Shadow Warrior by Rajeev Srinivasan

Prof. Rajeev Srinivasan
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An Indian/Hindu nationalist perspective on world affairs; as well as on technology and innovation; conversations with experts and with people just like you and me. rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

  1. Oct 25

    Ep. 198: The Autumn of the Patriarch: the end of the globalist project?

    There’s a scene in García Márquez’s novel that I keep returning to. The old dictator still goes through the motions of power, the court still bows, and everyone in the room knows the real authority left some time ago. That is roughly how the Western order looks to me this October. Start with the calendar. Even as I write this, Brazil votes in a runoff between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, who came first in round one. Lula, a leftist, had come to power in the last election replacing Bolsonaro senior, who is under house arrest. Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday, and Binyamin Netanyahu’s future is uncertain, as is the entire power structure in West Asia, including the trajectory of the Iran War. The US has midterms on November 3, and chances are that Donald Trump, despite his offer of $5000 to every citizen if his Republican Party retains power, will find himself facing a hostile House. France elects a president next spring, and Marine Le Pen’s party leads the polls. Emmanuel Macron (along with former US President Barack Obama) has long exemplified globalism, but he is term-limited and cannot contest. The center cannot hold No single result rewrites the world. Together, though, they show how little of the old consensus is left. Things fall apart. The streets say something similar, only more messily. On October 17, more than 600 demonstrations were planned across France over the cost of living. The interior ministry counted about 550,000 people, the organizers 800,000, and some marches ended in looting and fires. Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Albania have had their own versions. These crowds aren’t necessarily one movement, and Le Pen herself argued the far left had hijacked the day. What they share is a feeling that the deal didn’t pay out for them. Open borders, open markets, factories moved abroad, and prosperity to follow: many people stopped believing that last part. The polls show where the anger leads to. The National Rally leads in France. In Germany the AfD now tops the national polls, in the high twenties and at 30% in some, with Friedrich Merz’s conservatives well behind. This doesn’t look like a passing mood to me. It looks like a turn back toward national control, away from the institutions that dominated the last few decades. Immigrants have become the scapegoat; not only in Europe, where North African-origin Muslims are stereotyped as violence-prone, but also in the US, where Indian-origin Hindus are blamed, ironically because they are successful, often getting coveted jobs in Silicon Valley. I would not be surprised if there is a standard “toolkit” being applied not only in these riots, but also in the “GenZ” agitations that have accomplished regime-change in Nepal, Bangladesh and elsewhere. It is possible that the same template is being used in India, too. Elements of a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations may also be in play; Orwell’s surveillance state is all the more feasible because the ubiquitous Internet is a panopticon; the policing of speech is already a reality in many countries, as is narrative control. One example: the mainstream media coverage of the French riots, it seemed to me, was notably antipathetic towards the rioters; but the same media was notably sympathetic to those rioting at the same time in India. Geo-economics is changing The post-Cold War bargain was that pulling everyone into a US-led system would make the world richer and more alike. In reality, what we got was manufacturing concentrated in China, brittle supply chains, and enough inequality at home to feed populism. Cheap goods arrived and industrial jobs left. For years the backlash was treated as a mood to be waited out, and that answer no longer works. The economics are shifting too. The dollar is still central, but more countries are looking for ways around it. America is trying to rebuild chips, minerals, medicines and energy with tariffs and subsidies. Europe, flooded with Chinese goods, is turning protectionist after decades of lecturing others against it. Ukraine has slipped down the agenda as the costs mount. My guess is that Europe will eventually look for a detente, a working arrangement with Russia. The mercurial Donald Trump has himself recently shown signs of a thaw with Vladimir Putin. Trump’s relations with Xi JinPing are also opaque, veering between hostility and acquiescence to a G2 (the trade truce now lasts till January 10, 2027), based possibly on the reality of Chinese hard economic power. “Middle Power”? No, “Swing State” India has been called a “middle power”. I think that denigrates India, because the real middle powers are countries like France, Britain, Australia, Poland, South Korea, Indonesia. Granted, size alone doesn’t buy influence. Leverage does, and leverage means being the supplier others can’t easily replace. India has to think deeply about being that inevitable partner. That would make it a true swing state, not only the China+1 construct. India has a real head start in generic medicines, and it is scaling up solar manufacturing. Electronics components, AI and defence equipment come next, with semiconductors further out. The open question is whether scale, quality and reliability follow. The engineers are there. The infrastructure and execution are what I’m less sure about. I wonder if India’s ability to offer a Pax Indica in the Indian Ocean could be its best bet: its Rimland geographic position central to the Suez-Malacca and Hormuz-Malacca sea-lanes, and a blue-water navy to offer security to maritime trade. Plus deals with littoral states, and bulked-up capacity with its new mega-ports (Vizhinjam is operational, and Vadhavan is planned) both to increase trade and, as with the planned Galathea Bay, to keep a close eye on the Straits of Malacca. The old order won’t vanish next year. But it is losing the ability to set terms without being challenged. Power is spreading out, getting more transactional, and attaching itself to whoever can make things. India can help shape what comes next if it builds what others need. If it doesn’t, it will stay large but secondary, following rules written elsewhere. The patriarch is still in the palace, and the people who plan for what comes after him will do better than those who keep performing the ceremonies. 1050 words, 25 Oct 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 11

