Pankaj Saran – Convenor, NatStrat
As main powers deploy synthetic intelligence to advance scientific discovery and strategic functionality – India should broaden its imaginative and prescient – from AI for All to AI for Sovereignty, Science and Security.
India will host the India AI Summit 2026 in New Delhi in February. It is more likely to be accompanied by bulletins of great investments in information centres and cloud infrastructure. These developments are welcome and underscore India’s rising significance as a worldwide hub for AI deployment and purposes.
Yet, as India consolidates its place as a number one ‘use-case capital’ for synthetic intelligence, you will need to mirror on a deeper strategic shift underway elsewhere, one with profound implications for science, nationwide safety and international affect.
In each the United States and China, the centre of gravity in synthetic intelligence is transferring past shopper-dealing with purposes and productiveness instruments. Increasing emphasis is being positioned on superior AI programs designed to speed up scientific discovery and strengthen nationwide safety. This shift displays a rising recognition that AI’s most consequential affect could lie not merely in effectivity good points however in shaping the way forward for information, strategic functionality and energy.
In the United States, this pondering has taken form via initiatives such because the Genesis Mission, coordinated by the Department of Energy, which seeks to harness AI for discovery science whereas addressing nationwide safety considerations. China, via programmes led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and different establishments, is pursuing related targets, typically via tightly built-in efforts throughout science and safety institutions.
A lately-launched report by the Strategic Foresight Group, India’s AI Gambit: Navigating the Global Race, argues that India’s lengthy-time period AI technique have to be considered via this wider lens. The report cautions that an unique deal with giant language fashions to spice up productiveness and creativity dangers overlooking a extra consequential transformation: using superior AI programs to drive breakthroughs in science and to reshape the strategic steadiness between nations.
India can develop a assured strategic framework constructing by itself expertise. Our achievements in house, atomic vitality and vaccine improvement display a capability to pursue slicing-edge science and expertise with restricted sources, guided by accountability and public goal. These experiences supply useful classes as India seeks to use synthetic intelligence to scientific development in areas starting from supplies and vitality to well being and local weather.
Recognising the significance of analysis-led innovation, the Indian Government has introduced a Research Development and Innovation Scheme Fund of USD12 billion, overlaying AI, quantum applied sciences and different rising fields. While trade will play a significant function in leveraging these investments, India’s diplomatic and nationwide safety establishments should additionally assist form a coherent nationwide imaginative and prescient that balances alternative with accountability.
Artificial intelligence raises considerations that reach past misuse by people or teams. Advanced AI programs have already demonstrated the potential to generate hazardous chemical or organic information, undermine cyber resilience and work together with crucial determination-help programs. As these applied sciences evolve, questions of management, accountability and unintended escalation change into more and more salient. These are strategic challenges that demand cautious, sober evaluation moderately than alarmist responses.
Internationally, there’s rising recognition of those dangers. Scientists, technologists and policymakers have referred to as for stronger safeguards and clearer norms governing the event of superior AI programs. India – as a significant supply of expertise, information and markets – has each the standing and the accountability to advocate accountable international behaviour on this area.
At the nationwide stage, the implications of synthetic intelligence for sovereignty and safety benefit sustained consideration.
The National Security Council Secretariat is properly positioned to look at these points in a structured method, together with the case for nationwide safety affect assessments of superior AI applied sciences, whether or not developed domestically or imported. Scenario workouts exploring AI-enabled dangers, from biosecurity threats to recursive self-enchancment, would assist policymakers anticipate challenges moderately than reply to them after the very fact.
The authorities’s AI governance guidelines, issued in November 2025 acknowledge these considerations. The job forward is to translate intent into operational observe, together with safeguards in public procurement and clearer thresholds for threat administration.
India stands at an essential crossroads within the international AI race. Social inclusion and financial transformation will rightly stay central to our strategy. But they don’t seem to be ample on their very own.
As main powers deploy synthetic intelligence to advance scientific discovery and strategic functionality – India should broaden its imaginative and prescient – from AI for All to AI for Sovereignty, Science and Security.
The selections we make now will form not solely our technological future however our place on the earth.
(Exclusive to NatStrat)