Extracting the Gains: Why India Must Negotiate Harder in the Data Center Boom

The report does three things. It maps the market and policy drivers of the boom, including domestic demand, the GCC ecosystem, infrastructure status for data centers above 5 MW, a twenty-year tax holiday for foreign hyperscalers exporting their services, state-level incentive packages, and a dense maze of data localization rules. It then conducts a cost-benefit analysis that questions the dominant claims of technological sovereignty and broad economic gain. Finally, it argues that India must shift from investment facilitation to negotiated extraction, and lays out the concrete templates the government can put on the table: compute for academia, applied R&D testbeds, regional tech clusters, AI-based public service delivery, and a structured renewables and storage push.
C Raja Mohan writes: AI is changing national security bureaucracy. Without empathy, nuance, that is a dangerous turn

As AI systems begin to simulate negotiation outcomes, generate policy options, and model crisis responses, the temptation to let them decide will grow. While AI can scan vast archives and […]
Why algorithmic sovereignty should be India’s top priority

The AI systems of today, trained on Western datasets and models, draw heavily from Western legal scholarship when it comes to geopolitical issues
Bhabha, Cold War, nuclear technology, 1955: Dos and don’t for India in AI

No nation can afford to treat AI as only a public good. The calls for international cooperation at the summit then coexist uneasily with pursuit of national interest.
AI shakes statecraft: Prediction markets test diplomats, spies

While governments discuss how to regulate the transformative technological revolution, AI-driven prediction markets are beginning to constrain state behaviour — including on decisions about war and peace.
India’s Approach to Military AI: Strategy, Governance, and Challenges

This report assesses India’s military AI ecosystem, its institutional foundations, operational deployments, and persistent structural constraints, and benchmarks it against the rapid advances of its principal competitors.