    Dancing with elephants and surviving: India in the world of generativeAI

    As the greatest investment bubble in economic history in happening right in front of our eyes, with the distinct possibility of a godawful bust in the not too distant future, and persistent memories of promising technologies that crashed and burned, it is necessary, and urgent, to consider how India should play this game of generativeAI now and into the future, whether that future is boom or bust for the technology. What adds criticality to this matter is the serious but hidden concern about three things: epistemology, values, and national security. The vacuuming up by Big Tech of Indian data gratis (hey, what happened to “data is the new oil”?) as well as the increasingly sophisticated manufacturing of narratives are at least as important as the threat to traditional knowledge systems that India has preserved more or less, under duress, for millennia. Is there a bubble? Irrational exuberance almost always ends up in grief, or at least that has been the experience in past cycles. We may be reminded of the Dutch Tulip Mania of 1634, as described in the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, wherein tulip bulbs were sold at enormous prices based on speculation about increasing value, which turned out to be baseless. Those of us with moderately long memories will also remember the 1999-era Internet bubble, where just having a web site and a cool online retail idea was enough to generate speculative investment. The net result was a huge bust, but there was a good outcome: the infrastructure left on the ground by bankrupt investors was useful in other ways in later iterations of the internet, which proved to actually generate value. But there indeed is irrational exuberance regarding generativeAI. The Wall Street Journal noted that Anthropic seems to believe its Total Addressable Market (TAM) is an eye-watering $30 trillion. For comparison, that was roughly the US’ GDP in 2025. Goldman Sachs goes one step further: it estimated in July 2025 that the global TAM may be as much as $40 trillion. In any case, The Economist magazine estimates that the current generativeAI mania is the daddy of all speculative bubbles in western history, surpassing others in the last few centuries. The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be enough revenue and profits being generated to justify the literally trillions of dollars that are being ploughed into capital investment by the likes of Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, i.e. US Big Tech. The Economist magazine, again. Sorry, folks, there does not seem to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The bottom line is that at least at the moment, there is a fair chance that there will be the mother of all busts from generativeAI. This is not investment advice, of course, but I’d say caveat emptor. The two potential business outcomes: the Linux way vs. the Windows way I am fundamentally an operating systems guy, having spent years working on UNIX internals at Bell Labs. I have observed how that market has evolved over the last forty years, and I believe there are good lessons to be learned from the experience. For, the OS is perhaps the most critical software on any machine, and strangely enough those who focused on it may have made either no money whatsoever, or lots of money. The “no money” category belongs to UNIX and its descendants, Linux, Android, Apple iOS etc. UNIX was developed at AT&T Bell Labs, and was given away for free to universities and other companies for complicated reasons having to do with AT&T’s status as a regulated monopoly. UNIX is now ubiquitous, running everything from data centers to smartphones to Internet servers through its progeny. Alas, AT&T made absolutely no money from it. I know this because I moved to Sun Microsystems from Bell Labs, and I was product manager for Sun’s UNIX OS Solaris. If I remember right, I suggested the name ‘Solaris’ in homage to Stanislav Lem. I was active in AT&T and Sun’s attempt to unify the slightly different variants of UNIX (HP-UX, IBM AIX, DEC Ultrix etc.) that had proliferated because experimentation and enhancements on especially the BSD (UC Berkeley) version of UNIX was very easy. We failed in this unification attempt in the “UNIX wars” of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The result was that UNIX lost a tremendous opportunity to be the desktop/laptop OS, because rival Microsoft was able to do disruptive innovation (see Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail) and capture the customer base that these firms had earlier served through mainframes, mini-computers and engineering workstations. Before the mid 1990s, Microsoft Windows had relatively little market share. What is really interesting is that Microsoft then proceeded to “make lots of money”, the second business outcome alluded to above, by realizing that Windows was not just an OS, but a distribution channel for third-party applications. At Sun, I knew this too, but basically as hardware companies, Sun, IBM, etc. didn’t think much of the OS. Apple figured it out, and has made good money off the App Store. I make a direct analogy between the OS and LLMs. Both are core software in that they both have a clear impact on the hardware requirements, and that they are part of a stack in which many things can be written in layers above. In my opinion, the LLM, just like the OS, could possibly become either background noise (like UNIX/Linux) or the main thing (like Windows). It appears to me that Anthropic, OpenAI, the hyperscalers et al hope to make their own LLMs the inevitable choice (like Windows), whereas the Chinese are on the way to, intentionally or otherwise, making LLMs immaterial (like UNIX and descendants). This, incidentally, fits into the standard operating procedures of the respective countries: the US likes to use overwhelming force (the metaphor here is American football), whereas the Chinese use scale, overproduction, and crashing prices to destroy the competition. From India’s point of view, in either case, this dictates that pursuing foundational models is the wrong game to play. If American Big Tech wins, they become money-minting machines like Microsoft and Windows, and resistance is futile; if Chinese Tech wins, the foundational models become commodities. Therefore, the right place to compete would be on the layers above, that is vertical applications for real problems faced by real people. India could emulate a major Big Tech company that has taken a similar approach: Apple. Instead of jumping headlong into the LLM race, and spending billions like Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Meta (owner of Facebook and Whatsapp), Apple has preferred to stay on the sidelines, perhaps seeking out market niches or waiting for an LLM winner to emerge. There is a chance that Apple may emerge the victor, intact after the possible bloodbath. Sovereign AI and dancing with elephants What, then, does AI sovereignty mean for India? In my humble opinion, India needs to find the “white spaces” that neither G2 giants (i.e. the US and China) are attempting to occupy. Therefore, India should look at areas of the overall stack that are open to it, and which it can profitably involve itself in. Even though the most obvious thing that comes to mind when you talk about sovereign AI is a Made-in-India foundational model or LLM, that is overkill considering the enormous expense it would entail, literally in the billions of dollars. It’s also something that has been done already by both American and Chinese players, so there’s nothing novel about it. On the other hand, unique applications that take into account peculiarities in the Indian environment, and provide real value to Indian consumers/businesses may well be of considerable value. Once again, there is an analogy: the India Stack, which has not only provided us with the wildly successful UPI, but also ONDC, and various other applications, such as Account Aggregator, FASTag, UMANG, Government e-Marketplace. Here we … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 5

    Ep. 195: Is there a uniquely Bharatiya management style? How compatible is it with the current global scenario?

