reports from global media and the media briefings from both sides provides us with the likely factual picture of Operation Sindoor. India launched targeted strikes in what it believed were terror camps and supporting infrastructure to begin Operation Sindoor. In response, Pakistan launched a series of drone attacks on multiple Indian cities, followed by targeted missile attacks, which were thwarted with minimal damage. India then launched air strikes at 13 Pakistani air bases, successfully jamming their air defence system and getting deep into their territory with impunity. What’s now clear is India lost at least one (and possibly a couple more) fighter planes in the first 24 hours of this operation. The media briefings, the global coverage and France’s own admission about losing Rafale(s) make this quite categorical. It is also true that India had a very successful test of its air-to-land striking capabilities, and it could have done even more damage to Pakistan's air infrastructure if the ceasefire hadn’t been called. The extent of damage on the Pakistani side is material, but not to the extent claimed by India, if one were to go by satellite images put up by independent media sources. This is all that can be said with confidence at this moment. A stalemate with both sides getting something to take back to their people, may be India a bit more. All other talk of Pakistan damaging Indian air bases or India striking Pakistani nuclear storage facilities is proverbial kite flying.
There are a few hard truths learned here. China has built an indigenous defence capability that’s looking as good as any. Considering that it won’t be exporting its latest and best equipment, it is sobering to note how even the export version of its weapons performed in this skirmish. Clearly, India was caught off guard by it when Pakistan used the Chinese J-10C with a PL-15E on the Rafales. Pakistan is the top export destination for Chinese armament, accounting for two-thirds of it, and is on its way to consolidating itself on Chinese platforms. India has to consider further deepening of Pakistani capabilities in future, using Chinese arms, and also what it means for its security on the long Indo-China border. India itself is hamstrung by the multiple defence platforms it operates on that aren’t fungible.
The other thing that stood out was the response of the international community to the Pahalgam terror attack and to the Indian response following that. The level of outrage, say, when compared to the Oct 7 attack on Israel, was not in line with India’s global position as a stable and trusted democracy and a large trade partner. India has made a legitimate case of being a victim of terrorism from Pakistani soil for a long time. The short-lived war that followed had everyone being equivocal in their response in seeking peace, and in effect, brought back the dreaded hyphen in the India Pakistan relationship. Later events, especially the way Trump has gone about speaking on this topic, including in Saudi Arabia, have only made this starker. There was limited support for the legitimate posture of India being a victim of these attacks for long, once India initiated the air strikes. All the claims of Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkar brotherhood, the Quad as a counterweight to China in the Pacific, India as a swing power and the deepening of Indo-US strategic partnership over the years didn’t lead to Trump and his administration or any of its partners giving direct support to India’s stance. All it elicited were hugely nuanced responses from everyone, putting the onus on both India and Pakistan equally. We were back in the late 90s of being lumped together as errant schoolboys with nukes. This should hopefully lead to some soul searching on how India perceives itself internationally, as some of its diplomats strut around in global conferences, and the reality of our global standing when it comes to the crunch.
The final point is about Trump's reliability and the merit of India throwing its lot with this US administration. On the India/Pakistan issue, Trump is still in the 1980s. This isn’t a surprise since it appears he developed his core political and economic beliefs back in the New York real estate market of that decade and has held on to them since. He is also a quintessential bully who only respects strength. Anyone kowtowing to him will receive a few platitudes and throwaway crumbs, but won’t earn respect. As US-China trade negotiations proceed and India tries to close out the FTA with the US in a supplicant mode, this difference will become quite apparent. Trump’s withering comments on Tim Cook (or “Tim Apple” as he called him) and his plans to shift Apple’s manufacturing base to India from China, while the FTA is being worked on, are pretty revealing. Trump also has gone on record unilaterally this week that India has agreed to a zero-tariff regime with the US, a claim India has disputed. This may just be Trump being Trump, or he may be setting a pre-emptive bar on the terms of the trade agreement. In any case, there is no reason to believe Trump will adhere to a trade agreement that he has signed himself. Ask Mexico or Canada about this. There are some hard truths for India to contend with from this episode.
The ceasefire was followed by PM Modi’s address a couple of days later to the nation on Operation Sindoor, which laid out three key elements of a new doctrine. One, India won’t make a distinction between government-sponsored terrorism and terrorist organisations. It will act against both in the event of a terrorist attack on its soil. Two, Operation Sindoor like action is the new normal and sets the threshold for future responses. Surgical strikes will not be the only pathway, and India will go up the escalation ladder as it did this time. Three, India will not tolerate nuclear blackmail. Therefore, this ceasefire should only be seen as a pause in retaliation against terror attacks on its soil and not as bowing to Pakistani nuclear brinkmanship. In terms of signalling commitment and forcing one’s hand in advance, this is the best PM Modi could have done following the Trump announcement of mediation on Truth Social.
