Analysing the India-US Comprehensive and Global Strategic Partnership Joint Fact Sheet
In this special edition of Technopolitik, the Takshashila team analyses the 2024 Joint Fact Sheet on the India-US Comprehensive and Global Strategic Partnership.
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On the 21st of September, President Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened to discuss the progress and state of the US-India Comprehensive Global and Strategic Partnership. They reaffirmed their commitment to partnership and collaboration across sectors and also released a joint fact sheet that revealed new objectives in various spheres that both countries hope to achieve, in addition to detailing various areas of collaboration.
Earlier this year, a fact sheet detailing the 2024 iCET (an initiative on critical and emerging technologies was released), before which the previous India-US fact sheet on strengthening key cooperation dates back to last year. We compare the 2023 and 2024 iCET fact sheets here.
The Strategic Partnership fact sheet from earlier this month talked in depth about partnerships on semiconductors, quantum, clean energy and telecommunications. In addition to building on previous commitments and collaborations discussed in the Joint Fact Sheet released in June, there were also some new endeavours. Some areas, such as agriculture and healthcare, featured in previous fact sheets, did not feature in depth. Concrete details regarding anything AI-related were sparse. The National Science Foundation and India’s Department of Science and Technology announced the selection of 11 funding awards for joint research projects in multiple areas, such as next-gen telecommunications. Machine learning is also mentioned as one of these areas. Besides these, the joint statement only touches upon AI as an area that is seeing heightened cooperation between the two countries through a brief reiteration of iCET commitments and also by noting the increasing role of the private sector.
In this edition, the High Tech Geopolitics Team analyses the joint statement and looks at what new ventures for collaboration there are, in addition to differences and departures from previous fact sheets across sectors.
Semiconductors
In the past, India had one major complaint with the US about technology transfer. It went something along these lines: Russia was willing to transfer critical technology through government-to-government deals, while the US was not. The American government often responded that in the US, private companies make a call on overseas technology cooperation, not the government. It was hard for them to explain this to Indians even though American private companies do way more for tech transfer in India than Russia, particularly in the new high-tech domains.
However, the past few joint statements suggest that the US has got the message. You can now see many standard private sector cooperation items make their way into the joint statements of leader summits. In addition to this trend, there are now many overt partnerships between the techno-strategic ecosystems on both sides.
Specifically, there were three announcements related to semiconductor collaboration.
A new compound semiconductor fab: This announcement puts into action the June 2024 iCET fact sheet declarations on “investments into India’s ecosystem” and “assessments to identify opportunities for development of complementary ecosystems”. The plan is to manufacture chips for “advanced sensing, communication, and power electronics for national security, next-generation telecommunications, and green energy applications”. This makes it a unique dual-use technology collaboration between the Indian and US defence establishments. We will zoom in on this announcement in a Siliconpolitik edition.
GlobalFoundries announced a “Kolkata Power Center”. This is not a chip fab unit just yet, but it will be a place where GF will do R&D, testing, and use case application of its Gallium Nitride chips, which are increasingly being used for AI workloads in data centres since they are more power-efficient than equivalent silicon chips.
In the June 2024 iCET meeting, there was no mention of the International Technology Security and Innovation (ITSI) Fund. This fund was created under the CHIPS Act 2022, which authorises the US Department of State to invest $500 million over five years in friendly countries to make the semiconductor supply chain resilient. The readout of the latest summit says that the India Semiconductor Mission and MeitY are officially a part of the ITSI Fund.
All in all, a highly productive outcome from the Summit with regards to semiconductor collaboration.
Space
The fact sheet remains bullish on space cooperation, but the mentions are brief and short on specifics. It does say that both sides “welcomed progress toward the first joint effort by NASA and ISRO to conduct scientific research onboard the International Space Station in 2025.”
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in June 2023, both countries had announced a “joint effort” to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024. While that ambitious deadline has been unsurprisingly pushed back by about a year, it is now clear that India’s gaganyatri Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla is slated to pilot a mission to the ISS in early 2025. Another of India’s four gaganyatris, Group Captain Prashanth Nair, will serve as Shukla’s back up.
The ISS mission, dubbed Ax-4, will be run by the private American company Axiom Space. While Axiom is reportedly facing serious financial challenges, the Ax-4 mission is apparently set to proceed on schedule. In a press release, Axiom announced that veteran American astronaut Peggy Whitson will command the mission. Shukla will be the mission pilot and will be joined by two other crew members from Poland and Hungary.
While the ISS mission is likely to be of much immediate practical value, it is potentially a useful symbol of deepening bilateral space cooperation.
Notwithstanding the symbolism, the latest fact sheet makes little mention of progress on specific projects. For instance, previous fact sheets had mentioned the Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme (a NASA initiative to send small scientific payloads to the Moon) as well as the Lunar Gateway (a planned space station for the Moon). However, it would appear that both sides are finding it harder than expected to make serious progress on these ambitious projects.
Quantum
The fact sheet mentioned the Second convening of the U.S - India quantum coordination mechanism in Washington in August. Additionally, it also announced the creation of seventeen new awards for binational R&D cooperation on AI and quantum via the U.S. - India Science and Technology Endowment Fund (IUSSTF).
It also highlighted private sector cooperation on emerging technologies, such as IBM’s recent memoranda of understanding with the Government of India. The key focus of these memoranda was to enable IBM’s WatsonX platform on India’s Airawat supercomputer as part of building a new AI Innovation Platform, enhance R&D collaboration on advanced semiconductor processors as a knowledge partner and provide increased support for India’s National Quantum Mission with a focus on workforce enablement, development of industries and startup, R&D and providing quantum services and infrastructure.
