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The AI Dimension of India’s Act East Policy

For India’s AI vision to succeed, it will need to partner with East Asian countries. That makes AI diplomacy central to the AEP.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined India’s updated Act East Policy (AEP), expanding the strategic focus of ties to incorporate defense and security with its Southeast and East Asian partners. However, the policy was not originally conceptualized around security. Its predecessor, the Look East Policy (LEP), began in the early 1990s to strengthen economic relations, but transitioned into the AEP as New Delhi recognized the strategic imperative of developing defense ties with its extended eastern neighborhood. 

While the policy’s first decade successfully deepened regional defense ties – including BrahMos deals with Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam – India has again reached a moment when it is looking at the rise of critical and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and the increasing prospect of partnering with its Asian partners on the same.

This reality places AI diplomacy at the very core of India’s AEP. It has become apparent that India seeks to achieve AI sovereignty across five layers of the AI stack — application, model, semiconductor, infrastructure, and energy. For this vision to succeed, its talent, researchers, and startups urgently require strategic value chain diversification beyond traditional partners in Western Europe and Northern America region. Escalating visa constraints, technology export controls, and the heavy economic toll of one-way talent mobility indicate the structural limits of this dependence. 

AEP and Tech Diplomacy: AI at the Forefront

India’s technological cooperation, especially in the cyberspace domain, is already underway with ASEAN and with countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, underscoring the existing avenues for technological partnership. However, with growing AI adoption and integration, the demand has quickly shifted toward exploring strategic partnership for AI cooperation and collaboration. 

India’s bilateral digital partnership agenda identifies AI as an important pillar and emphasizes the exploration of specific AI projects. For instance, the 2026-2030 Plan of Action to implement the ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership explicitly tasks India and ASEAN member states with advancing joint capacity building and knowledge sharing in the field of information and communication technologies. Similarly, India is exploring partnerships across the full spectrum of the AI stack with Japan. However, for this ambition to turn into reality, India will have to move beyond joint statements and identify specific projects and initiatives for co-creation, collaboration, and co-development of AI solutions. 

The strategic logic for technological partnership has never been more critical. The recent episode of the United States enforcing AI-related export controls and restrictions is a case in point. While on this front, some developments have already taken place, they are too little and too insignificant considering the challenge at hand.

Strategic Partnership on AI: Co-Creation and Investment

On April 21, 2026, the First India-Japan AI Strategic Dialogue took place, which operationalized the Japan-India AI Cooperation Initiative (JAI) launched during Modi’s visit to Japan in August 2025. While India-Japan economic cooperation dates back a long way, a revitalized interest among Japanese media giants, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, and even some technology and engineering labs and MSMEs in the Indian market clearly indicates their need to pivot their market expansion strategies and diversify their reliance on the U.S. and Chinese markets. 

This eastward momentum is further reinforced by the launch of the India-Korea Digital Bridge in April 2026, designed to drive deep bilateral cooperation across AI, semiconductors, and the broader electronics and IT sector. Similarly, under the 2026-2030 Plan of Action, India and ASEAN governments are exploring areas for collaboration to develop studies on AI governance, standards, and tools. It therefore remains crucial for AEP to pursue an AI Diplomacy pillar, which focuses on strategic research cooperation first and foremost. 

Research cooperation and co-creation remain fundamental and delicate issues for Indian start-ups and talent ecosystems to achieve sustained growth. It is noteworthy that AI start-ups and technical talent........

© The Diplomat