    A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-chanakya-to-ai-india-needs-its-own-management-model-14038647.html/amp If you interpret the term ‘management’ broadly, that is, to include not only the day to day running of companies, but also the bigger picture of governance, leadership, strategy, geoeconomics, and even civilizational survival, the clear answer is that there indeed is a unique Indian style of management. Whether it has been uniquely successful in the past is an open question, and given the ravages of invasion, one may be tempted to say it hasn’t been; similarly whether, or how, it is appropriate for today’s and tomorrow’s needs is another good question. But it is useful to identify what may in fact be the factors underlying such a style of management, and there are likely three reasons: civilizational, cultural, and practical. Civilizational The first is perhaps the idea of Bharatiya exceptionalism: that is to say that Bharat exemplifies a singular civilizational thread that goes back to the ancient four-fold Hindu idea of purusharthas: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. It is a holistic approach, perhaps most evident in the Bhagavad Gita, with its emphasis on ethical leadership and nishkama karma. It is certainly influenced by the topography and geography of the land, Jambudvipa, which has natural boundaries marking its extremities: Bharat, the land between the mountains and the sea. The climate and the rivers and the vegetation reflect a reality of natural abundance: what Rajiv Malhotra referred to when he spoke of the ‘religions of the forest’ versus ‘the religions of the desert’. Bharat, in general, had a tropical cornucopia of food, and perhaps that was reflected early in a certain tolerance for not only for other humans, but also for all life. It is notable that among all the lands that were populated early, Bharat was the one that retained its megafauna the best. All other human settlements saw the rapid extinction of large animals. Sustainability, a key mantra these days, was built into the Bharatiya outlook all along. This same generosity was seen in trade patterns in the Indian Ocean as well: from 5,000 years ago, Bharatiya sailors executed cross-oceanic voyages, eastward during the southwest monsoon and vice versa during the northeast monsoon. The trade benefited everybody, as valuable goods were exchanged, in an illustration of the theory of comparative advantage. The infrastructure for trade was brilliantly executed: not only the building of ocean-going ships that plied the Spice Route, and the ability to defend them from pirates, but also the subtler aspects: the “multi-protocol switch” that allowed trading guilds along the peninsular coasts to facilitate trade between say, Romans, and say, Chinese, who had different languages and currencies. Bharatiya traders smoothed the transactions. Furthermore, the venture capital and banking services for the trading guilds were provided by Hindu temples. Pax Indica was benign; for instance, 1,001 years ago Rajendra Chola dispatched a large fleet to open up the Straits of Malacca for trade when the Srivijaya Empire interfered with it. The contrast with the current standoff in the Straits of Hormuz is salutary. Yes, it is necessary to ensure freedom of navigation, and the commons, with deadly force if need be. There was a very real notion of the ‘common good’. For instance, perhaps the greatest intellectual contribution of Bharat was innovation and the creation of Intellectual Property, and then making it freely available to all: not hoarding it for individual benefit. The model was that scholars and intellectuals were frugal, that the State (king or temple) provided for their basic needs, and in return, they produced masterworks over which they, unlike patenting in the western sense, did not claim any rights. Thus you have intellectual giants such as Brahmagupta with his invention of the zero, Panini with his context-free grammar, Madhava with his infinite series for trigonometric functions, and much later Ramanujan who wrote down his extraordinary theorems for all, and JC Bose whose seminal wireless communication discoveries he refused to patent, on principle. In fact, one could argue that the entire idea of “open-source” is a Bharatiya invention. The natural resources of the Indian subcontinent along with the industriousness of its residents allowed for the creation of tremendous wealth; but in the “Guns vs Butter” dichotomy in economics, Bharat neglected to build the guns; which meant that often invaders with guns were able to capture the butter .Management theory suggests that there are only three sustainable business strategies for long-term viability: 1) customer intimacy, 2) cost leadership, 3) innovation. Bharat historically chose innovation, and its native genius may result in the flowering of an intellectual revolution as the effects of impoverishment by conquest begin to recede. Cultural It is interesting to note that Bharatiyas are different from both Occidentals, (e.g. the Anglosphere) and Orientals (e.g. East Asians) culturally. The stereotypes (with good reason) is that Occidentals are highly individualistic and that Orientals are highly group-oriented. Bharatiyas fall somewhere in between, being fairly individualistic, and gregarious, yet only moderately group-oriented. This has implications for governance. A highly individualistic society needs powerful laws that control individuals, including their tendencies for mischief. Thus, for example, the US is a highly regulated society, and their police are quite capable of unleashing deadly force. A highly group oriented society like Japan has norms that mean children clean after themselves in schools, and that discipline carries over into adulthood as well. Bharatiyas are neither; the net result is that there is a distinction between public spaces and private spaces. While people may keep their homes spotlessly clean, they have no problem littering anywhere or throwing trash just over their walls onto the public street. They also have no problem breaking traffic rules. “The tragedy of the commons” is rife. There is also the cultural memory of shortages and deprivation. Since people have grown up in a shortage economy, there is a tendency to hoard, cut corners, to pay bribes, to find any way of getting a slight advantage over others. Thus the unnecessary pushiness on roads, the inability to queue up anywhere, and especially the unwillingness to let people exit a lift before you enter. This applies to groups as well, as is seen in the “race to the bottom” in the case of the backward, the most backward, and the extremely backward designations intended for government largesse. There is also the unfortunate feeling that a contract is just a mere annoyance, not something that is to be followed to the letter. Punctuality is a small indicator of this: Bharatiyas on average feel justified in being late and casually making excuses. In contrast, both Anglosphere people and many East Asians (especially the Japanese) are punctual, and they can be trusted to deliver absolutely whatever they promise, whenever they promise. Interestingly, Chinese, like Bharatiyas, do not have integrity in terms of keeping promises, which is a problem in doing business with both. In Bharat, there is also extreme reluctance to deliver bad news until the very last minute, for instance the day before something is due to be delivered. This can be very difficult for partners to deal with. Perhaps all this makes Bharat a low-trust society. As a result of all this, doing business in Bharat takes twice as long, and managers need to have contingency plans, and to do intrusive ongoing audits to ensure that things are on time. But there are inspiring counter-examples of community action and high trust. One is the re-greening of the Aravallis with the support of the Tarun Bharat Sangh and Rajendra Singh: a few villages built simple check dams b… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Jul 13