There was a domestic constituency fed and fattened on what can only be charitably called fast food nationalism, waiting to hear something impactful that would take away the embarrassment of the Trump intervention. So, it was delivered. This new Modi doctrine sounds belligerent, and many have called it a fundamental shift in terms of engagement with Pakistan, from a default pose of strategic restraint to that of forceful deterrence in the face of a terror attack. Will this be an effective signal for curtailing future misadventures from Pakistan? We will hopefully never have to find out. But what this doctrine does is it raises the probability of war. That will mean Pakistan spending disproportionately more on its defence, getting China more involved in its economy and bringing war into any calculus of risk of investing in India. The other risk is that it encourages random actors to perpetrate an act of terror in India to stoke a war. There’s no easy way to find the real perpetrators, after all, India hasn’t found any one of the terrorists who killed tourists in Pahalgam. So it will be difficult to buy time and investigate any future attack. The demand for action based on the doctrine will be high. India might have an asymmetric advantage over Pakistan in terms of its economic might and defence capabilities, but as was the case between Israel and Palestine prior to October 7, that vast difference and a doctrine to treat every attack as an act of war didn’t stop future attacks. And while Israel could pummel Gaza into submission following Oct 7 attacks, and some in India may harbour those illusions about Pakistan, the availability of nuclear deterrence makes this a whole different ball game. The highest rung in India Pakistan escalation ladder is quite different from any other conflict that’s on right now. The Modi doctrine, in that sense, is the best that India could do at this moment in terms of a signal. A commitment to call any Pakistani bluff on nuclear threat in future and hope they take that pledge seriously. A thriving, functional state that cares for its citizens and its future would do so. But Pakistan? Who knows? The cost of finding that out is prohibitive.
India Policy Watch #2: The Narrative Battle
Insights on current policy issues in India
—Pranay Kotasthane
With the “understanding” on the cessation of hostilities holding up, we can move on to the narrative aspects of the India-Pakistan war.
First, consider the information ecosystems in the two countries. These two ecosystems remain partitioned to such an extent that each side could save face, claim victory, and walk away, despite the promise of the borderless Information Age.
The basis of these self-contained information ecosystems is the little to no contact between the two countries, which fostered dangerous delusions on both sides.
For instance, the Pakistani side, including the Army and its government, was convinced that the situation of minorities in India was so bad that killing Hindu tourists and then running with the “false flag operation” line would fan communal tensions in India. They continued with this posture nearly three days into the conflict, shooting missiles at Gurudwaras and other places of worship, while claiming that it was all being done by the Indian side! While these claims are ludicrous for us sitting in India, they are wholly consistent with Pakistan’s information ecosystem, which has amplified the bigotry in India by several notches. Pakistan genuinely believed that inter-communal relations in India could be pushed to a breaking point because their only source of information about India is Twitter and YouTube, crowded information environments where only the most shocking, partisan, and extreme views make the cut.
As for the Indian side, the government’s formal communication remained sober and de-escalatory right from the beginning of Operation Sindoor. But that wasn’t enough to dispel delusions built up in our information ecosystem about Pakistan’s situation. Many Indians genuinely believed that Pakistan’s poor economy would have meant a sudden decline in its warfighting capabilities. Or that the only reason why India couldn’t take PoJK in the past was because previous Indian governments were pusillanimous. Or that Balochistan will break away from Pakistan easily. Such delusions meant that the understanding reached on May 10th, while being communicated consistently in official statements as the desired end state, ended up inviting regret, despondency, and hatred.
The weakening of these delusions is probably the only shared mutual gain from the conflict. However, dismantling them completely will require a more objective understanding of each other’s societies, economies, and governments, an ask that seems unrealistic for now.
A second aspect of the Indian wartime information ecosystem was the deeply held belief that the rest of the world is conspiring against India. This belief gave rise to the claims that all reports about the downing of Indian jets were part of a grand design to stymie India. Now, no one can claim that the Western media and information ecosystem is fair, not after seeing their stance on the genocide in Gaza. It is also evident that many international reporting outlets do not grok the pattern of Pakistani terrorism that many Indians have lived with for over four decades. Nevertheless, the reality is that India is just isn’t that important yet for the world to conspire against. They have far bigger problems of their own to worry about. Their follies in covering the conflict may stem from neglect or incapability, but not out of malice.
The outsized belief about India’s influence also led people to consider boycotting Turkey as a tourist destination. Such conscience laundering might provide momentary relief, but it doesn’t remove the fact that Indians comprise less than 0.5 per cent of Turkey’s annual tourist intake, and any reduction will hardly change Turkey’s foreign policy calculus.
