Commentary
Find our newspaper columns, blogs, and other commentary pieces in this section. Our research focuses on Advanced Biology, High-Tech Geopolitics, Strategic Studies, Indo-Pacific Studies & Economic Policy
Why India, Taiwan should strengthen ties
By Arjun Gargeyas
As the world gets back on its feet from the Covid-19 pandemic while reeling under a global chip shortage, Taiwan has become an important geopolitical focal point. Taiwan’s stranglehold over the semiconductor industry and its overall technology expertise have demonstrated its strategic importance in the global world order.Taipei’s New Southbound Policy was envisaged by President Tsai Ing-wen to enhance cooperation between Taiwan and other major states in Southeast and South Asia. India, on the other hand, formulated the Act East Policy as a major diplomatic initiative to promote economic strategic relations with other states in the Indo-Pacific region.With both India and Taiwan looking to deepen diplomatic ties in their respective regions, now would be the opportune time for the two states to forge an alliance built on common interests.
(Re)Defining Social Media as Digital Communication Networks
This article originally appeared in TheQuint with the headline 'We Need a Better Definition for Social Media To Solve Its Problems.' An excerpt is reproduced here.
The Need For a New Term
There’s nothing wrong with an evolving term, but it must be consistent and account for future-use cases. Does ‘social media platforms’ translate well to the currently buzz-wordy ‘metaverse’ use-case, which, with communication at its core, shares some of the fundamental characteristics identified earlier? Paradoxically, the term ‘social media platform’ is simultaneously evolving and stagnant, expansive yet limiting.This is one of the reasons my colleagues at The Takshashila Institution and I proposed the frame of 'Digital Communication Networks' (DCNs), which have three components — capability, operators and networks.Read More
Neither MoD nor MHA can resolve the unacceptable state of affairs on Indo-Tibetan Border
The Indo-Tibetan border continues to be actively problematic and the trajectory of the current geopolitical events seem to indicate that politico-military tensions will endure. The lack of progress in the 13th India-China Corps Commanders talks and the two military incidents in Tawang and Barahoti are but symptoms of the continuing tensions. Conflict in its varied forms is on the cards. Yet, India’s political leadership and national security practitioners seem to be blind to the dangers posed and opportunities missed in effectively manning the active border.Read the full article in ThePrint
India needs a framework to regulate the use of artificial intelligence
The White House Offiice of Science and Technology Policy called for a new Charter of rights for the 21st century last week, aptly titled the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill of Rights. These rights are envisioned as the first step to ensure the protection of established norms of civil rights, and aim to direct the development and use of technology in ways that are compatible with constitutional mandates, furthering the interpretation of the Bill of Rights in today’s world of data and algorithms.Such initiatives are gaining momentum across the world. The European Union (EU) proposed the Artificial Intelligence Act this summer, initiating conversations on regulating the development and use of AI. The objective was to create conditions for the effective functioning of the EU’s single market, adhering to standards of safety and governance while creating legal certainty.Read the full article on Hindustan Times
Make Public India’s Doctrine on use of Force, it’ll Dispel notion that we are Non-Committal
The strategic community might have received more cud to chew on when an independent and multidisciplinary Indian group released a Discussion Document titled ‘India’s Path to Power – Strategy in a World Adrift’. on 2 October. In 2011, several members of this group were associated with Non-Alignment 2.0. It says: “The guiding premise of the present document is that India’s external and internal environments are now being shaped by tectonic shifts—incipient trends that require thinking afresh and calibrating India’s strategy on a broad front. A new world needs new ideas from time to time….This document is an effort to focus our attention on the need for concentrated strategic thought and encouraging a debate about the hard choices that confront India in the decade ahead.”
Adopting the perspective of a decade, the strategic compass of the document attempts to steer India’s path to power through the realisation of its potential in a world adrift in the waters of growing geopolitical tensions that could severely test India’s statecraft. Adopting a strategic approach is imperative and doing the right things paramount in contrast to just doing it right. The writings on India’s geopolitical wall are seemingly ominous, and what the country decides about the role of force may take centre stage. Without it, India’s development of military power and its application could cost us dearly.
Read the full article in The Print.
