The Geopolitics of Technology: India’s Approach

By Ravi Nayyar

A few days back, India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, delivered the Inaugural Address at the Global Technology Summit, organised by Carnegie India. Following his remarks, he was interviewed by Indian foreign policy watcher of high renown (and Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, New Delhi), Dr C Raja Mohan.

The Minister’s interventions were excellent. They shed a good deal of light on India’s approach to navigating the extraordinary geopolitical and geoeconomical changes invited by societies’ ‘digital dependencies’ (to borrow from the OECD’s language). The Minister’s comments particularly touched on foreign policy issues brought to the fore by, to quote him, ‘covid, conflict and climate change’.

Of note was his explanation of statecraft in a world where:

• the Westphalian order has been rendered irrelevant by sheer technological interconnectivity between nation-states;
• ‘everything is being weaponised’; and
• the choice between a more ‘collaborative’ globalisation in the context of ‘trusted partners…[,] trusted providers and trusted geographies’ — versus the hitherto more concentrated globalisation — is fundamental, certainly in a post-covid world dealing with the technological ruptures encouraged by great-power competition between the USA and China, as well as the war in Ukraine.

Now, as of my writing this, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs is yet to upload a transcript of the Minister’s remarks.

Hence, I thought I would save you the time and effort, and attempt a transcription myself. With the help of YouTube, of course.

Which is what this article is — a transcription of parts of the Minister’s interventions that I found interesting.

I hope you find them so too.

Oh, and TGIF.

Extracts from the Minister’s Inaugural Address

Today, technology is very much at the heart of geopolitics. You could, of course, argue that it was always so… That is really the story of both human progress and in a sense of competitive national politics… [and] when we think today of competitive politics’ sharper contradictions[,]… we should be more and more cognisant that it’s going to be driven by technology and also be visible or be reflected in the technology debates.

Now, I had six basic points to make today:

1. … [We in India] cannot be agnostic about technology and we have to stop pretending that there’s something neutral about technology. Technology is no more neutral than economics or any other activity… [T]he fact is, more and more things are technologically driven… [W]e need to understand that there’s a very strong political connotation which is inbuilt… I would say technology [is increasingly relevant] in terms of… [how] you [can use it to] influence… politics and how you actually shape decision-making in different societies.
2. My second point would be [that], for technology and geopolitics, the obvious big picture context is globalisation… [Globalisation] is about [the] economy. It is about technology. It is about mobility… [Therefore,] the globalisation big picture is very much at the heart of… geopolitics… I think the right argument is: are you for collaborative globalisation; or are you for a globalisation model which allows domination by a few players? And so… how flat or in a sense and how broad is your globalisation model?… [T]hat debate is going to be very much driven… by technology… [T]herefore, to my mind, neither technology nor globalisation should be considered, really, economic issues. I think they’re very strategic issues.
3. We live in an era where, in many ways, the Westphalian model of international relations is over for us in this era of technological interpenetration… I think the quality of partners and the sociology of partners… [is] a very, very important point. All partners are not the same and, therefore, today trust and transparency… have become key issues… I think in the digital side, we are going to hear, more and more, the concept of trusted geographies, so the moment you start talking trusted geographies, the geopolitical connotation of that is very, very clear.
4. Just as the Westphalian model has started to become less relevant, obviously, when it comes to supply chains, the Nagoya model has also started, I think, to become less relevant. Between covid, conflict and climate change, just-in-time is just too risky. So the… world, and I think particularly large countries with deep interests, are actually moving to a just-in-case approach rather than a just-in-time approach. And a lot of economic choices and technology choices are going to be driven by a just-in-case approach. So, if you actually have resilience and reliability in supply chains, and you have trust and transparency when it comes to data, I would suggest, if you add these two concepts up,… the outcome you’re going to get is a very different geopolitical outcome than it used to be before.
5. [T]he fifth point I would make is regarding India itself. Our sense of technology in the past has been very narrow… Typically, if you ask people in government, … “What’s your sense of strategic technologies?”, they would say, “Well, defence, nuclear, [and] space”. I think that’s… 50 years out of date… [Today exists] a completely different world there where the building of deep strengths is actually going to determine our capabilities… [W]hat we in India call ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, which is like a ‘Self-Reliant India’, you can say a kind of an economic strategic autonomy, that is today going to be key for global rebalancing. That big players are going to consciously strive to be… technologically more capable in order for rebalancing to actually take place…
6. [G]eopolitics ultimately does come down to partners and choices… [T]here are different… ways you can slice up multipolarity. You can look at multipolarity… [by asking,] “Who are your key partners politically? Who are your key partners in trade? Who are your key partners in energy?” And the answer will always be very different. So, when it comes to technology, because technology is going to be a key criteria today, I would say our key partners… [and] this is my view of what should be India’s view which is, I feel [determined by asking], “Who gives us access, … who is our collaborator and who is our market?”… [T]hese should be the criteria of… which direction the needle should move and if you look at India’s geopolitical positioning, I would say it should be a kind of a… net assessment of politics, of energy, [and] of economics, but increasingly [also] of where our technological… interests lie. And our positioning should really give a substantial weight to that technology factor.

So let me just conclude by saying that when we speak about the rise of India, the rise of India is deeply linked to the rise of Indian technology…

[I]n the world that we are in today, I would still say there might be greater disorder under the heavens but there is more opportunity in that disorder.

