What is the United States-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET)?

RUDRA CHAUDHURI

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At the end of January 2023, India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and the U.S. NSA Jake Sullivan officially launched the United States-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET). The two NSAs took part in an unofficial discussion hosted on January 30, 2023, where they were joined by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and a whole host of Indian and American officials.

The room was filled with industry mavericks, thought leaders, representatives from India’s impressive startup ecosystem, and others who have been long invested in the bilateral partnership. The aim was clear—to communicate the incredible growth in ties between the two countries and to highlight the potential to deepen these ties across a range of critical and emerging technologies. The energy in the room was hypnotizing but real. “This is serious business,” a leading Indian CEO put it. The appetite for doing more between these two trusted geographies was unmistakable. It was evident that the iCET framework served as a lightning rod. That the governments, the private sector, research laboratories, and the academia in India and the United States were entering into a distinctive chapter for partnerships was clear.

Those in the room highlighted the possibilities of deepening ties between the two countries in strengthening quantum communications, building a semiconductor ecosystem in India, accelerating defense collaborations, exploring commercial space opportunities, and catalyzing existing and forging new research opportunities and partnerships. Government officials patiently absorbed the suggestions made in a room representing almost every part of Indian and American industry invested in the future of technology. Officials took particular note of the regulatory bottlenecks to deeper cooperation.

A day later, the two NSAs took part in G2G meetings alongside an impressive group of government representatives. On the evening of January 31, the White House published a fact sheet on the iCET. The fact sheet made clear that the iCET was a process that started in May 2022, following a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden in Tokyo. The two leaders met on the margins of the QUAD leaders’ summit in Japan. The fact sheet features details on a range of areas covered by the iCET—from creating quantum coordination mechanisms and collaborating on high-performance computers to creating a defense industrial cooperation roadmap and setting up a task force to “identify near-term opportunities and facilitate longer-term strategic development [of a] complementary semiconductor ecosystem.” The fact sheet is carefully inked and balances functional ways forward with an ambition to cement ties across a range of critical and emerging technologies. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) published a press release on the iCET on February 1.

WHAT IS THE ICET?

Yet, what exactly the iCET is remains something of a mystery. Leading defense experts and industry representatives in part view the iCET as an upgraded version of the U.S.-India Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) that was launched in 2012. The DTTI was designed to overcome and reduce impediments in bilateral defense cooperation. The eleventh DTTI meeting was held virtually in November 2021. With the iCET, for many journalists, both in India and the United States, the overarching question is, “What is the deal?” If there is no deal, the argument goes, and as several journalists have confessed to me, what is the point of “this iCET?” “Is it just another turn of phrase [that maintains the] momentum behind the relationship?” is the common refrain amongst those who have tracked the space for long.

Those who have served in official positions in both countries refer to their time negotiating the 2008 United States-India Nuclear Deal. Compared to the enormous effort it took to ink the nuclear deal, the iCET seems “less significant.” “Is it a real thing?” one such insider put to me. To be sure, newspapers seem to have concluded that the “deal” is done. “US offers critical technologies to India under the iCET,” claimed one headline. This would surprise anyone engaged in the long and hard task of negotiating for access to such technologies.

In part, the confusion is understandable. There is little in the public domain officially on the iCET. Till date, to the best of my knowledge, there are only four substantive official public references to the iCET—a readout following the Modi-Biden meeting in May 2022, a publicly recorded conversation with a senior U.S. National Security Council official leading the iCET, the fact sheet published by the White House, and a press release published by the MEA. Further, this is an initiative that is led by the NSAs of the two countries and their respective bureaucracies: the National Security Council (NSC) in the United States and the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) in India.

For the sake of analytical clarity, there is merit in deciphering what the iCET is and what it is not. This way, perhaps, the expectations and analyses on and around the iCET can be better managed against the principles that drive the same. The fleeting assessments offered below are from the vantage point of someone on the “outside” who has tried to follow the evolution of this initiative over the last eight months.