The final aspect of the Indian information ecosystem is the fear of hyphenation. The idea is that any military action against Pakistan would only pull India down, and hence India should eschew any escalation. This narrative ignores the point that India will not be taken seriously across the world if it cannot punish a country in its neighbourhood that uses terrorism repeatedly and predictably against it. All dreams of a net security provider can be put to rest if we can’t muster the will and force at critical junctures to make a principled point. The fear of re-hyphenation with Pakistan can’t be an argument for inaction.
Were there other aspects of the narrative war that we’ve missed covering?
Global Policy Watch: Four Pathways to Technological Sovereignty
Insights on global issues relevant to India
— Pranay Kotasthane
(An edited version of this article appeared first in India’s World magazine on May 14)
Words have meanings. They create narratives that have implications for politics and policy. This article discusses one phrase that’s become quite the rage in technology geopolitics: technological sovereignty.
With technology now at the forefront of international competition, confrontation, and collaboration, “tech sovereignty” has gained currency. Governments often speak of its many variants—digital sovereignty, cyber sovereignty, and, of late, AI sovereignty. Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke about AI sovereignty ahead of the Paris AI Action Summit, equating it with a nation’s ability to train AI talent, retain AI talent, build data centres, and create large language models. The European Commission now has an Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Not to be left behind, NVIDIA also uses this term, calling Sovereign AI as a nation’s capability to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks.
Despite its many offshoots and widespread use, tech sovereignty implies different things to different countries at different times. This article examines four distinct meanings of this term and investigates their relevance for India.
The first articulation is the oldest—one that equates tech sovereignty with self-sufficiency. This maximalist vision treats technology as a physical domain like land, territorial waters, or space. As nation-states strive to maintain absolute control over a physical domain, tech sovereignty implies that a country should be able to access foundational technologies without being dependent on any extra-national actor. In other words, sovereignty over tech becomes a goal as obvious as control over one’s land. Some policy instruments to achieve this vision are industrial policy, national champions, and technology denial methods.
The efficacy of this vision is constrained by the nature of new technology domains, which rely on extensive cross-border movements of intermediate products, talent, and intellectual property. As R&D costs for technological improvements have risen across sectors, 'national' industries have been transformed into global supply chains. For instance, the US Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that a typical semiconductor production process spans 4+ countries, 3+ trips worldwide, and 12 days in transit. Japanese companies have developed expertise in semiconductor manufacturing materials. Taiwanese companies have a big lead in semiconductor fabrication and packaging, and a significant portion of semiconductor design happens from subsidiaries in India.
This reorganisation means even the US is not technologically sovereign with respect to semiconductors—external dependencies for intermediate goods, specialised equipment, international talent, and critical materials will remain even when the final product is American. Similarly, chips are the biggest import category by value, even for Taiwan, the semiconductor superpower. Given these fundamental shifts, defining tech sovereignty as self-sufficiency has limited value for catch-up countries like India.
The second vision of tech sovereignty is more pragmatic and centres around building and retaining baseline capabilities in some domains. This vision values resilience over self-sufficiency. In this articulation, sovereignty means possessing sufficient capabilities, options, and alternatives to withstand external disruptions or technology denial by other countries. Rather than focusing narrowly on domestic indigenisation, it emphasises the value of diversified supply chains, multiple technology sources, and the capacity to pivot quickly between technological pathways. This idea stresses possessing enough capabilities to absorb and re-create foreign technologies. One of the earliest proponents of this view was Paul Grant, who, in a 1983 paper, defined tech sovereignty as “the capability and the freedom to select, to generate or acquire and to apply, build upon and exploit commercially technology needed for industrial innovation. It is present to the degree that there is the technological capability to undertake such tasks: it is absent to the degree that others are able to restrict or prevent subsequent development or exploitation of that technology.”
One instrument to realise this vision is to promote open technology, which involves leveraging open standards, open-source software, open-source hardware, and collaborative R&D initiatives to reduce single points of technological dependency. Though open-source alternatives might not always be cutting edge, their mere existence reduces the power of nation-states controlling proprietary technologies.
For India, this vision is especially relevant. India's recent endorsement of open-source systems at the Paris AI Action Summit illustrates its strategic alignment with this viewpoint. By promoting open-source AI models and interoperability standards, India seeks to position itself not merely as a consumer of foreign technologies but as a player capable of shaping global technology norms and standards. Open technology approaches also allow India to leverage its extensive human capital to influence international technology development.
Government initiative to fund a commercial chip fabrication plant also makes strategic sense from this view of tech sovereignty. While it will cater to less than 5 per cent of India’s total chip demand, the fab will likely create baseline capabilities in a supply chain segment where India has no presence.