    Ep. 194: The Quad is dead; Long live the Quad!

    A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-old-quad-is-dying-time-for-a-new-quad-14030966.html The Quad, a 2007 partnership broadly intended to contain China’s hegemonistic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, was a brainchild of then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. It makes sense: China is rampaging in its neighborhood, and gives every sign of wanting to either grab territory that belongs to others, or bully them into acquiescence and tributary status. The belligerence that created the current Chinese empire, that is the forced absorption of Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria into the core Han coastal heartland, is part of a harking back to ancient Chinese empires. Xi Jinping, perhaps even more than Mao, embodies a hankering to be the almighty King-Emperor of the erstwhile Middle Kingdom The US unwittingly allowed China to rapidly de-industrialize it post joining the WTO, and to come up with a business plan that calls for massive over-production and the resultant price collapse, which is a template they use to rape and pillage industry after industry. A recent casualty is Germany’s prized automobile industry: bellwether Volkswagen has been forced to lay off 100,000 workers, brutalized by a tsunami of Chinese electric vehicles. However, as Utpal Kumar points out in an insightful essay, all is not well in Xi’s kingdom: e.g., the debt mountain, paranoia as seen in regular purges of military brass, and propaganda that conceals all bad news (did you hear of a small plane hitting a tower in central Beijing? Yes, a mini-9/11. But the information was blanked out). Continuing rural poverty is also censored, although Indians on x.com posted images of extreme filth and poverty, far from the glossy high-rise, bullet-train image that Chinese propaganda projects. Paradoxically, that is precisely what makes China yet more dangerous: it will probably lash out in external adventurism to preserve legitimacy internally. Thus the need for sober containment of China’s destructive power. The US, which has been the natural candidate for reining in this rogue power, has now demonstrated that it is retrenching. It has, for instance, demonstrated that it is no longer willing to indefinitely support its NATO allies. The “nuclear umbrella” that it has offered Japan may also be getting a little threadbare. It is likely that President Trump invaded Iran with the good idea of denying China oil both Iranian and Venezuelan oil, as retaliation for China’s squeeze on rare earths. Alas, that has turned into a fiasco, creating collateral damage for innocent bystanders such as India. In game-theoretic terms, if an isolationist “Fortress America” mood has descended on the US, then a “G2 condominium” with China may be the simplest option, as I said several years ago. If the US has indeed acquiesced to China being the hegemon in its sphere of influence, namely the Indo-Pacific, then there is good reason for the jilted Quad members (Japan, Australia and India) to enter into bilateral agreements amongst each other to look after their own national interests, including but not limited to Sinophobia. And in fact they have done so. It is true that the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May 2026 in Delhi produced some agreements on critical minerals (clearly a US priority) and surveillance collaboration, but I get the feeling that this is mostly a matter of keeping up appearances. Therefore it is worth pivoting to Japanese PM Takaichi’s recent visit to India, and PM Modi’s trips to Indonesia and Australia. Japan and India are obvious partners, because their economies are complementary: one is resource- and technology-rich, and labor-poor, and the other is the opposite. There is also an old civilizational link between the two, going back to Bodhidharma from Kanchipuram who embarked from Muziris circa 500CE and established the Zen school of Buddhism in Japan. There are also clear civilizational links between India and Indonesia. Hindu Bali is obvious; but Java, until the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire was defeated circa 1500CE by Muslim kingdoms (encouraged by the Chinese empire of the time), was also heavily Indianized. As someone who has traveled in both Japan and Indonesia, I was delighted to see Devanagari inscriptions on the Great Bell at Hiroshima, and the Ramayana Ballet at Prambanan temple. विपुलप्रभ अतुल्यनन्त नाथ दिशि विदिशि स्फुरि सर्वबुद्धक्षेत्रा। राग प्रशमि सर्वदोषमोहां नरकगतिस्मि प्रशामि धूमकेतुम्॥१५॥ "The lord of vast light, incomparable and infinite, has illuminated all Buddha countries in all the quarters; he has quieted passions, all sins and errors; he has quieted the fire in the walk of hell." This is the inscription on the Great Bell in Hiroshima. Japan and India signed a series of agreements, including an investment target of Yen 10 trillion (about $66 billion) in areas such as critical minerals, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. They agreed upon a new focus on Artificial Intelligence and quantum technologies and in energy self-reliance, including hydrogen and biogas. They also reaffirmed support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (let us note that on June 16th the US renamed its Indo-Pacific Command to just “Pacific Command”, a telling admission of retreat. The US may well be abandoning the Indian Ocean just when it is becoming the focus of trade.) The Indonesia-India agreements were significant: they included, for instance, Brahmos and Astra missile systems (which, in conjunction with other ASEAN purchases of Brahmos missiles, creates a potentially integrated sea-denial mechanism against persistent Chinese maritime aggression). Pointedly, there will be joint development on Indonesia’s deep-water Sabang Port in Aceh, which is on the Malacca Straits just 90 nautical miles away from India’s upcoming Great Nicobar dual-use port. The two ports can form a defensive shield that could deny transit in Malacca to hostile ships and submarines (read Chinese). Since two-thirds of China’s trade and energy imports pass through Malacca, this is a potent threat, especially as we have just seen what the siege of Hormuz did to global trade. Let us also remember that, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a large fleet to open up Malacca when the SriVijaya Empire closed it. There were also agreements on critical minerals (e.g. nickel for EV batteries, as Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves, cobalt, etc.), steel, maritime security, and technology cooperation. Let us also remember the trilateral Japan-Indonesia-India naval exercises in the Andaman Sea in February 2026. PM Modi’s visit to Australia is the most problematic. Earlier, under Kevin Rudd, a Sinophilic PM, Australia exited the Quad in 2008, effectively making it moribund. Besides, Australia for decades refused sniffily to sell India uranium, despite India being a committed non-proliferator. This may also have had something to do with the UK’s (Whitehall’s) deleterious influence on Australia. But days ago, Australia committed to supplying uranium to India, in support of the latter’s quest for energy security. Oz has apparently learned that cozying up to China is not good for its own economic health. Thus, the quadrilateral of US, Japan, Australia and India may well morph into a quadrilateral of Japan, Indonesia, Australia and India, all united in their concerns about China. The US has a choice: either continue to be the anchor of the Quad (Pentagon?), or be left behind if it insists on retreating into its shell. The former option would be better for all concerned. 1150 words, 11 July 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Jun 20

