Science and Technology

Washington and the world have changed a lot in the two years since Vinay Kwatra took charge as India’s ambassador to the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has upended much of the world order—militarily, economically, and diplomatically. The U.S.-India relationship has been no exception.

But technology has been a bilateral bright spot—as Kwatra outlined in an interview with Foreign Policy at his residence last week—with the two countries strengthening partnerships in areas such as space, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and critical minerals.

Washington and the world have changed a lot in the two years since Vinay Kwatra took charge as India’s ambassador to the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has upended much of the world order—militarily, economically, and diplomatically. The U.S.-India relationship has been no exception.

But technology has been a bilateral bright spot—as Kwatra outlined in an interview with Foreign Policy at his residence last week—with the two countries strengthening partnerships in areas such as space, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and critical minerals.

He also discussed how India is navigating the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, provided an update on New Delhi’s trade talks with Washington, and addressed the tensions in other aspects of the U.S.-India relationship.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign Policy: There have been a lot of shifts in the U.S.-India relationship over the past couple of years, but technology cooperation is one area that has remained relatively consistent. What do you see as the main contours of that cooperation?

Vinay Kwatra: Science and technology ultimately is a very key constituent of our own economic growth and prosperity. There is a huge bilateral component. So what we do is not restricted to our own benefit, it also feeds into synergies and positives into a bilateral engagement. And the larger play there is that eventually whatever you do gets diffused into global distribution. That’s the nature of science and technology—ultimately it’s for the benefit of humanity overall. It’s not possible to do this in isolation.

If you track the trend of science- and technology-based engagement between India and the U.S. over the last 10 years or so, you will find a very distinct pattern of technology partnerships that are rooted in building not just a bilateral ecosystem of engagement and cooperation, but also very strongly linked to institutional partnerships. To give you an example, in just the last few years what the Indian Space Research Organization has done with NASA here in terms of space cooperation has been quite remarkable. There was a time where our exchanges with NASA by and large were limited to data exchanges, but it has really transformed over the last few years.

We also launched our semiconductor mission, and I was involved in the initial discussions and considerations of how to shape that in the policy space. There was a very close engagement with the semiconductor-based research expertise in the U.S. Those efforts today have borne actually very concrete fruits in a sense that I am told that two pilot production plants are already in the running, and by next year, the commercial production of the legacy nodes [basic, general-purpose chips that help power technologies including cars, home appliances, and consumer electronics] would start.

There’s also AI infrastructure. In the last several months there have been some very crucial announcements by American companies to invest in building AI infrastructure in India. And again, that is something of mutual benefit.

So AI, biopharmaceuticals, critical minerals, and a fourth crucial pillar I would add is quantum. And I’m not even mentioning the technology-based partnerships that we do in the field of defense innovation, what we do with each other in undersea communication, maritime surveillance, and all those spaces.

Ultimately, the government enablement of this high technology cooperation is very crucial because there are parts........

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