#ii Beyond Citations | The many flavours of tech sovereignty: Autarky or ability?
Curated by Lokendra Sharma, Beyond Citations grounds vital tech developments in foundational scholarship. Because academic work is deeply relevant beyond citations in the scholarly universe. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.
This edition explores the many flavours and shades of tech sovereignty. It asks: does self-reliance (autarky) help India in achieving tech sovereignty?
It is a season for sovereignty. Data, digital, cyber or even biotech — tech sovereignty comes in many flavours. Amid the heightening US-China rivalry in the AI domain, DeepSeek’s launch of a cheaper and efficient open-weights AI model, and US AI export control rules on AI hardware and software, it is the idea of AI sovereignty — in the context of India — that has increasingly become popular. Debjani Dhosh, former president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, in her 26 January 2025 piece for The Economic Times has called for ‘building a self-reliant AI ecosystem to control its entire AI value chain, transforming raw data into intelligence within its borders.’ More recently, on 4 February 2025, commentator Javaid Iqbal in his piece for Times of India has positioned sovereign AI as a strategic imperative for India as the large language model (LLM) race heats up. In a similar vein, journalist Tarunya Sanjay has batted for sovereign AI in an Outlook Business piece dated 16 January 2025. It is not just among the tech commentators, the idea of sovereign AI has been embraced by the government as well. In 2023, the then minister of state for information technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, had given a clarion call for sovereign AI.Â
Replace AI with any other flavour of tech sovereignty alluded to above and these calls may still stack up. Their core argument (explicit or implicit) goes something like this: at a time when the US-China rivalry is heating up — including in the tech domain — it is in India’s interest (a rising power in its own right) to nurture the different flavours of tech sovereignty. Another theme underlying these arguments is the idea of self-reliance or self-sufficiency (autarky).Â
But does self-reliance help India in achieving tech sovereignty? What is tech sovereignty after all? March and Schieferdecker’s following 2023 paper has some answers:
Christoph March, Ina Schieferdecker, Technological Sovereignty as Ability, Not Autarky, International Studies Review, Volume 25, Issue 2, June 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viad012Â
For March and Schieferdecker, ambiguity surrounding the meaning of tech sovereignty is problematic as it ‘opens the door for vested interests, who attempt to exploit the policy debate on technological sovereignty to support their strive for autarky and deglobalization.’ Their primary argument — bolstered by two case studies — is that autarky does not help. At the heart of tech sovereignty, according to the authors, are innovation policies as well as international trade and cooperation. It is no surprise then that their definition of tech sovereignty emphasises ability, and not autarky: ‘Technological sovereignty is the ability of a polity to self-determinedly shape the development and use of key technologies and technology-based innovations, which impact its political and economic sovereignty.’Â
While the paper has its strengths, such as in demonstrating the bi-casual relationship between technological sovereignty and international trade/cooperation, it is not without shortcomings.
Leaving aside for a moment the obvious biases in the paper (selection of European case studies, wedding democracy and individual self-determination with sovereignty without explanation), there are two problems with their argument.Â
First, while their focus on innovation policies may hold for European countries that have a long history of tech development, wealthy markets and are an entrenched node in the global tech flows, the same may not necessarily apply to developing countries such as India which are short on all these aspects.
Would international trade and cooperation come to the rescue of a pariah developing country that has decided to position itself against all the major power blocs of the day? And it would be decades before ‘research, education and innovation policy’ start giving desired returns. In such a scenario, do developing countries really have a choice other than some shade of autarky?Â
Second, developing countries such as India constantly engage in the battle of perception domestically — whether a democracy or not, perception management is central to their idea of legitimacy. In face of global supply chain warfare that increasingly spills into the technological domain, would it be wise for developing countries to simply signal to their own populatin that they are working on long-term education and innovation policies? Wouldn't they want to be seen doing something about high-tech development. Not tomorrow or after 10 years, but today, this very minute?
March and Schieferdecker are not the only ones making the case for a long-term approach. Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha, has written on AI sovereignty in his popular blog on 29 January 2025. He makes a compelling point:Â
India’s AI sovereignty and future thus lies not in a narrow focus on LLMs or GPUs, which are transient artifacts, but the societal and academic foundation required to enable conditions and ecosystems that lead to the creations of breakthroughs like LLMs—a deep-rooted fabric of scientific, social, mathematical, philosophical, and engineering expertise spanning academia, industry, and civil society. Any AI sovereignty focus must thus direct resources to fostering high quality research capacity across disciplines, aiming explicitly for a fundamental shift in conditions that naturally disincentivise skilled, analytical, critical-thinking, passionate brains from draining out of the country. In fact, the bulk of any long-term AI sovereignty strategy must be a holistic education and research strategy. Without the overall quality and standard of higher education and research being upped significantly, it is going to be a perpetual game of second-guessing and catch-up. Realistically, the horizon for that is ten, if not twenty years, and that is okay, as long as we collectively accept this reality and strive to address it.
But his argument, like that of March and Schieferdecker, suffers from the same second problem discussed above. In such a scenario, what can India do and be seen doing such that it gives short to medium term benefits? That is, and ideally should be, the million dollar question animating Indian policy makers and wonks alike.