    Ep. 193: "Trump to India: Drop Dead"?

    A version of this essay was published by firstpost at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-indo-pacific-to-pacific-delhi-must-prepare-for-strategic-loneliness-14024528.html I refer, of course, to the (in)famous newspaper headline which said, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in 1975 when then-POTUS Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City during a financial crisis. It appears to be the same sentiment now with POTUS Trump regarding India. The end of India’s fond hopes of a strategic alliance came not with a bang, but with a whimper: the Pentagon announcement, right in the middle of the G7 conclave in France, that the US has reverted its Indo-Pacific Command to the “Pacific Command”, which had been the name before Trump changed it in 2018. What this means is clear: the US has turned its back on the Indian Ocean, on India, and on the vaunted “strategic partnership” that Indian policymakers had long assumed would be a corollary of that presumed bedrock of Indo-US relations: the mutual need to contain a rampaging China. Coming on top of the remarkable cavalierness about the murders of three Indian merchant-navy sailors, and numerous other slights, we see a pattern of indifference at best, or disdain at worst. The US is signalling that they don’t need India. India, in other words, has no leverage. I am not amazed, to be honest: I wrote in 2023 that in an era of relative decline, it made sense for the US to downgrade its aspirations from sole hyperpower to first among equals: that is, a “G2 condominium” with China. This is, in principle, the same as the Vatican-brokered Treaty of Torsedillas in 1494 that divided the world into Portuguese and a Spanish spheres of influence. Interestingly, that didn’t end up well for either party, but we shall let that pass. Let us connect the dots: there is a ‘Donroe Doctrine’ whereby the US is asserting its hegemony in the Americas, its sphere of influence. Trump has ejected China from Venezuela, and is in the process of kicking them out of the Panama Canal zone; although the Pacific-to-Atlantic railway project in the Brazilian rainforest, and its terminus, the deep-water Port Chancay in Peru, remain. The disastrous Trump foray into Iran was predicated on denying China easy access to that country’s hydrocarbons. But the MoU after 100+ days of war suggests that the US has received a bloody nose, and is withdrawing, retired hurt. The shrinking of ambitions away from the Indian Ocean as in the reversion to the ‘Pacific Command’ suggests that the US is ceding the continent, including West Asia, to China. America-watchers have noticed this strange attitude to Asia before. Evan A. Feigenbaum, a former advisor to US Secretaries of State, wrote about this in 2011: For Washington, the problem is at once intellectual, strategic, and bureaucratic. Intellectually, the United States still has three separate foreign policies in Asia—one for East Asia, another for South Asia, and a third for Central Asia (which it scarcely regards as a part of Asia at all). As Asia reintegrates, then, the United States is too often stuck in an outdated mode of thinking ... Asia is being reborn, and remade. Yet, the United States is badly prepared for this momentous rebirth, which is at once stitching Asia back together and making the United States less relevant in each of Asia’s constituent parts. Asians are, in various ways, passing America by, restoring ancient ties and repairing long-broken strategic and economic links. Well, this is also the end of the “pivot to Asia”, even though it was probably half-hearted at the best of times. Then-POTUS Obama started using the term in 2011, but was himself guilty of ‘awarding’ “South Asia” to Chinese overlordship on a visit to that country. Now that the US is dumping its European allies, it should not be surprising, in view of the ‘Fortress America’ tone of the National Security Strategy of 2025, that India is also being thrown under the bus. A US official, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said this bluntly in Delhi at the Raisina Dialog 2026: India should understand that we’re not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying oh you know we’re going to let you develop all these markets and then the next thing we know you’re beating us in a lot of commercial things. Landau is right from a short-term US perspective. The US blundered, presumably taken in by Chinese propaganda, and allowed itself to be stripped of its industrial prowess. They have learned a lesson: squash potential competitors when you can. This is a back-handed compliment: it suggests that the US is aware that India can be a challenger, and make the G2 a G3. India is literally the only power that’s large enough to make it to Great Power status: Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, etc. have too many problems. No incumbent power wants an insurgent power to challenge its hegemony. The so-called “Thucydides Trap” predicts that chances are that they will go to war: a kinetic war or an economic war or both. India is simultaneously facing Thucydides Traps from both the US and China, those G2 buddies. I wrote about this as an “Abhimanyu Syndrome” for India: splendid isolation. I hasten to add that though Abhimanyu died, his side did win convincingly. So it’s time for India to be pragmatic, and develop its own self-reliance, both in military power and economic/trade power. The existing G2 are looking for vassals, not allies. The equation between them is also interesting. It is clear that the US is in gentle relative decline; but it does have deep resources, and can survive as a continent sized economy, even if it turns its back on the rest of the world, as it has done several times in its 250-year history. But Trump did kowtow to Xi on his May trip to China: he looked like a supplicant paying tribute to the emperor. China, if you look at its 3000-year-long history, is volatile and unstable. A pattern repeats, again and again: there are periods of prosperity and power under a strong imperial center, followed by collapse and utter chaos. An unwinding of the Chinese empire, much like the implosion of the Soviet empire, is probably only a matter of time. If you look at Indian history, the nation was mostly stable, though its prosperity invited invaders. As far back as 3000 years ago, India was the center of a lucrative Indian Ocean trade, based on Pax Indica in the region. With a deep water navy, a massive manufacturing push, and self-reliance, India can regain its past glory. Military power breeds respect from others. Economic power makes others want to trade. 1100 words, 18 Jun 2026 AI-generated slideshow courtesy notebookLM.google.com: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jun 18

