Opinion | Code, Power And Politics: Why Modi Sees AI As The New Frontier Of Geopolitics

PM Modi bets that AI, chips and cognitive sovereignty now sit alongside defence and trade as core determinants of national power

Artificial intelligence is no longer a niche technology story; it is fast becoming one of the decisive arenas in which power will be accumulated, contested and constrained in the 21st century. For Narendra Modi, convening a global AI summit in New Delhi and tying it explicitly to Viksit Bharat is a way of signalling that India intends to be a rule-maker, not a rule-taker, in this new geopolitical order.

Across capitals, AI is shifting from a technical domain to a central instrument of statecraft, touching everything from military strategy to industrial policy, surveillance and digital sovereignty. The United States, the European Union, and China are now each attempting to export their own bundled models of chips, cloud services, software, and rules to third countries, converging into a battle of AI stacks of sorts.

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It is a struggle that can define the rest of the 21st century, over whose values, security assumptions and regulatory philosophies will be embedded deep inside other nations’ digital infrastructure.

At the same time, AI is transforming the conduct of conflict and coercion. Open-source work and UN reporting have already documented autonomous systems engaging human targets, raising questions about whether meaningful human control can be preserved in lethal decision-making.

The same underlying techniques power hyper-realistic deepfakes, synthetic media and automated propaganda operations that have the capacity to be tuned to local languages and grievances. Ultimately, it may just erode trust in institutions and make societies more vulnerable to manipulation.

No country, therefore, can afford to treat AI as an afterthought. As a recent Atlantic Council assessment put it, the question is no longer whether AI will reshape the global order, but how quickly and at what cost. That is the backdrop against which Modi’s AI diplomacy needs to be read.

Why Modi wants to host the world on AI

Modi has made clear in recent months that he sees technology, and AI in particular, as one of the main levers for turning the slogan of Viksit Bharat into a concrete development strategy. In a wide-ranging pre-Budget interview, he linked India’s newfound confidence in negotiating free trade agreements with 38 countries to deeper structural........

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