The third vision equates technological sovereignty with innovation policy. In their paper titled Technological Sovereignty as Ability, not Autarky, March and Schieferdecker explain this view as follows: ‘our competence-based definition of technological sovereignty straight-forwardly implies that research, education, and innovation policy are key to strengthening technological sovereignty.’ This vision places human capital development at the front and centre of the technological sovereignty conversation. It follows that the State’s role should be to improve technical education, solve coordination problems, and remove barriers to commercialisation. Edler et al. take this view further, arguing that technological sovereignty cannot be an end in itself; rather, it is a means for ‘achieving the central objectives of innovation policy—sustaining national competitiveness and building capacities for transformative policies.’
This view naturally has a lot of relevance for the Indian context, given our underwhelming performance on innovation and R&D. This view acknowledges that technical breakthroughs are finally the end result of a long process that begins with high-quality education. Kailash Nadh, the CTO of online brokerage platform Zerodha, forcefully argued for this lens of tech sovereignty on his blog where he wrote, ‘any AI sovereignty focus must thus direct resources to fostering high quality research capacity across disciplines, aiming explicitly for a fundamental shift in conditions that naturally disincentivise skilled, analytical, critical-thinking, passionate brains from draining out of the country. In fact, the bulk of any long-term AI sovereignty strategy must be a holistic education and research strategy. Without the overall quality and standard of higher education and research being upped significantly, it is going to be a perpetual game of second-guessing and catch-up.’
The limitation of this strategy is its long gestation period. While a high-quality research ecosystem is necessary to build India’s atmashakti (self-strength) in tech, it doesn’t offer defence against hostile actions that could deny access to foundational technologies today. For instance, this view does not provide a direct response to mitigate the impact of AI compute export controls and technology denial regimes—developments that might hurt India’s technological development today.
The fourth vision of technological sovereignty is about developing asymmetric technological power. This view aligns closely with a classic geopolitical understanding of power, i.e. the capacity to exert influence and impose asymmetric costs on adversaries. At its core, this perspective calls for identifying and cultivating presence in niche supply chain segments to gain leverage. For example, nations historically have leveraged specific technologies—such as advanced semiconductor fabrication, specialised raw materials, or cyber capabilities—to apply political, economic, or security pressure on rivals. Countries gain strategic leverage by controlling a few critical nodes within global technology supply chains, deterring technology denial by adversaries.
This vision of tech sovereignty holds promise for capable developing countries like India. However, the strategic dilemma for India lies in the limited scope for using its strengths as leverage. Unlike countries such as the US or China, which dominate various critical technology domains (such as advanced computing chips, rare earth elements processing, or telecommunications infrastructure), India's advantages are diffused. India's primary asset remains its vast and highly skilled talent pool, with world-class engineers, scientists, and technologists employed globally across diverse sectors. Given this unique but indirect strength, India’s most feasible pathway to exercising technological leverage—its "asymmetric option"—is embedding Indian talent across critical global technology supply chains. The strategic goal in the near-term, therefore, becomes ensuring that substantial Indian participation exists in all major technology ecosystems. Such dependencies can make it costly for other nations to isolate or disadvantage India geopolitically.
These four meanings of technological sovereignty are not mutually exclusive. However, understanding them is essential for crafting a technology strategy. India’s quest for technology sovereignty will probably involve a mix of all four perspectives. In all likelihood, India will have to focus on developing baseline capabilities in the short term, craft asymmetric options in the medium term, and transform its innovation policy in the long term.
HomeWork
Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters
[Podcast] In many ways, standard international relations theory cannot explain the India-Pakistan relationship. Atul Mishra’s 2021 book, The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan, develops a new framework to explain why the two countries are entangled the way they are. We discussed this book in the latest Puliyabaazi.
[Paper] An analysis of the Post-Uri Scenario Through an India-Pakistan Conflict Escalation Framework.
[Thread] A Twitter thread covering major trends in India’s defence expenditure, along with some projections till 2030.
“This narrative ignores the point that India will not be taken seriously across the world if it cannot punish a country in its neighbourhood that uses terrorism repeatedly and predictably against it.” Just curious about evidence that justifies this punishment. We did not get to hear of any thorough investigations before the operation was launched. Second, a lot of the narratives we were seeing were further polarising the country along religious lines. It makes me wonder if we were making a principled point or was this yet another opportunity to advance a divisive political agenda.
A fairly objective assessment but I differ on the following points which are not covered or there is a tilt :
1. The defence platforms of India got tested and performed very well since considering very few, if any of Pakistan's drones and missiles swarms could penetrate India boundary. This is the first time these have been tested.
2. Indian missile and drone platform also performed very well and caused considerable damage which I feel your article underplayed.
3. I also feel that India cannot be ignored by world despite their pre-occupation in other matters due to its size of economy, large market and very very strong army which is battle hardened.
4. I also felt that there was a bit of praise required for calmness, maturity and controlled aggression exhibited by political leadership especially the PM who handled himself very well under the circumstrances and took a bold call despite of precedence of last 50 years of indifferent response by previous government.
5. All the above indicates that India is punching above its weight category.