China far ahead of India on using AI for defence technology, says LatentAI CEO
Q. What sort of projects do you intend to work on for the Indian military?
So let me give you an example. At this year's Aero India, I met with a colonel in the Indian Army and he was demonstrating an indigenous capability that the Army had created, which was using computer vision on an automated weapon system to be deployed on India's borders. So you define a zone of activity and if there is human movement over there, the machine shoots them down. So in that case, they were using heavy computing and you cannot scale that weapon system the way that they had designed because of hardware limitations. That is a critical use case that our company can solve. We worked with the US Navy on a battery operated underwater vehicle with very limited space and so there were limitations on how much computing power it had. Our job was to compress and optimise an AI model to fit that limited hardware to allow the vehicle to run efficiently. We did that successfully. So that is what we bring to the table. The idea is that autonomous warfare is going to be the future. Ukraine has shown, for example, that drone warfare is here to stay. AI will be used for target recognition, surveillance, intelligence gathering and the like and there will be a lot of demands on military hardware to run AI models efficiently. We're solving that problem.
Q. You're an American defence firm that has partnered up with InferQ, which is an Indian firm. We've seen a new defence tech ecosystem come up between America and India. The governments have pushed for it through new initiatives like INDUSX and IDEX. How well has it worked?
Absolutely, so I was in Coimbatore last summer, and I met with Forge ventures, which is an Indian defence-focused venture firm and Vish — who heads Forge — was part of an INDUSX cohort that came over to America. So Vish is clearly plugged in with the Ministry of Defence as well as America's Defence Department over here. Vish was one who made introductions to several companies in India and our partner InferQ was one of them. That is the clear, direct path that helped me forge this relationship,
Q. How is it working with the Indian defence bureaucracy as a foreign firm?
Look, there are a lot of challenges that still need to be overcome. One simple thing is that we don't have a clear mechanism of obtaining clearances for a non-Indian passport holders to work with the Indian Ministry of Defence. Also the bureaucracy in India can be difficult. It takes 18-24 months to even move things forward, right? It is an absolute pain to work with bureaucracy. There are no questions about that. Transparency doesn't exist. So when we're in the US, when we submit a proposal, we know all the different steps that we have to go through and all the decision makers along the way. All of that is very transparent in the US ecosystem. In India, I don't get to see that as a foreign company. And even Indian companies don't get to see that.
I am advising a couple of founders in the Indian defence ecosystem. And one guy, he almost had to shut down his company because he built a prototype that the army wanted to see built. He showed it to them. It took them two years, literally two years, to get it certified. And that is the certification. It does not mean he won a contract and then he has to wait again before he gets a contract. I actually think India can become a great proving ground for defence technology. India has the geographical distribution that no other country can have from swamps to deserts to the high range mountains and everything in between. You have a wonderful variety of landscape that one can test technology out. How can US companies leverage that? How does India make it much easier for US companies to come and do business that way?
Q. How do you see the China challenge from the Indian perspective? Can you compare the levels of progress from the two sides on defence AI?
My personal opinion is that, when it comes to AI applications of defence, the Chinese are like a third year PhD student while India is still in elementary school. India's defence forces have the intent to get new technologies but I don't know if they have the mechanisms they need. I was talking to a few flag officers in India. Since India doesn't have a proper battle management system today, they were looking at hardcore maps, like paper maps, to look at what things are happening. I'll tell you a story. Back in 2009-2010, I was starting another company in Atlanta, and I was approached by the Chinese Communist Party to build a company in Shanghai. They offered to provide me with resources and support for three years, including picking up the payroll costs but I would need to build the company there. Now obviously I declined but you see the way China was approaching this issue even in the 2010s. I was a big, vocal critic of this, and nobody in the US government was paying attention to this. What India needs today is a quantum leap on defence technology. India has leapfrogged in the past like with the telecom sector and it needs to do that again.
Q. So what exactly is working in the Indian defence tech ecosystem?
I think the IDEX platform launched by the Minister of Defence is uncovering a lot of new technologies that are being homegrown. IDEX is able to expose a lot of talent and technologies and that is important since there is a lot of talent in India and there are a lot of smart people there from a technology point of view.
