Washington, DC [US], April 11 : At the Carnegie Global Tech Summit, Tarun Chhabra, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Technology and National Security in the United States, reflected on past US-India technology ties, particularly during his tenure, underscoring a shared strategic outlook between Washington and New Delhi.
"We had a shared view with our counterparts in New Delhi at a time on shared concern on supply chains and vulnerabilities in our supply chain," he said. Noting mutual opportunities, he added, "We saw opportunities in talent flow and cooperation. We both share a concern about China being on the frontline of a technological revolution, as when technology is applied to the national security space."
Chhabra emphasised the importance of strategic alignment in determining the direction of technological and defence cooperation. Referencing the development and application of diffusion rules in critical sectors like biotechnology, he noted that strategic context was a key motivator behind joint decisions.
"At the end of the day, in defence cooperation, biotechnology has brought benefits to our countries, but the key driver is the strategic context," he said. He also highlighted emerging regulatory challenges in the AI hardware supply chain, particularly in relation to sensitive technologies. "A concern that China was getting access to computers that we did not want them to get access to. We did not have in our regulatory toolkit on what GPUs were going into South East Asia," he said.
Looking at regional dynamics, Chhabra pointed out that certain nations have adopted AI strategies that closely resemble the Chinese model, raising fresh challenges for policy frameworks.
"There are countries that have significant AI strategies on land, or even GpUs, very similar to the Chinese context. We felt that would trigger the rapid off shoring that we did not want as a national security in India," he said.
However, India was considered outside the scope of such concerns. "That did not apply to India. We feel that the Gulf could be a global chips hub second only to the US. The tiering system as a practical matter, what we proposed we did not think would get into the material demands of India's ambitions."
Chhabra defended earlier US actions to restrict China's access to semiconductors and related tools, saying those steps had strategic value. "I think we would be in a fundamentally worse position today if China had unconstrained access to these chips; we took further action to constrain access to semiconductor manufacturing equipment," he said. "I think that, absent that action, China, as a competitor on the front of AI, would be in a very different place."
Chhabra expressed both optimism and caution regarding the future of open-source AI models. "I think there is enormous good coming from open wave models. I think there will be a stage in which we begin to worry more about what the risks could be, whether they are cyber risks or bio risks." He acknowledged Meta's efforts with its Llama model while flagging potential security concerns. "Meta has Llama, and some of the closed suite companies are releasing open wave models. But I think we need to look at the security risks of DeepSeek."
Chhabra also touched on the growing interest in high-tech sectors beyond AI. "There is a lot of interest in investing in the civil nuclear sector, with amendments to the law. Do you think there is a scope for investments there? Bio pharmaceuticals is another area that is ripe. President Trump has announced tariffs on the sector," he said, adding that aerospace remains promising as well. There is a lot of area of cooperation in space, especially for our start-ups"
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