Washington: A day after saying that there was no doubt in his mind that India’s “number one” partnership in science should be with the United States (US), external affairs minister S Jaishankar kicked off his official engagements in Washington DC with a meeting focused on technology in its various dimensions at the National Science Foundation on Monday.
During the interaction, Jaishankar met top representatives from the trifecta of administration (including top White House and commerce officials), academia (including university presidents), and industry (including those representing semiconductors, biotech, and computing sectors).
After the meeting, Jaishankar tweeted, “Began my Washington DC program with a Round Table organized by the National Science Foundation. Thank you Director Dr. S. Panchanathan for putting together a great selection of policy, research, industry and academia.” The session, he added, covered “tech security, trusted research and talent development”. “Encouraged by the enthusiasm for India-US partnership in these domains.”
Among the senior administration officials at the meeting were Laurie Locascio, the undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology and the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Alondra Nelson, the acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP); and Tarun Chhabra, senior director for technology and national security at the National Security Council of the White House. Industry leaders included Jimmy Goodrich, vice president of global policy at the Semiconductor Industry Association, Dario Gil, senior vice president and director of IBM research and member of the National Science Board, and Jason Kelly, founder, and CEO of Gingko Bioworks, a venture supported by NSF, which had, in the early stages, also funded Google in a sign of its focus on innovation.
The meeting was seen as a sign of the forward-looking, multifaceted cooperation between India and the US in domains that will define the future; these are based on a high degree of strategic trust and will have dramatic implications for national security, economy and employment, and cutting-edge innovation.
The Indian context
The meeting focused on national security and tech, workforce development for tech, and economic security, according to a person familiar with the development.
Jaishankar first laid out India’s context and its advances in the science and tech domains. The minister also spoke about how India was focused on tech development, be it through the production-linked incentives (PLI) scheme to boost manufacturing or the New Education Policy (NEP) to nudge pedagogy from traditional modes of learning to focus on creativity and innovation . During his travels in India, the minister pointed to his encounters with students and researchers who already possessed patents, which was fast becoming a new metric of achievement in a society that had so far been focused on ranking.
The minister, it is understood, also spoke of “trusted data” and “trusted scientific research” and how they could be a key driver of economic growth and innovation. There was a focus on enhancing coordination with what the Indian ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who attended the meeting, termed the “triple helix of innovation — admin, academia, and industry”.
Four themes
From the US side, people aware of the discussions said, almost all the speakers highlighted the deep partnership that already existed in at least four aspects.
First, there was a recognition of the partnerships that existed and were in the offing between research institutions of both countries. Knowledge partnership, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is already a key focus of Indian diplomacy in the US. Speakers pointed to the collaboration between Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and American institutions and highlighted the role Indians play in the American tech industry. For instance, 40,000 Indian engineers are involved in chip design for semiconductors in American companies.
The second focus was on the deep economic cooperation scientific exchanges had entailed. Companies pointed to the huge research and development centers they had in India while acknowledging the potential in emerging tech fields, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, areas that have been identified in the past by Jaishankar as key frontiers of the future.
Discussions also revolved around talent pool, with both academia and industry representatives how it was important to enable this talent pool to both “catalyse the bilateral partnership as well as a global innovation and growth”.
And finally, the strategic dimensions of tech were a theme in the conversations. The idea, participants suggested, was to develop “habits of cooperation” between India and the US. This was already happening both bilaterally and under the Quad umbrella. In the bilateral frame, the US and India, in May, announced the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), “spearheaded by the National Security Councils of the two countries to expand partnership in critical and emerging technologies”.
In its March 2021 joint statement following the first leader-level summit, Quad had agreed to “begin cooperation on the critical technologies of the future to ensure that innovation is consistent with a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific”. A working group on critical and emerging technologies was formed, with a focus on “technical standards, 5G diversification and deployment, horizon-scanning, and technology supply chains”. In September 2021, Quad countries announced a statement of principles on tech design, development, governance, and use. And in the May 2022 leaders level summit, the four countries of the grouping said they will “advance interoperability and security through the signature of a new Memorandum of Cooperation on 5G Supplier Diversification and Open RAN”. They also issued a statement on the Common Statement of Principles on Critical Technology Supply Chains.
“Number one partnership”
The minister’s meeting came a day after he said that strengthening science and engineering was vital to India’s future and there was a recognition of that in India.
At a community event on Sunday, Jaishankar had said, “From PM (Narendra) Modi downwards, there is an effort to expand educational institutions, especially in science and engineering, to expand research to say a domain like space. If you see the Covid period, it wasn’t that we were just happy making vaccines, there was a spike in interest in the health, pharma, science domains.”
It was important for India to build “deep strengths, have supply chains at home, have patents, have researchers and have relationships with other countries such as the US”, Jaishankar said.
“Especially in science and engineering, there is no question in my mind that the number one relationship should be with the US. It is a country that has tremendous achievements to its credit. It is the foundation on which American power is built. The Indian-American community can be a bridge,” he had told the diaspora in recognition of the role Indians play in STEM in giving the US its edge.
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