    India will collapse without digital sovereignty and Pax Indica: lessons from Hormuz

    A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/world/india-will-collapse-without-digital-sovereignty-and-pax-indica-lessons-from-hormuz By now it is clear that the Iran War (or West Asia War) has been a disaster to all concerned, including the principals as well as assorted passersby. The massive amounts spent by the US (at last count $25 billion) are at least articulated; the bill for the enormous infrastructural and human suffering inflicted on Gulf states, in the theater of war, must be greater, by definition. The collateral damages suffered by the rest of the world from the cessation of trade through the Straits of Hormuz will presumably run into the trillions of dollars. As one of the worst affected, India, which imports 90% of its hydrocarbons from the Gulf, not to mention other essential items such as urea (for fertilizer), sulfuric acid, helium, etc., is on track to take a massive hit. As an article in The Economic Times said, “India must brace for broad-based economic shock”. Indian exports of up to $50 billion are also affected, especially agricultural products including perishable foodstuffs, but also gems and jewellery, electronics, textiles and garments. Some of this can be diverted via Oman and the UAE’s Fujairah port, but much of it passes through the Straits of Hormuz and is potentially blocked and/or stranded at sea. The Hormuz closure is a body blow to India’s economy. What can and will India do about it? The Indian State has a habit of rising to the challenge only when there is a crisis, while vegetating otherwise. The 1991 economic crisis is a case in point; the sanctions following “The Buddha is smiling”, and the denial of cryogenic rocket engines and supercomputers are other examples where the nation rallied. So were covid vaccines. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Turning a threat into an opportunity If I were to be an optimist, I could say that the current crisis is actually an opportunity. In fact, a major opportunity. My reading of the Iran War is that it is President Trump’s strategic tit-for-tat against China for denying him rare earths and cutting off soybean purchases. In return Trump decided to deny China access to oil by closing access to Venezuela and Iran. Whether this will work, or whether the G2 condominium (read ‘surrender’) will prevail, is unclear. But that is, in a sense, background noise that needs to be managed. India needs to focus on its own issues, of which I see several as critical, and the solution in general is to become Atmanirbhar, self-reliant, and from that, to create an Anti-Fragile nation: * National security/defense * Food security * Energy security * Digital security/narrative control * Trade security The first three do not need an explanation: they are obvious. Internal and external security are pre-requisites for any successful society. If India’s hard-won food security can be threatened by external threats, then there needs to be some deep introspection. Energy security means diversification, both of hydrocarbon sources, and of types of energy, including renewables, nuclear, biomass, coal-based, and so on. Malign narratives and digital sovereignty Narrative control is something that the Indian State has failed at so far; it is laughably easy to create hate speech against Indians and India (as has been demonstrated freely by any number of players, starting from the MAGA crowd, to Audrey Truschke to a”Cockroach Janata Party” and some nitwit Norwegian journalist in just the last fortnight) and there are no consequences to the culprits. It’s enough to make me pine for Lee Kuan Yew’s aggressive legal battles against the media. It’s one thing if it were only a problem with foreigners, but with the massive spread of social media, and in particular generativeAI, it is becoming a serious domestic issue. Since India is an avid consumer of social media, and because generativeAI is trained on things like Wikipedia, X, Whatsapp and Google content, biased and motivated material becomes ensconced as The Truth. I have written about narrative warfare and manufacturing consent. This used to be a one-way tsunami of (mis)-information by legacy media, but now there is also the opposite: the wholesale and free vacuuming-up of Indian data (whatever happened to “data is the new oil”?). The “Great Firewall of China” both kept out foreign BIg Tech applications and prevented their plundering Chinese data: is that the way to go? Manufactured narratives are intended for regime change: all the color revolutions today are hatched with massive bot-farms funded by some combination of Deep State, CCP, ISI, Qatar etc. (for example the alleged Gen-Z uprisings that rocked Nepal, drove Sheikh Hasina out of Bangladesh). Thus muzzling malign narratives, and ensuring data security, are imperative. Even Singapore is not immune: it had to block anti-India narratives that likely originated from Chinese sources. A particularly striking example of narrative warfare is the virtual hate speech inducted into Wikipedia by deeply prejudiced anonymous editors. Ashley Rindsberg, who exposed the mighty New York Times’ biases in his book The Gray Lady Winked, provides many examples of this. Of note to Indians and Hindus is his recent substack titled “Wikipedia’s India War” where he identifies just four editors as having created most of the content condemning the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in ‘Wikivoice’, i.e. the allegedly neutral perspective of Wikipedia. They are, on the contrary, shown to be highly one-sided.As Rindsberg mentions, Wikipedia being central to generativeAI, the damage is baked into the world-view of all AI applications. Truly Orwellian. Says Rindsberg: “four… anonymous accounts can have an enormous impact on what millions of people believe to be the truth.” “Over four years (2021-2025), editors systematically erased HAF’s identity as an American civil rights group, transforming its Wikipedia page into a heavily curated dossier of accusations.” Trade, and how the Spice Route was far superior to the Silk Road Finally, something that is becoming increasingly important: ensuring freedom of trade. This is more than just freedom of navigation, although I find it instructive that Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a huge fleet 1,001 years ago simply to open up the Straits of Malacca. India can make an active attempt to regain primacy in Indian Ocean trade, the whole Pax indica idea. Here is another example of the power of narrative: we have been led to believe that the Silk Road to China was some major highway of commerce between ancient Rome and ancient China, but it was a term coined only in 1877 by the German Ferdinand von Richthofen. There was no highway. A large caravan might take six months, and with 500 camels traversing treacherous deserts and braving bandits, it might carry a maximum of 100 tons. That is puny. In comparison, on the Spice Route, a single stitched ship from Muziris could carry 400 tons of ivory, pepper, silk, tigers and elephants; and the historian Strabo around 1 CE talks about fleets of 250 ships going from Alexandria to India on a six-week monsoon-powered journey. That is 100,000 tons of merchandise. No wonder Pliny the Elder complained that Rome’s treasuries were being emptied of gold by India. Simple question: where are hoards of ancient Roman coins found in Asia? Answer: not along the Silk Road. The hoards are in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Today, it is possible for India to aspire to port-led development of trade, especially with the major ports at Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Maharashtra (Vadhavan), and Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay). The underlying ‘software’ of India’s millennia-old trade competency was a ‘multi-protocol switch’ as I pointed out, and today’s India Stack can replicate that. Then there is the need for a blue-water navy: muscle to provide security on the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes. So there is a vision. How can India get there? This is where policy matters, as I disc… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  7. May 19

