WASHINGTON: India's growing role as a strategic technology partner was in sharp focus this week as US lawmakers and experts warned that the global race for artificial intelligence has entered a decisive phase, defined by China's rapid military adoption of AI and tightening US-led controls on advanced chips.
At a December 2 Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing on geopolitical risks from China's AI surge, witnesses stressed that the coming year will demand far deeper coordination among democratic partners - including India - to shape global AI standards, secure semiconductor supply chains and counter Beijing's ambitions.
India featured early in the discussion, with Anthropic's Tarun Chhabra - a former White House national security official - identifying New Delhi as a pivotal actor in building "trusted AI frameworks." He pointed to the major AI summit India will host in February 2026 as a key opportunity to advance shared governance rules. The next two to three years, he said, represent a "critical window" for frontier AI development and diffusion.
Chhabra also urged stricter controls to prevent Chinese state-linked firms from acquiring US-made AI chips, warning that China cannot catch up unless the United States "squanders its advantage."
Senators Pete Ricketts and Chris Coons framed the AI contest in stark strategic terms. Ricketts likened the moment to the Cold War space race, arguing that America now faces "an even higher stakes" contest with Communist China. AI, he said, will reshape daily life and define future military power, with Beijing racing to merge civilian and defence applications.
Coons stressed that allied leadership in AI must rest upon "our chips, our cloud infrastructure and our models," noting China's declared goal of becoming the world's top AI power by 2030. Maintaining leadership, he said, must be treated as a "central national imperative."
Experts warned that China's military AI integration is accelerating rapidly. AEI's Chris Miller said Russia and Ukraine already rely on AI for battlefield intelligence, and argued that US dominance hinges on sustaining "electrical power, computing power and brain power." CSIS expert Gregory Allen called US chip export controls the most consequential policy move in years, crediting them with preventing China from operating the world's largest data centres.
Witnesses unanimously opposed any move to export NVIDIA's H-200 or Blackwell chips to China. Chinese military scholar James Mulvenon warned that the PLA is embedding large language models "at every level," and remains confident it can obtain Western chips through smuggling and espionage.
For India, the hearing underscored both the opportunity and responsibility to shape emerging AI governance. New Delhi's expanding partnership with Washington on critical technologies - from semiconductors to cloud and cybersecurity - aligns closely with the US push for a "democratic tech stack" to counter China's AI influence at a time when global standards and supply-chain rules are being rewritten. (IANS)
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