Leaked Documents open a Pandora’s Box of Issues
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a non-profit organisation based in the United States. It is fully funded by donations, and donor details are available on its website, as are its annual reports. Its 2020 annual report says that its annual expenses were $4.7 million (about Rs 35 crore). The ICIJ has a small, core group of 280 investigative reporters who operate through various offices worldwide and is also supported by a network of members from more than hundred countries.Read the full article in Free Press Journal
Prospects of Indian and Chinese collaboration with Russia on a Joint Space Station
Read the full Article on Valdai ClubIndia’s strategic rival China has already made advances in maintaining a sustained human presence in orbit and the learning curve for India appears steep. Only collaboration with Russia can give India a leg up and may perhaps be the only path for India to catch up to China in any meaningful way, writes Aditya Pareek, Research Analyst at the Bangalore-based Takshashila Institution. Read the full Article on Valdai Club
Japan aims to toughen up its cybersecurity
World is Entering A New Moon Age
Read the full article on Times of India It will require India to do some tough space diplomacy between divergent spacefaring campsOn September 7, 2019, India’s Chandrayaan-2 Moon Lander crashed in a cloud of lunar dust no human would witness. It had experienced a “hard landing” on a desolate patch of the lunar surface. Isro chairman K Sivan called the mission “98% successful”, which implicitly acknowledged the sheer difficulty of such undertakings but also reflected the combination of optimism and determination that go into India’s spacefaring aspirations. Read the full article on Times of India
Will the Quad Tangle with the O-RAN Alliance?
By Arjun Gargeyas
While China and Huawei may have won the 5G race, all is definitely not lost for those looking to reduce their dependencies on the Chinese telecom infrastructure.Technology was a major area of focus during the first in-person summit held in the United States. The Quad has already created a working group on critical and emerging technologies to facilitate cooperation and innovation between the states. Semiconductors and 5G were the areas of focus in the technology sphere with an idea of using alternative 5G technology to create a global communications standard.A 5G deployment and diversification effort is already in the works with the “support and the critical role of Quad governments in fostering and promoting a diverse, resilient and secure telecommunications ecosystem,” as mentioned by White House officials.
This is where open radio access networks (O-RAN) and the O-RAN alliance come into the picture.
The regulation of social media can be an opportunity for India
This article was originally published in The MintChina gives us an estimate of how many people you need to effectively monitor content on the internet. The Great Firewall employs over 100,000 people to prevent around a billion Chinese internet users from accessing content Beijing considers undesirable. That is one censor for every 10,000 users. In contrast, according to Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who released internal company documents to the media recently, Facebook has around 40,000 employees keeping an eye on content posted by its 2.5 billion users around the world, or a ratio of roughly 1:70,000. Thus, the company would need to employ seven times as many people to match the Beijing standard. In fact, if we account for the fact that Facebook would need to monitor conversations in over 100 languages, it might need as many as half a million censors.Sure, artificial intelligence can perhaps reduce the headcount requirements, especially if clever humans don’t stay a step ahead of censorship rules as they generally have throughout history. Even so, if social media networks come to be mandated to monitor user content as part of the ongoing scrutiny by the world’s governments, the world will need millions of censors in the coming years. They will be called content oversight officers, online safety managers, country compliance executives, forum moderators and suchlike, but the job scope will essentially be to prevent certain types of content from spreading on their networks.There is one problem, though: Good censors are hard to find. In a speech to parliament in 1644 opposing the censorship of books, poet John Milton said: “He who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of books... had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious. If he be of such worth as behooves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets... we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we are to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary." In other words, good censorship demands wise and learned people, but ends up attracting only the wrong sort. This problem will not trouble authoritarian governments very much, but social media networks concerned about free speech are bound to hit a human-resource crunch pretty soon.The demand for “a person above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious" is not restricted to just content moderators for social media companies. Given how deeply and profoundly the tech industry already impacts society, everyone from engineers and developers to chief executives and investors will need to have a better understanding of a range of disciplines in the social sciences. Facebook’s current troubles demonstrate how difficult it is to retrofit social responsibility and ethical considerations on business models and corporate cultures that were designed for different