Takshashila Issue Brief - The Quad Agenda for Semiconductors, Biotechnology, and Space
Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in the third Quad Leaders’ Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, along with leaders from Australia, Japan, and the United States. They discussed the Indo-Pacific region, reaffirming their commitment to shared democratic values and strategic interests. They announced several regional resilience, prosperity, and development initiatives, including a clean energy supply chain initiative, a Quad infrastructure fellowships programme, and a partnership for undersea cable connectivity and resilience in the Indo-Pacific.
India will host the next Quad Summit in 2024. Since its regrouping, the Quad has set an ambitious agenda and the partners have demonstrated commitment to using the platform for realising a shared vision of the Indo-Pacfic — free, open, inclusive, and resilient. While the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness provides the immediate maritime governance and security agenda for the Quad, the grouping must diversify its focus to other areas as well.
We have argued that the “convergence of values and geopolitical interests means Quad countries are uniquely placed to envelop their economies inside bubbles of trust”. An economic agenda for Quad is critical to bolstering its security and geopolitical interests. The Quad has already established working groups such as the Critical and Emerging Technology working group, which has identified areas such as semiconductors, biotechnology, 5G communication, space, and cybersecurity, for collaboration.
In this Issue Brief, we take a look at some of the area-specific recommendations for the Quad, arising from our work, which can not only achieve Quad’s objectives but also help usher in a freer global economic order.
Semiconductors Given their unique global supply chain, multilateralism is not a choice but a necessity for semiconductors. We have argued that the Quad Semiconductor Supply Chain Initiative “suggests a shift in mindset from national self-sufficiency to multilateral strategic cooperation”.
In Siliconpolitik: The Case for a Quad Semiconductor Partnership, we argued that the Quad collaboration on semiconductors must rest on the following principles, which give rise to specific recommendations:
Think security and ecosystem, not indigenisation and manufacturing: Quad can set up a consortium aimed at building a diversified semiconductor manufacturing base and cooperate on developing new standards such as RISC-V and GaN manufacturing [1].
Coalesce “bubbles of trust”: The Quad must aim to form a larger bubble of semiconductor manufacturing involving Taiwan and South Korea and another one on semiconductor R&D and design with the EU and Taiwan.
Governments should do what companies can’t or won’t: The Quad must encourage strategic cooperation on R&D between private companies in respective countries. Agreements on tech transfers, licensing, and cross-licensing within the ‘bubble’, backed by strong patent and legal enforcement regimes must be enabled.
Biotech & Biomanufacturing For the biotech sector, in the Takshashila Issue Paper - The Case for Quad Co-operation in Biotechnology we identified the following areas for potential collaboration between the countries: Pandemic Research Hub, Sustainable Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Vaccines, Gene Editing, Synthetic Biology, and Computational Biology.
In the more recent Takshashila Discussion Document – The Quad should Commit to a Bio-hub in India we propose setting up a bio-manufacturing hub in India, promoted by the Quad. Biotech is an emerging technology with significant economic potential in areas like foods, pharmaceuticals, oil, plastics, and more. Given its military applications, it also enjoys strategic value.
The ‘hub’ will focus on the following areas to enable coordination and collaboration between the biotech sectors of the Quad:
Strengthening the physical infrastructure
Strengthening workforce capabilities
Increasing visibility of available opportunities for funding or collaboration
Space Sector We first proposed the idea of a Quad space station in the Takshashila Discussion Document — Examining the Opportunities and Challenges for India’s Human Spaceflight Programme.
The analysis yields that India has immense potential for collaboration with Japan as a symmetric partner, and with Australia as a junior partner, for achieving its human spaceflight goals. While the scope is limited with respect to the U.S. due to differing space priorities, India can still benefit from working with the private space sector in the U.S. for building a space station. India could look to bolster its Gaganyan programme [2] by identifying options for international cooperation available within the Quad.