Q. How could India and America work more effectively together on this front?
India and the US are the linchpins of democratic society for the next century and there is a threat to that. So just using that as a foundation, there are things India and America can do to work more closely here. For example, can there be reciprocity around clearances? If somebody is cleared over here in America, can they be given priority such that India does its own due diligence and provide a level of clearance that gives them access, or gives them permission to work on defence technology.
That would be my first recommendation. Secondly, I was born in India but I'm now an American citizen. Now, there is always this gripe from the American side about India having a lot of Russian hardware. So how does interoperability work? Because India is not going to get rid of Russian hardware. So if we are providing our technology, how does it co-exist within the Indian ecosystem, next to a Russian system? That needs to be solved. I don't think there is a clear, easy solution. But can we define interfaces that are transparent, that protect sensitive secrets for both sides? That would be something to work on.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
17 minutes ago
- Time of India
India's Stand Vindicated As Putin Exposes Trump, Confirms US Trades With Russia But Penalises Others
Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly confirmed that U.S.-Russia trade increased by 20% during Trump's tenure, revealing contradictions in U.S. sanctions policy. Trump criticized India with tariffs but stayed silent about rising U.S.-Russia trade amid the Ukraine conflict. Previously, Trump had avoided answering questions on Russian imports and Indian tariffs. India had highlighted this hypocrisy, continuing to import Russian crude for energy security despite international pressure. In 2023, Russia became India's largest oil supplier, delivering over 1.8 million barrels daily. The U.S. responded by imposing tariffs on Indian products as a punitive measure for its dealings with Russia.
Mint
17 minutes ago
- Mint
Transformer by Mint: The man shaping India's AI dreams, and continuing chaos at Vodafone
I've known Abhishek Singh, a senior bureaucrat, for some time now. He's been in the Indian tech ecosystem for a while, leading multiple government-backed digitisation initiatives. Now, as chief of the billion-dollar India AI Mission, he faces one of his biggest challenges in a public-service career spanning three decades. The reasons for this are varied. For one, the fact that AI presents a huge opportunity to a long-serving government official shows just how far the technology has come, and how it now affects everyone. More importantly, though, India could potentially gain or lose a lot depending on what we do with AI. Let me take you back a few decades. If you've read the venerable Chip War by Chris Miller (whom I had the pleasure to meet this January), you know that during America's push for leadership in electronic machines at the start of the world's tryst with semiconductors, India missed the bus. This allowed Japan and Taiwan to become global technology leaders despite being societies steeped in tradition. Then came the mobile revolution, and apart from emerging as a big global market, India almost missed the bus there, too. But then the Digital India and Make in India initiatives emerged, digital skills took centre stage, and India is now at a point where tech manufacturing is at least on the ascendancy. To cut a long story short, after having missed out on tectonic global shifts, India a chance to show with AI that it is not just the world's tech back-office and can lead from the front, too. Singh has a plan for this: building a voice-based foundational model that, along with India's government-supported base of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, would become India's next big export to the world after UPI. Here's why he thinks this will work. Speaking of tech's back offices… Jas Bardia, our resident correspondent for India's nearly $300-billion IT services industry, reported last week that there's a war brewing at India's mid-sized tech services firms, which truly believe they can take on the behemoths and win. India's IT services industry had began booming in the early 1990s, turning Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and the likes into the mammoths they are today. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every household around where I grew up had at least one person working at these IT giants. The world, however, as changed considerably since then. Over the past two years companies such as Coforge and Persistent Services have emerged as serious competitors, pitching themselves as specialised firms with a deeper understanding of technology. Where does this leave TCS and its ilk? Will they lose out? Maybe not so soon, but market dynamics are undeniably changing. Also changing is the top job at Vodafone-Idea The beleaguered telecom operator began its India journey as Command Telecom, a telco operated under Kolkata's Usha Martin. In 2000, Hutchison Max acquired Command, leading to the creation of network provider Hutch in 2005. In 2007, Vodafone entered the market and created Vodafone Essar Limited, the entity's longest-standing identity so far. Despite its more than three decades of history, the Vodafone-Idea entity of today is in perilous financial health. Last week the telco appointed erstwhile chief operating officer Abhijit Kishore as CEO for three years as outgoing chief Akshay Moondra's term ended. Now, being a CEO is a dream for anyone in corporate India, but Vi faces a veritable nightmare. After all, it needs to catch up with Airtel and Jio on quality of service while paying off its eye-watering dues and needing $30 billion of capital immediately. Suddenly, Kishore's job doesn't seem like a dream. One thing's clear, though – whichever way this goes, Vodafone-Idea's story will make for a fascinating case study in India's telecom sector for years to come. Mint's telecom correspondent Jatin Grover brings you all the juicy details. Finally, satellites on the frontline Last week, Jatin and I wrote about India's potential revamp of sensitive defence networks in an exclusive report. The full story: over the past two years, the government has been exploring ways for modern satellite internet providers such as Elon Musk's Starlink and Bharti Airtel's OneWeb to offer their services to India's defence forces. The reason is clear: it's now imperative to have secure and blazing-fast internet connectivity even in remote bounary regions. India needs drones, consistent satellite feeds, and a host of other technologies to stay ahead of its enemies. Older satellite connections—which serve only as a backup—aren't up to the task. In other news: the battle for Chrome, and an iPhone 'Air' Last week, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas put in a bid for Google Chrome, saying his company was willing to spend $34.5 billion to buy the world's leading browser. However, he doesn't have that kind of money. You see, Perplexity is only worth about $18 billion. Chrome, on the other hand, is valued more than $50 billion. Then, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added fuel to the fire, asking, 'Is Google really selling Chrome? If they are, we'd be interested. Why not?" Welcome to Silicon Valley's newest battleground, one that we'll be tracking. We've already reported about Google and OpenAI's silent fight, and how it forced Sergey Brin, a Valley legend, back to the engineering table. Finally, its that time of the year when we expect to see new Google Pixels and Apple iPhones. This year, rumours are that Apple will launch an 'iPhone Air' as part of its range this year. If you've followed Apple, you'd know the 'Air' branding refers to ultra-thin and light devices. The first MacBook Air, in fact, remains one of the most legendary consumer devices to date. Will the iPhone Air live up to this? Here's what we've gathered so far. Transformer by Mint is a weekly newsletter that brings India's most important and interesting technology updates under one umbrella. As the world transforms with every day of innovation, Transformer will keep a tab on the impact that technologies will make in each of our lives. Published every week, the newsletter brings some of India's tech landscape's most insightful coverages until date.
Indian Express
17 minutes ago
- Indian Express
S&P rating upgrade: how India earned it and what lies ahead
Last week was turning out to be a great one for the Indian economy even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a raft of reforms in his Independence Day speech. A day earlier, S&P Global Ratings had upgraded its rating on India to BBB from BBB-. The sovereign rating upgrade by S&P is significant for two key reasons. One, it came after a gap of nearly two decades; and two, it has meaningful implications for the Indian economy. India's upgrade pursuit The Indian government has over the last several years aggressively pursued the three global agencies — S&P, Moody's, and Fitch Ratings — for higher ratings that, in its opinion, better reflect the economy's fundamentals. In fact, New Delhi has repeatedly expressed its displeasure over the agencies' methodologies, saying they were biased against emerging economies. The Economic Survey for 2020-21 even had a chapter titled 'Does India's Sovereign Credit Rating reflect its fundamentals No!'. 'The rating of India did not capture India's fundamentals for almost a decade,' Soumya Kanti Ghosh, State Bank of India's Group Chief Economic Adviser, said in a note on August 14. So, what has convinced S&P that now is a good time for India to be given an upgrade? Steady economic improvement The primary reason is clarity on the government's finances. While the Centre has had a law called the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act since 2003 — it demands reducing the annual fiscal deficit to 3 per cent of GDP — it has rarely been met. In fact, only once since the Act's enactment has the Centre's fiscal deficit fallen below 3 per cent, in 2007-08, and that was primarily due to some financial jugglery. It was in January 2007 that S&P had last upgraded its rating on India. However, post