goals. If you are building a startup today, you are better-off paying less attention to cynical industry veterans who’ll tell you to ignore the idealistic stuff and chase the money. The next few years will likely see legislation in several major countries designed to hold big tech companies accountable for social ills caused by the use of their products.Negative and harmful content is usually more contagious, and this phenomenon is amorally exploited by growth-seeking business models to the detriment of society. Haugen’s testimony to the US Congress last week contained nothing we didn’t already know, but it is nevertheless an important milestone in the growing political realization that the negative social consequences of social media have become too serious to ignore. If lawmakers in the United States knew what to do about it, they would perhaps have done it. Unfortunately, they do not, yet. In the meantime, expect piecemeal legislation over specific issues flagged by whistleblowers and activists, tempered by the tech industry and its lobbyists.The emerging new balance between public interest, tech-industry business models and online behaviour is an opportunity for India’s tech industry and its people. In addition to technical skills, an aspiring tech entrepreneur or employee will need to be broadly educated and capable of making value judgements. Let’s be honest: Too little in our education system prepares us for this. Our smartest people can solve calculus problems, but are unlikely to know much about the ideas of Bentham or the Bhagavad Gita. Encouraging new liberal arts universities and including social-science subjects in engineering and science curriculums at the undergraduate level is part of the answer.I am also optimistic that market forces will drive companies and individuals to invest in training in ethics, responsible strategy and social impact analysis. (Full disclosure: I teach courses on these subjects at the Takshashila Institution). India’s competitive advantage in the tech economy has always been high- quality human capital at scale. The challenge now is to create millions of people who can exercise good judgement in addition to writing great code.
The Quad Makes the First Siliconpolitik Move
By Pranay Kotasthane
Summary
An earlier paper on ‘Siliconpolitik: The Case for a Quad Semiconductor Partnership’ made a detailed case for a Quad partnership on semiconductors. It argued that the Quad’s technology cooperation agenda should focus on semiconductors due to their ‘metacriticality’. Further, it reasoned that “since each Quad member enjoys a comparative advantage in a specific sub-domain of the semiconductor supply chain, this grouping is well-placed to collaborate.” With these arguments as a reference point, this paper analyses the semiconductor supply chain collaboration announcement at the first in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit.Read the full paper on the Institute of South Asian Studies website here [HTML & PDF].
Fantasy sport, Karnataka’s online gambling ban, and what policymaking gets wrong
Over the past few years, online fantasy sport (OFS) in India have gone from being a rather shady area of niche interest to becoming ubiquitous, so much so that a fantasy sport platform, Dream 11, was the title sponsor of IPL 2020. Indeed, the IPL viewing experience has changed significantly in recent years, with the long breaks between overs now stuffed with an array of commercials about cryptocurrencies, mutual funds and above all, fantasy sport. To someone unfamiliar with state-level policy developments in the country, this omnipresence of fantasy sport commercials would seem to suggest the presence of a thriving and safe fantasy sport industry, but the reality, of course, is quite the opposite.Creating fantasy teams and participating in fantasy sport contests, as would be obvious to many, involves a significant amount of domain knowledge, for instance, of cricket gameplay, player form, pitch conditions, and a deep understanding of the intricacies of T20 cricket (like wickets in powerplay overs are more valuable than in the death overs). Thus, investing money in an OFS cannot be called gambling.
On Semiconductors, India Needs to Reboot Trade Policies, Ecosystem to Build a TSMC
By Arjun Gargeyas and Pranay Kotasthane
Talks have accelerated between India and Taiwan to build a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing unit in the country. Reports have indicated that officials from both sides have met regularly to discuss the possible outcomes of Taiwan investing in a fabrication facility in India. The Taiwanese government and its major foundries, which hold the lion’s share of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing supply, have reportedly agreed to invest $7.5 billion in India to set up a long-pending fab in the country.
I could serve the Indian Army thanks to IAF ‘bounce’ party 50 years ago
The 1971 War gifted the 49th Regular Course at the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, three additional months of commissioned service. Our commissioning was advanced to 31 March 1972, instead of June that year, to make up for the war causalities. The losses had bequeathed the benefit of early commissioning to about 350 of us. Later, it became a topic of debate among our coursemates whether the benefit we enjoyed was at a cost to the Army. Some thought that the three months of training lost had often shown up in the overall performance of the batch.
While such debates will continue life long, here is a personal story that wouldn’t have been the same, had it not been for the Indian Air Force (IAF). As the IAF celebrates its raising on 8 October, I say “cheers” to them.