    IITMAA Fireside Chats Ep. 5: Masterclass by Anuj Gupta on Policy and How Govt is now a Shaper and Enabler of Business, not a Regulator alone or an Obstacle

    Episode 5: May 17th, 2026: Shri Anuj Gupta, B Tech Mechanical 2003, Managing Director of Policy Consulting Firm BowerGroup Asia, former Govt of India policy expert, and former Chief of Staff to the Commerce Minister . Policy expert Anuj Gupta on how India Governs and why it matters for Business * The government has moved sharply toward outcome-orientation — targets, dashboards, PRAGATI reviews. What does that mean for how you sell to, partner with, or contract with the government? * The government operates with a clear priority stack — Swachh Bharat, Ayushman Bharat, PLI, ONDC. Reading that stack correctly seems like the most underrated business intelligence exercise in India. How do you read it? * if you knew exactly how a reform-oriented government thinks, decides, and executes, how would you run your business differently? This is a fireside chat hosted by the IIT Madras Alumni Association featuring policy expert Anuj Gupta, who examines the evolving relationship between the Indian government and the private sector. The discussion highlights how the state has transitioned from a mere regulator to a primary shaper of market structures, utilizing industrial policy and digital public infrastructure to drive rapid economic change. Gupta emphasizes that modern governance in India prioritizes outcome-oriented execution and scale, as evidenced by massive initiatives in electrification, poverty reduction, and the India Stack. Business leaders are encouraged to move from a reactive compliance mindset to an anticipatory strategy that aligns with state-driven goals like competitive federalism and technological innovation. By understanding the structural logic of current reforms, entrepreneurs can better navigate emerging opportunities in sectors like green energy, space technology, and logistics. Ultimately, the sources advocate for a collaborative partnership where businesses leverage government-built foundations to foster national growth and wealth creation. Brief Profile of Anuj Gupta Anuj Gupta is the Managing Director of Policy Consulting firm BowerGroupAsia. BowerGroupAsia is present in 30+ countries in the World and helps Fortune 500 companies enter or expand in a country and operates at the intersection of policy and business. Anuj previously was a Vice President at TataSons and spent a decade in the Indian and Abu Dhabi governments, where he shaped flagship policies across trade and industry, energy, finance, technology, infrastructure and startups. As chief of staff to Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, he was instrumental in India’s recent economic, trade and supply chain realignment. He has worked in 10+ Ministries with experience ranging from energy, mining, transportation, industry, trade and food. Anuj holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a BTech (ME, 2003) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is also an alumnus of Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. In his spare time, he enjoys reading more than 100 books an year and exploring ideas at the intersection of policy, innovation and global development. Here’s the AI-generated audio podcast based on the conversation: Here is also a brief AI-generated video summary: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