the coronavirus pandemic, the fiscal deficit has been reduced aggressively from 9.2 per cent in 2020-21 to a targeted 4.4 per cent in 2025-26. Going forward, the Centre will start targeting a reduction in its debt-to-GDP from 57.1 per cent in 2024-25 to 49-51 per cent by 2030-31. Then there is growth. Despite GDP growth falling to a four-year low of 6.5 per cent in 2024-25, India remains one of the fastest growing large economies in the world — or in S&P's words, 'among the best performing economies in the world'. And this is real, or inflation-adjusted, growth; nominal growth — which is the actual increase in the GDP in today's prices — is even higher. When it comes to calculating the debt-to-GDP ratio, it is the nominal GDP that matters. As such, as long as nominal GDP growth is higher than the pace with which the debt is increasing, the debt-to-GDP ratio will keep falling. Another key factor has been the fairly low and stable domestic inflation, with S&P praising the Reserve Bank of India's inflation management record. As per latest data, India's headline inflation rate had fallen to 1.55 per cent in July — the lowest since mid-2017. Low and stable inflation is crucial to foreign investors as sharp increases in prices can erode their investments, weaken growth and the domestic currency, and create social unrest — all factors that can lead to a rating downgrade. A credit rating is nothing more than a measure of an entity's creditworthiness, or how likely it is that they may pay back borrowed money. If you pay back your loans and credit card bills on time and in full, your credit score improves. It is the same for countries. Most countries need to borrow money every year to fund some of their expenditures. The difference between the total income and the expenditure for a year is the fiscal deficit; the Indian government's is Rs 15.69 lakh crore for 2025-26. This has to be met by borrowing money from the markets, with the government paying interest on it. Now, if the government is seen as being more likely to repay the loan — which is what a higher credit rating indicates — then the rate of interest is lower. According to Madhavi Arora, Chief Economist at Emkay Global Financial Services, the rating upgrade 'can open the door for new pools of global funds' capital', resulting in 'lower cost of funding across macro agents' curves, including corporates — especially those borrowing abroad'. The rating scale To be sure, India's rating level with S&P has itself not changed — the country remains in the BBB category. It's just that it has gone from the lowest edge of it, or BBB-, to a more secure position. The next step would be BBB+. So where does the move to BBB put India on the rating scale? Ratings are divided into two rough classes: investment and speculative grades. Entities, including countries, in the former class are worth investing in, while repayment of loans taken by those in the latter is difficult to predict. But even within the investment grade, there are steps, and BBB is the lowest. According to S&P, a BBB rating indicates 'adequate capacity to meet financial commitments, but more subject to adverse economic conditions'. The next step is A, then AA, and finally, AAA, which signifies 'extremely strong capacity to meet financial commitments'. Who stands where Alongside India, S&P has the likes of Greece, Mexico, and Indonesia at BBB. Just above it, at BBB+, are Botswana (negative outlook), Bulgaria, Italy, Thailand, Uruguay (all stable outlook), and Philippines (positive outlook) A positive outlook puts a rating closer to an upgrade, while a negative outlook makes a downgrade more likely. Above this, with an A- rating, are countries such as Cyprus, Poland, and Malaysia. And right at the top of the tree, with AAA rating, are the richest countries in the world — Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Germany, among others. The richest countries are not guaranteed the best rating. Take the US, for instance, which was downgraded to AA+ by S&P in August 2011 — the first time the world's largest economy had ever been assigned any rating lower than AAA — days after the US Congress raised the country's debt ceiling. More recently, Moody's Ratings in mid-May 2025 lowered its rating on the US to Aa1 from Aaa reflecting 'the increase over more than a decade in government debt and interest payment ratios to levels that are significantly higher than similarly rated sovereigns'. What's next? The implications of a better credit rating are clear — the Indian government should be able to borrow at a lower rate of interest. This has already occurred, with government bond yields in the secondary market on August 14 falling as much as 10 basis points, with the rupee's exchange rate also getting a boost. What about the next upgrade? Helpfully, S&P said on August 14 that it may further raise India's rating if the fiscal deficit of the Centre and states falls below 6 per cent of GDP on a structural basis. This, however, is a 'tough ask', according to Arora of Emkay Global. S&P itself expects the combined fiscal deficit to decline only to 6.6 per cent in 2028-29 from 7.8 per cent in 2024-25.