Read the full article in ThePrint
How China manufactured nationalism in triumph over Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s return
"If faith has colour, it must be China Red," said 49-year-old Meng Wenzhou, after returning to China after almost three years. Triumph in her speech and nationalism in the air around her couldn't have been more evident.Meng Wanzhou, Chief Finance Officer (CFO) of Huawei, returned to China on 25 September after she was arrested in December 2018 in Canada following an extradition request from the US, on charges of with fraud and misleading HSBC over Huawei’s business dealings in Iran in violations of American sanctions on Iran. She pleaded “not guilty” to charges but accepted that some information in her presentation to HSBC was false. She returned after the United States (US) agreed to drop the extradition request. The nationalist rhetoric of China's triumph in securing Meng's release was overflowing everywhere from state media to social media. Social media was abuzz with news of Meng coming back to the "motherland" to the extent that on 25th Sept, 26 of the top 30 hot searches on Weibo were related to Meng.While netizens admired China’s diplomatic efforts for securing her release, others were swooning over the very public display of affection by Meng's husband, Liu Xiaozong. The nationalistic fervour among netizens is perhaps best exemplified by a cartoon by Chinese cartoonist Wu Heqiling. It depicts a woman dressed in yellow being rescued from a huge shark-like creature, with its skin coloured as the US flag, by officers in a red helicopter. The cartoon went viral in China and even the Embassy of People's Republic of China in Sri Lanka shared it on Twitter. State media in China left no stone unturned in covering Meng's return. The hours-ling live broadcast of her landing at Bao’an airport in Shenzhen also featured a live flight tracker. Over 400 million people reportedly watched the live broadcast.The celebration is part of State media’s carefully manufactured nationalistic narrative.Read full article published by Firstpost.
COVID-19 outbreak underlines need for India to develop its own epidemic intelligence service
Australia may have opened the door for India. Like Rafale, a submarine deal is critical
Fear, it seems, is the reigning global emotion and is reflected in innumerable speeches at the seventy-sixth United Nations General Assembly session. The dangers posed to humanity by climate change, extremism, and human and women’s rights violations were seated in the front row of the hall of fear. Cooperation was a popular antidote. The problem is that global geopolitics is currently afflicted by a surge in confrontations, especially between the United States and China — the big powers.
Power balancing is the name of the game and both are in search of partners. Middle powers in Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific cannot possibly escape the shadows cast by the global and regional struggle for domination. India’s geographic endowments make it a prisoner of forces at play in both geographies. The Eurasian geopolitical struggle is for India, a primarily continental one, while the Indo-Pacific struggle is maritime. Striking a balance between the two is one of the central challenges of India’s national security strategy.
India should invest in ever more sophisticated cyber armaments
A century ago, the declaration of war was a formal exercise. Diplomats in frock coats would turn up at chancellories to first serve ultimatums and subsequently to hand-deliver notices of war. Some would even insist on reading them out aloud for the benefit of bemused recipients, who would then make arrangements for the safe departure of the enemy’s embassy. These age-old courtesies were abridged by the time of World War II and terse telegrams replaced frock coats. The advent of the Cold War, nuclear weapons and proxy wars of the 20th century put an end to the custom of formal war declarations. In recent times, an incoming missile or fighter aircraft announces war. Even so, we are used to wars that have a starting point and an end date.Not anymore. Information warfare is an ongoing affair. Cyber warfare, its technical aspect, has already been militarized. It is global and continues regardless of whether or not states are in armed conflict. We cannot pinpoint the date, month or even the year it started. And, unfortunately, we also cannot say when it will end, if ever. States have no choice but to wage it. Gloomy as this sounds, at least so far the pursuit of politics through these other means has avoided large scale bloodshed that characterized armed conflicts of the Industrial Age.Read the full article in The Mint
In Quad’s Semiconductor Gambit against China, India Stands to Gain
By Pranay Kotasthane
Semiconductors gave become a domain of confrontation between the US and China. And then, the demand shock of COVID-19 led to a severe shortage of chips in automobiles, medical devices, and other sectors. And finally, fears of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan—which alone accounts for nearly 73 per cent of the world’s global contract chip manufacturing—have made countries scramble for alternatives. And so, from being at the margins of the technology policy agenda of several countries, semiconductors have become a primary focus area. Little wonder then that the first in-person Quad Summit meeting on September 24 had semiconductors on its agenda.