India & US launch iCET, elevate strategic partnership

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Tuesday met his American counterpart Jake Sullivan to launch the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET). The Indian Embassy in the United States has provided the information on its official Twitter handle.

iCET is being launched at the direction of US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi who after their Tokyo meeting in May 2022 had announced to elevate and expand the strategic technology partnership and defence industrial cooperation between the governments, businesses, and academic institutions of the two countries.

White House statements

“The United States and India affirm that the ways in which technology is designed, developed, governed, and used should be shaped by our shared democratic values and respect for universal human rights. We are committed to fostering an open, accessible, and secure technology ecosystem, based on mutual trust and confidence, that will reinforce our democratic values and democratic institutions,” the White House said.

In order to strengthen the India-United States (US) technology and defence industrial partnership, the two countries have agreed to a new bilateral defence industrial cooperation roadmap to accelerate defence tech cooperation for joint development and production and launch a new innovation bridge to connect Indian and US defence start-ups, senior US administration officials have said.

The two countries will also strengthen their innovation ecosystems in the field of artificial intelligence, establish a joint India-US quantum coordination mechanism, work together on determining standards and benchmarks on AI in technical bodies, set up a task force on semiconductor manufacturing collaboration, strengthen cooperation in the realm of space, embark on new public-private dialogue on advanced telecom technologies, and enhance academic collaboration.

According to a senior US administration official, four factors — the fact that the dialogue is a result of a high-level political understanding and is being led by the national security councils, the issues covered are broad, there is deep stakeholder engagement including with the business and academic communities, and it is based on a strategic alignment — make iCET “unique”. The mechanism isn’t meant to replace existing platforms of cooperation and dialogue but energise it further, the official clarified.

Senior officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the National Security Council Secretariat also participated in the talks.

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