Clean Energy Transition
The fact sheet delved into the India - US roadmap to build safe and secure global clean energy supply chains, a new initiative launched to expand safe and secure clean energy supply chains through Indian and U.S. manufacturing of clean energy technologies and components. The initial phase will seek to create $1 billion in multilateral funding to support projects across renewable energy, storage, power grids and transmission technologies, high-efficiency cooling systems, zero-emission vehicles and other emerging clean technologies.
It also highlighted the U.S International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)’s partnership with private firms in India to expand clean energy manufacturing. DFC has extended $750 million in loans so far to solar cell and module manufacturing projects.
The statement highlighted the Strategic Clean Energy Partnership (SCEP), most recently convened in September 2024, which collaborates on energy security, clean energy innovation, climate change and employment generation opportunities through capacity building and collaboration between industry and R&D. In addition, a new National Center for Hydrogen Safety in India is to be setup as part of the Renewable Energy Technology Action Platform (RETAP) to enhance collaboration on clean energy manufacturing and supply chains, including through public-private task forces on hydrogen and energy storage.
Additionally, the fact sheet reaffirmed both countries’ commitment to the Minerals Security Partnership, which is focused on building diversified and sustainable supply chains for critical minerals. A Critical Minerals Memorandum of Understanding is expected to be signed at the upcoming U.S-India Commercial Dialogue.
The statement highlighted the progress between India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and the U.S International Development Finance Corporation, which are providing $500 million each to anchor a Green Transition Fund, expressing hope of the fund being operationalised soon. The fact sheet also notes that 'India commits to invest $2 million in new solar projects in Fiji, Comoros, Madagascar, and Seychelles. And Japan has committed to $122 million grants and loans, both public and private, in renewable energy projects in the Indo-Pacific.'
Aeronautics
Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO):
The discussion on developing India’s Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) capability from last year has also continued this year. This year President Biden has welcomed the Indian government’s decision to keep the GST at 5% in the MRO sector. This is expected to attract global players to establish MRO services in India. This sector's development is beneficial to India's nascent MRO industry. This will help reduce Indian airlines’ dependence on foreign MROs, where 90% of Indian MRO requirements are imported from countries like Singapore, the UAE and Sri Lanka.
Jet Engines:
In this year’s Modi’s US visit, there was only a mention of the progress of the agreement on the technology transfer of the GE-414 engine. The co-production and manufacturing of the engine in India would surely improve the Indian manufacturing sector. The question remains as to how much technology is transferred in this co-production of the GE-414 engine.
Cyber
India and the US have been cooperating on cyber issues for more than two decades. In 2016, India and the US signed a Framework for the U.S.-India Cyber Relationship giving an impetus to cyber dialogue that had been continuing in some form since 2013. The framework was agreed upon for five years, but it is unclear whether it has been extended after 2021. A brief by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of India released in 2023 on India-US relations does mention the 2016 framework and a cyber dialogue in 2022, but does not give any information on whether the 2016 framework is still operative.
Further, a search of keyword ‘cyber’ in MEA’s press release archives does not give any result for India-US cyber dialogue for the past few years (the last one is from 2016). Based on the 2023 Joint Statement and Sep 2024 Fact Sheet, it seems that the bilateral cyber dialogue is continuing in an annual manner. But publicly available information could not be ascertained about the outcomes of the cyber dialogues held over the last few years.
Bilateral cyber dialogues are in themselves not uncommon. India holds several of these with different partner countries or blocs like the UK, EU, Japan, and Australia (press releases for these are readily available). India even has a mechanism to meet with Quad members on cyber issues called the Quad Senior Cyber Group.
While the announcement of areas such as ‘threat information sharing, cybersecurity training, and collaboration on vulnerability mitigation in energy and telecommunications networks’ provides some idea about the direction of India-US cyber cooperation, there is a need for greater clarity about what exactly cooperation in these areas entails, and what has been the outcome of the cyber dialogues. It would be helpful for policy wonks and cyber researchers if future statements, fact sheets and press releases incorporate the same.
Telecommunication
Open RAN is more expensive and complex to deploy and is not likely to be the first choice for telecom service providers for their networks. While they theoretically offer supply chain resilience and vendor diversification, there are many hurdles to adoption. The grant for the Qualcomm-Mavenir-Airtel pilot was announced in the June ‘24 fact sheet. It will help to build confidence in such deployments once it goes live.
The September ‘24 fact sheet indicates a continued push for Open RAN with the expansion of the work of the Asia Open RAN Academy. If Open RAN is to see wider adoption, such a multi-stakeholder initiative can help build technical and regulatory capabilities. We have written in detail about these challenges and how initiatives like the Asia Open RAN Academy can help in our discussion document on Open RAN.
Additionally, the September fact sheet has no mention of the participation of Indian companies in the U.S. Rip and Replace Program as was the case with the previous fact sheet as well.
The analysis was a joint effort of the Takshashila team.
What We're Reading (or Listening to)
[Podcast] A Quad for All Seasons, by Aditya Ramanathan and Manoj Kewalramani
[Opinion]China's high-altitude heliports in Tibet a sobering reminder of threat to India along LAC, by Dr Y. Nithiyanandam
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Wowo...detailed breakdown. Helpful.