Technology is not neutral. It carries power.
At a summit in New Delhi, India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar gave voice to what many have long sensed but few in power have stated plainly: technology is not a neutral force but a vessel of political will. Speaking before the Global Technology Summit, he argued that India's rise as a civilizational power is inseparable from its capacity to build, control, and export its own technological infrastructure. In a multipolar world where data sovereignty and semiconductor supply chains have become the new geography of influence, Jaishankar's message was both a diagnosis and a directive — nations that treat technology as commerce alone will find themselves governed by those who understood it as strategy.
- The old assumption that technology exists outside politics is collapsing, and India's foreign minister is demanding his country stop pretending otherwise.
- Control over data — where it lives, who processes it, who profits from it — has become a fault line in global power, and India risks being on the wrong side if it remains passive.
- India is positioning its G-20 presidency as a platform to redirect international technology conversations toward the global south, challenging wealthy nations' monopoly on the agenda.
- India's homegrown digital welfare systems — reaching hundreds of millions of citizens — are being offered as proof that developing nations need not import Western or Chinese models wholesale.
- Jaishankar's call for strategic autonomy in semiconductors, AI, and 5G signals a shift: technology development is no longer a ministry of commerce concern, but a pillar of foreign policy.
India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar took the stage at the Global Technology Summit in New Delhi to make an argument that felt both overdue and urgent: technology is inherently political, and India can no longer afford to treat it as anything less.
Speaking at the three-day conference co-hosted by Carnegie India, Jaishankar laid out a vision in which India's geopolitical ascent is directly tied to its technological self-sufficiency — in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, 5G, commercial space, and satellite manufacturing. These are not merely industrial ambitions. They are, he argued, the architecture of national power in a world where influence is no longer concentrated in a handful of capitals but distributed across multiple competing centers.
At the heart of his remarks was a challenge to a comfortable fiction long held in technology circles: that innovation is somehow apolitical. Questions about where Indian data resides, who processes it, and who benefits from it are not technical matters, he insisted — they are strategic ones. Nations that fail to build and govern their own technological infrastructure will find themselves dependent on those that did.
Jaishankar also pointed to India's G-20 presidency as a moment to reorient global technology conversations toward the developing world. Africa, Latin America, and other regions of the global south have long been marginal voices in these discussions. India, he suggested, could change that — and could do so by example. He highlighted India's digital welfare platforms, which deliver direct financial transfers to 450 million beneficiaries and food assistance to 800 million, as evidence that robust social infrastructure is not the exclusive province of wealthy nations.
Perhaps most significantly, he framed India not merely as a technology consumer seeking independence from Western or Chinese systems, but as a potential technology provider — one capable of offering the developing world alternatives shaped by different values and different realities. The implicit message was clear: in a world being remade by digital systems, neutrality is not wisdom. It is abdication.
India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stood before the Global Technology Summit in New Delhi and made a case that would have seemed obvious a decade ago but still needed saying: technology is not neutral, and India cannot afford to pretend otherwise.
Speaking at the three-day conference, co-hosted by his ministry and Carnegie India, Jaishankar laid out a vision of technological development as inseparable from national power. The rise of India, he argued, depends directly on the rise of Indian technology—whether in semiconductors, 5G networks, artificial intelligence, commercial space launches, or satellite manufacturing. These are not merely commercial pursuits. They are the sinews of geopolitical influence in a world where power is increasingly distributed among multiple centers rather than concentrated in a few.
The minister's core argument cut against a long-standing assumption in technology circles: that innovation exists in some realm apart from politics. "We cannot be agnostic about technology," he said. "We have to stop thinking that there is something neutral about technology." The statement carried weight because it acknowledged what has become undeniable—that the systems shaping how information flows, how data is stored, who controls it, and what they do with it are fundamentally questions of power. India, he suggested, had begun to wake up to this reality. Where does Indian data reside? Who processes it? Who harvests it? These are not technical questions. They are strategic ones.
Jaishankar framed this argument within a larger principle: economic strategic autonomy. In a world being reshaped by technological capability, nations that cannot build and control their own technological infrastructure will find themselves dependent on those that can. The major powers understand this. They will continue to invest heavily in becoming more technologically capable. India must do the same, not as an afterthought but as a central pillar of foreign policy.
He also positioned India's upcoming G-20 presidency as an opportunity to shift the conversation away from the concerns of wealthy nations. The global south—Africa, Latin America, and other developing regions—has long been sidelined in international technology discussions. India, he suggested, could use its presidency to amplify those voices and to showcase what it has already built at home. He pointed to India's digital platforms for delivering social security: direct benefit transfers reaching 45 crore beneficiaries, free food grain distribution to 80 crore poor. These systems, he noted, had shattered an old assumption—that comprehensive social safety nets were something only wealthy societies could afford. The global south was watching. It wanted to know how India had done it.
Jaishankar's remarks also touched on the question of partnerships. In technology and strategy, he said, the quality of one's partners matters enormously. His conversations with counterparts in Africa and Latin America had revealed substantial interest in the digitally-enabled platforms India had developed. This suggested an opening: India could position itself not as a technology consumer dependent on Western or Chinese systems, but as a technology provider to the developing world, offering alternatives built with different values and different constraints in mind.
The message, taken whole, was a call for India to think of technology as a domain of statecraft. Not every innovation matters equally. Not every partnership serves the same interests. The choices India makes about which technologies to develop, which to control, and which to share will shape not only its own future but its standing in a world being remade by digital systems. In that context, neutrality is not an option. It is a luxury only the powerful can afford.
Notable Quotes
The rise of India is deeply linked to the rise of Indian technology. We cannot be agnostic about technology.— S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister
We have broken the presumption that social security is actually a wealthy society's prerogative.— S. Jaishankar, on India's digital welfare platforms
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When Jaishankar says technology is political, what does he mean exactly? Isn't he just describing the obvious?
He's naming something that the tech industry has spent decades denying. For years, engineers and entrepreneurs claimed they were building neutral tools—that a platform or a chip or an algorithm had no inherent politics. Jaishankar is saying that's a fiction. Every technology embeds choices about who controls it, who benefits, whose data gets harvested.
But why does India specifically need to assert this right now?
Because India is at a moment where it has to choose: remain dependent on foreign technology, or build its own. That choice has real consequences. If your data is processed abroad, if your semiconductors come from Taiwan or South Korea, if your AI systems run on American cloud infrastructure—you're not sovereign. You're vulnerable.
The G-20 presidency angle is interesting. Why does India care what the global south thinks about its digital platforms?
Because India is offering a different model. It's saying: you don't need to be rich to have a functioning welfare state. You don't need Western infrastructure. Look at what we've built. That's soft power. It's also a way of saying India isn't just another Western technology consumer—it's a builder, an alternative.
Does this mean India wants to cut itself off from Western technology?
Not entirely. But it means India wants leverage. If you can build your own semiconductors, your own AI, your own data infrastructure, you're not at the mercy of sanctions or supply chain disruptions. You can negotiate from strength.
What happens if India succeeds in this?
Then the world has multiple technology ecosystems instead of one or two dominant ones. That's destabilizing for the current powers, but it might be more stable overall. It also means developing countries have choices they don't have now.