The contents of this essay are based on conversations during the 7th India-US Forum
In just a year, the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) has gone from being an idea to becoming an organizing principle of the India-US bilateral relationship. Now, there is no Forum that meets bilaterally without some tangent that connects it to the iCET. This demonstrates the centrality of the technology conversation in this relationship and the enormous untapped potential for mutually beneficial technological cooperation.
At a time when demographics, markets, and policymaking in India are coming together in a sweet spot of growth, technology can turbocharge this process to the benefit of both US and Indian entities.
This bilateral conversation under iCET is not a new one, but previous attempts have been unfulfilling. In the past, this conversation happened via the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) which was government-led, while iCET is government enabled but private- sector-led. The strategic framework has evolved since the days of DTTI with increased alignment at the top leading to a broader buy-in by all stakeholders on both sides, which is responsible for the recent breakthroughs. Sustaining this momentum across several domains will require constant advocacy.
iCET is a framework to enable technology to go beyond pure supply-chain partnerships driven by labor, and instead aims to promote outcome-oriented technology collaboration by facilitating greater technology sharing, co-development, and co-production opportunities. An aspirational example would be for India to not just increase iPhone assembly, but be the design and production home for next-generation Apple products.
The launch of iCET between India and the US in January 2023 led to calls for similar partnerships from more of India’s close partners. India, the US, and the Republic of Korea announced the launch of a trilateral initiative on critical and emerging technologies in March 2024. Greater cooperation among like-minded countries on these subjects is a net positive that will help to embed the footprint of iCET more effectively.
There has been a significant progress under iCET in its first year. Under the defense pillar, the technology transfer arrangement for joint production of General Electric’s F414 engines with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has set a benchmark. The launch of India-US Defence Innovation Bridge (Indus-X) and the collaboration between General Atomics and multiple Indian startups on co-developing components has taken this progress further. Under the defense industrial cooperation roadmap, the two governments have begun to explore co-production of defense platforms and cooperation in certain foundational technologies which would enable development of a whole new generation of products and applications.
The space pillar has seen India’s accession to the Artemis Accords in June 2023. The NISAR satellite (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, which was originally scheduled to launch in 2024, is now expected in 2025. There has been progress towards the inclusion of an Indian astronaut in a NASA spacecraft on a mission to the International Space Station. Greater cooperation in the commercial satellite launch space would appear to be the logical way forward, buoyed by the recently launched sub-group under the Civil-Space Working Group.
In the telecommunications pillar, an Indian telecom company, Bharti Airtel, has undertaken Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) field trials in India using American equipment. Success in these trials could potentially result in deployment of the technology in third countries and in cooperation with other Quad partners.
In the cybersecurity pillar, India and the US are now sharing threat intelligence. The counter ransomware initiative that was created with the initiative of US Deputy NSA Anne Neuberger, has now expanded to 36 nations. The two countries also have a bilateral cyber dialogue; they cooperate on this issue via the Quad and through iCET. This multi-level engagement has increased the volume of discussion but has also caused overlaps. The challenges discussed in the bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral fora are the same. How to minimize the overlap to increase efficiency and reduce duplication of efforts, therefore, becomes an imperative.
Trust is a vital element in critical technology and cybersecurity collaboration. In the last two years, Indian stakeholders’ trust in American companies has increased. In June 2023, the Government of India came out with a national security directive which said that any equipment connected to the Indian telecom network has to be a trusted product from a trusted source. American companies operating in India go through this process of product and source disclosures without any issues in reinforcing the trust. In addition to the Indian directive, the US recently came out with a cybersecurity certification called the Cyber Trust Mark for IoT devices, which is a welcome step for the security of the ecosystem.
Institutional trust, however, is not achieved by a few isolated actions. It needs to be built across segments, step by step, over the years. India and the US signing the Security of Supply Arrangement (SOSA) and Reciprocal Defense Procurement Agreement (RDP) were significant steps last year. India qualifying under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement would be another step if it comes to fruition. A major step forward in a trusted technology partnership would be the development and deployment of small modular reactors.
While the progress is a welcome sign, it must be noted that growth under iCET has been limited so far to mature sectors in which the technology, products, business use cases, institutional actors, and cooperation structures already existed. Cooperation in these cases was an exercise in identifying and enabling the right stakeholders, not R&D. In fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotech, the cooperation is in a nascent stage with significant R&D yet to be done. There are aspects of artificial intelligence such as high-performance computing where collaboration can progress immediately if India is moved from tier three to tier one in US export controls.
In the long term, technology cooperation will rely on smooth R&D cooperation. The building blocks of a successful R&D relationship will imply fixing information asymmetries in our universities and national laboratories. At the same time, both sides will need to invest in building habits of cooperation.
While iCET focuses on co-development projects, a parallel aim should be to ensure that government, industry, and academia in both countries engage across sectors to break silos that exist within their domestic systems, particularly between the civil and strategic domains. The categorizing of emerging technologies into individual buckets of defense, manufacturing etc., is not as important as the acknowledgment of the criticality of technologies. With the pace of innovation, this flexibility will allow for continued conversations without getting stuck in bureaucratic crevices.
Most critical technologies are under a strict control regime and hence their passage is more cumbersome. Pipelines such as Indus-X will play a major role in ensuring that collaborations between startups in India and the US are able to see dollars at the end of the innovation tunnel. For short-term collaborations under iCET, two variables need to be considered: every problem should address a unique problem statement, and the platform should support a percentage of high-risk projects that would otherwise get neglected. Ideas that pass these filters could be supported by a joint innovation fund for startups—a formalized avenue for commercializing cutting edge technology.
The government used to be the driver of innovation, but the driving seat has been taken over by industry. Technology products and services from industry are accessed by governments at scale. Some companies now enjoy the level of agency that formerly only belonged to governments. This comes with an operational risk both within and outside war zones. How these risks can be mitigated is a question for platforms like iCET to consider.
So far, the iCET process has been driven by the two National Security Councils. In the US, that has been critical in persevering against naysayers in other agencies and branches of government. The established system could face challenges depending on the outcome of the presidential election in November 2024. For iCET to remain, prosper, and succeed it has to be predicated on wins, which means it has to be predicated on projects.
These projects will have to demonstrate to the incoming administration how India can be a technology partner for the US to build comparative advantages over the next decade. India can offer low-cost space technology, healthcare, and telecom technology like the 4G stack, which is getting upgraded to 5G, along with cooperation in Open Radio Access Network (ORAN). Developing technology in India is much cheaper than in the US. A Zinnov study reported that every major Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) of the US and Europe that carries out their R&D in India saves approximately USD 100 billion. India also has a National Quantum Mission with a starting fund of INR 7,000 cr (70 bn) under the Principal Scientific Advisor’s office, and has launched a National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems worth INR 4,000 cr (40 bn) with 25 verticals.
What makes iCET different from previous iterations of collaborative conversations is the focus on implementation. 2023 was the year of ideas and announcements, but 2024 must be the year of implementation.
The lack of a dependable structure is the one impediment that needs to be addressed to unlock the quantum of available opportunities—a structure that can handle the load of projects and logistics while instituting monthly meetings instead of annual ones. This structure could take the shape of a management organization which is a private-cum-government-sector institution that gives continuity and monitors the projects. The responsibility for monitoring is currently being shouldered by officers who are juggling multiple responsibilities.