  8. May 11

    Ep. 191: Gulf War 3 has become a quagmire; India has no option but to pursue energy self-reliance

    A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/gulf-war-crisis-why-india-will-take-a-huge-hit/20260511.htm In the heat and dust of elections, many of us have forgotten that there is a war going on. But the PM’s warning about sacrifices and conservation reminds us that this essentially unwinnable war, and the on-again, off-again negotiations to bring it to a closure, are going to hit every one of us in our wallets. On 30th April, the Pentagon announced that the US had so far spent $25 billion on the West Asia war. This is a staggeringly huge number, and I was startled because I had casually thrown around this number as the ultimate cost of the war for all parties. Clearly I underestimated the damage, if this is the US’ cost alone. Add the other frontline states, and then the untold misery and cost imposed on all of us innocent bystanders. And it’s not over yet by any means. Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war (self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it, they changed the name from secretary of defense, and lo! they went to war immediately thereafter) bristled at the idea of a quagmire, according to The Economist. But I am old enough to remember Vietnam, and then Afghanistan. These forever wars are easy to get into, but hard to get out of. Indeed, the war has become not only an impasse, but also a charade. Even considering how the narrative gets bizarre from all sides during every war, this one seems especially messed up. So much so that there literally is no point in paying attention to the day-to-day events, because they don’t seem to make much difference. Except of course, when the price of Brent crude hits $120, as it did on April 30th, twice what it was before the war. Ouch! And Hormuz is still closed. India is reeling under a heatwave, and we live under the Damocles’ sword of power cuts. Kerala announced a half hour of rolling cuts (anodyne euphemism: “load shedding”) every night, but they will not tell you when or where the cuts will be. This is like the Malayalam proverb: “the guy who got hit by lightning was then bitten by a snake”. Incidentally, there’s been a number of deaths from snakebites in Kerala as the reptiles enter houses seeking cooler temperatures. If this El Nino weather holds up, India’s assumptions about load (maximum 270 GW) will be challenged: we hit a record on April 25th of 256 GW peak demand, and the fact that the grid didn’t collapse is admirable, but being so close to the maximum is worrying. In Kerala, the grid cannot absorb the solar electricity produced by many households during the day because the Electricity Board did not purchase enough storage batteries: so much for on-grid. I am also fairly confident that once the elections are over, the government will be forced to increase fuel prices. Petrol has held steady at pump prices of Rs. 107.45/liter for a few years, but as crude oil prices have doubled, I see an inevitable rise not of Rs. 28 or so as speculated, but Rs. 50-100 based on how much inflation the Reserve Bank is willing to tolerate. In passing, I remember seeing somewhere that petrol prices have reached Pak Rs. 500/liter in that country. Therefore I have stopped paying much attention to the daily press releases and JUST IN, BREAKING NEWS types of ‘analysis’ (some of the most prominent of these are clear AI slop, possibly manufactured by Chinese troll farms). The big picture is that the Straits of Hormuz remain blocked, the amount of oil and gas coming from the Persian Gulf remains diminished dramatically, and recovery may take months, if not years, even if the strait is unblocked. The chances are increasing that this will become a protracted war, as the principals are standing by their maximalist positions, where this is little reason to believe they will be able to arrive at a via media and a lasting ceasefire. It is not business as usual. This is the biggest energy shock since 1973, and as always, it is developing countries that will be most seriously affected. India is going to take a large hit, with inflation rising by, say, 2%, and GDP growth falling from 7+% to 6%. There are several things India needs to do urgently: * Strive for self-reliance (“Atmanirbhar”) in a variety of areas * Diversify its sources of hydrocarbons to other geographies eg. Africa, South America, Central Asia (through Chabahar), and accelerate exploration of its own (offshore and onshore) blocks as Mumbai High and Assam fields are aging rapidly * Pursue other forms of energy: * Renewables * Coal, including carbon sequestration * Biofuels * Nuclear (both SMR and FBR) * Shift households from LPG to LNG, including tapping Krishna Godavari wells, coal gasification, biomass Especially at a time when electricity demand for new industries (eg. generativeAI data centers, semiconductors) is ramping up, it is important for India’s manufacturing rise to ensure that this does not become a constraint. From a consumer perspective, increased affluence brings increased electricity demand. In addition, the Indian migrant worker population of about 10 million in West Asia, and their inward remittances of some $40-$50 billion per annum (total of $120 billion globally) may be increasingly under pressure if oil/gas production does not go back to pre-war levels. There is one more factor: India needs military muscle. As I said about Pax Indica, the Indian Ocean needs a strong, impartial facilitator of trade in the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes, and India is best placed to do this, harking back to Rajendra Chola re-opening Malacca in 1025 CE. But this requires three things: * Major container ports: Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Vadhavan, Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay) * The ‘switch’ to ease multiparty, multi-protocol trade: the India Stack * Security: three aircraft carrier groups, two dozen SSBNs, SSNs, AIP diesel submarines This is the time for India to plan forward fully, with the goal of Atmanirbharata, and energy security. The Persian Gulf is no longer a reliable source. The war is indeed a quagmire. 950 words This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

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An Indian/Hindu nationalist perspective on world affairs; as well as on technology and innovation; conversations with experts and with people just like you and me. rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

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