India-US Unity On New Tech Will Give ‘Orbital Jump’ To Ties: NSA Ajit Doval

The India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) will provide an “orbital jump” to strategic ties between the two countries and emerge as one of the most important pillars of the relationship, NSA Ajit Doval said Tuesday as he hosted his US counterpart Jake Sullivan for talks on the regional and global issue ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the US next week.

The NSAs also participated in the second Track 1.5 dialogue on iCET organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry where they encouraged stakeholders on both sides to strive for technology value chain partnerships that would lead to “co-development and co-production of high technology products and services in both countries”.

The two countries have also established a strategic trade dialogue that, Doval said, will serve as a platform to address regulatory barriers and issues related to export control.

After it was launched by Modi and President Joe Biden last year, Modi and Sullivan have led efforts between the two countries to engage in areas like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, telecommunications, defense, and space.

“We have been able to kickstart the Indo-US Quantum Coordination Mechanism, signed an MoU on semi-conductors, the public-private dialogue on telecom engaging stakeholders from the government, industry, and academia to further open collaboration in Open RAN, 5G, and 6G has been kickstarted, detailed dialogue on biotech is being held, important exchanges on AI have taken place, and there is positive momentum under the defense and space pillars,” said Doval.

Sullivan said that a key focus area was the removal of barriers to collaboration on both sides “to maximize the full potential of bilateral ties”. “The US and India are poised to lead in clean energy transformation, shore up and diversify global semi-conductor supply chains…,” he said.

With Inputs