Extracts from the Minister’s Interview with Dr C Raja Mohan

I’m not sure globalisation changed so much after 2016. I think the debates and awareness about the real nature of globalisation changed…

[The key] is actually a sharper realisation that big production shares, big market shares, [and] big resources are all going to be leveraged and leveraged right in your face. So the idea that… everybody was going to be delicate about it and going to have rules and will work out something which is good for everybody, that’s not the direction the world has gone. We have actually seen… very tough decisions made by some countries… tough in terms of the impact it has on the rest of the world…

[Y]ou need, in a way, much more decentralised globalisation. You need many more centres of production… [I]f you are going to move in terms of de-risking the global economy, a large part of it will have to be to de-risk the technology sources and the production sources associated with it…

[W]hen I hear people saying, “Well, you know, our [India’s] future is in services”, … that’s simply not true, you know. Our future is also in services, definitely. But you cannot say that we will grow to be a major power and we’re going to give manufacturing a pass. And that is why [the] PLI [Production Linked Incentive Schemes], for example, the strong support which is today being given [by the Indian Government]… to different domains of manufacturing, is… so vital.

[W]hen the debate moves in the direction of civil-military fusion, … this belief that there are technologies and… activities that are benign and we can compartmentalise it, and there’s that tough… national security world [on one hand] and there’s this nice world where market economics [means] it will be business as usual [on the other hand], I think that belief has collapsed…

As I said, where our data [is] going is no longer a matter of business and economics. It’s a matter of national security… [E]verything is being weaponised in this world of ours, so I have to change my approach to the extent of where I should be protective about my interests. I have to define my protective zone in a much broader sense. Now, obviously, no country you know can really be an island… which is where trusted partners and trusted providers and trusted geographies come. So, there would be partners where I would have the confidence that… to a fair degree…, shall I say, the possibility of misuse of my data would be much less because there would be safeguards in those societies or those governments or those economies… and those will be partly influencing my choices…

The world of policy, the world of politics, the world of national security, cannot be divorced or cannot be in conflict with what is there, in a sense, on the street [eg commercial realities]…

[I]n the name of not being protectionist, it mustn’t be that you throw the baby out with the bathwater… [S]urely, a country like this [India] must have capabilities… [T]here must be an industrial policy. There must be a national security policy. There must be a national security industrial policy… I think it’s important to get the balance right… [I]t should be… fair not to… use [these] throwback images to advocate… a de-industrialised India as a disarmed India. And which one of us wants to see unilateral disarmament in this competitive world?

Today, we are talking of the impact of technology on geopolitics. I think it’s equally important to look at… the converse — the impact of geopolitics on technology. That if you get your geopolitics right, in a way, there are a lot of technology benefits, you know, to my mind… [A]t least in modern history, everybody has grown in partnership with somebody else… [W]e have to see today… where are our interests and who are the… partners we should have. And that is why I said, to me, my definition of our long-term partnerships is really [based on asking,] “Where is it that… our technologies and our capabilities will grow?” Which means, “Who gives you access?” And they will only grow if it’s a business which means, therefore, “Who gives you business?” And they will grow when there is a human collaborative connect… So, where is it that there’s actually a living bridge [in]… technology? And, to my mind, the answers are as plain as the nose on my face.

[T]he semiconductor space will finally be… a business dominated space… [but] it’s a government’s job to provide a kind of enabling environment… [J]ust getting out of the way is no longer enough… I think, today, businesses… would be rightfully expecting a much greater support from the government because that’s really what’s happening in the rest of the world.

[Relations b]etween sovereign states… at the end of the day, it’s a function of the state of the relationship… [Notwithstanding what happened especially after 1974,] it’s the same United States which has been our most forceful advocate for joining the NSG [Nuclear Suppliers Group], joining the MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime], joining [the] Wassenaar [Arrangement], [and] joining [the] Australia Group… [Finally,] it’s about the politics of the day[, which]… has changed profoundly… [such that] if you are constantly extrapolating difficult experiences, then… we are actually limiting our own possibilities… [T]he term which Prime Minister Modi used about “hesitations of history”. That “hesitation of history”… is this suspicious mindset. Which is “I had a bad experience once, therefore, … I will never cross the road again”… [T]hat’s not the way we [India] are ever going to rise.

It’s a competitive world which we can sometimes convince ourselves is benign, but it is fundamentally competitive. But in a competitive world, it’s not a Hobbesian world where it’s all against all… Like in civil society, international relations is also about finding, making relationships and building… the rules and the ability… to work together.

[W]e haven’t had a[n EU-India Trade and Technology Council] meeting… because… partly, the Ukraine war has kind of sucked up all the oxygen there in… Europe… we will be hopefully doing our meeting… at some point… we’ve been far more engaging on IPEF, … not out of intent, [rather] out of circumstances…

[I]f catastrophic events happen in production centres, … the catastrophic event can be climate but you know, as we saw, it could be covid. So, when you have concentrated production today, you are actually putting the entire world at risk. And in the de-risking [process], … pandemics is a lesson to learn, conflicts…, that is a risk as well. But I would argue that, increasingly, …extreme climate [risk,]… because it will be a more recurring issue, would be a worry.