THE ICET IS NOT “A” DEAL

The iCET is not designed to deliver a single deal. There are, at least, eight to ten different streams for cooperation under the iCET, which serve as a framework for collaboration between the United States and India on critical and emerging technologies. Accordingly, there are a range of deals to be done across these technologies. For instance, in the area of commercial space, it is about finding practical ways by which timely licenses can be provided to Indian space startups. In the event that licenses are not forthcoming, it is about discovering ways by which specific exemptions can be made from the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR).

As far as semiconductors are concerned, the deal to be done is to find ways by which companies in the United States place a greenfield bet on India to help build an ecosystem, which is going to be a process. On quantum computing and communications, the deal that is waiting to be struck is between universities invested in quantum technologies in both countries. Next is the ability of the industry to make the best use of the knowledge created and shared between scholars, students, and experts. Essentially, the aim is to create translational use cases for quantum.

The key point is that the iCET is not “a” deal—it is certainly nothing like the 2008 nuclear deal. It is a framework that electrifies the ability of government, the private sector, and academia to deepen cooperation across a range of emerging technologies. In this, there is plenty of room for failure, as there is for the potential of success.

THE ICET IS NOT A MODERN AVATAR OF THE DTTI

In certain corridors both in the United States and India, there is an increasingly common perception that the iCET is simply a new avatar of the DTTI. As one journalist puts it, “The iCET appears to be a technologically upgraded reincarnation [of the DTTI].” Defense experts focus on the potential of the iCET to deliver “combat potential” and monetize dual-use technologies for commerce. The focus, according to many, is on what the iCET can do for deeper defense technology cooperation. Whether it is in a closed-door setting in Washington D.C. or in New Delhi, a range of experts, once invested in the DTTI, have strong views on the way forward. This is of course promising. According to one such expert, a senior Indian military officer-turned-scholar, the focus ought to be on learning from “the success of [the] DTTI,” not only from its failure. In the defense world, the key pivot for the iCET is on and around defense technologies.

Yet, the iCET is not the DTTI. It is not an initiative that seeks only to deepen defense cooperation. To be sure, this is a holistic framework for cooperation between technologies that are at once interlinked and mutually separable. Defense cooperation is only a part of what the iCET focuses on, not the central focus of and for this initiative. That said, there is every opportunity to build upon the DTTI in certain domains.

There is much to be done between defense-focused startups and MSMEs in India and the United States. The iCET could catalyze a defense innovation bridge between the Bay Area and several institutions dotted across India, especially the IITs—a point also highlighted in the White House fact sheet. Programs designed to incubate startups and connect engineering students between the United States and India could serve as a long-term deliverable for the iCET.

In short, there is much more flexibility built into the iCET framework than was designed into the DTTI. The access to technologies of course remains a key demand in India, but there is much that can be done through the iCET beyond this essential need.

CONCLUSION

The iCET is best defined as an interlinked framework for cooperation on critical and emerging technologies. The architecture of the iCET is more of a charter or a structure that seeks to catalyze existing corridors of cooperation, create new opportunities, and arrest the present moment in geopolitical change to strike several deals on critical and emerging technologies.

Yet, deals themselves do not define the iCET.

The momentum created by this structure—led by the NSC and the NSCS—has immense potential to electrify opportunities that lay dormant, create green-shoot prospects in emerging and critical technologies, and deepen the strategic arc of technology cooperation between the two countries across several sectors of promise. Though this framework is shepherded by the NSC and the NSCS, both of which have invested an incredible effort to make the initiative more inclusive and participatory, they do not own the iCET. Rather, the two bureaucracies are best placed to serve as administrative guides to this unique and agile framework. They have the convening ability to help shape outcomes.

The iCET will require the private sector, knowledge partners in the industry, and the academia in both countries to give functional meaning to these very outcomes. Further, it will require line ministries and government agencies in both countries to deregulate, perhaps even coregulate, and provide the necessary strategic and operational assurances to the private sector in India and the United States.

Despite decades of close ties between the United States and India, there remain apprehensions, on both sides. This matters when the need of the hour is to place big bets on and leverage each other’s abilities and deliver an interconnected ecosystem for the growth of critical and emerging technologies. There is an electricity that has been generated by the iCET that is palpable. From space and defense startups to MSMEs and big industry, the iCET is looked upon as a distinctive framework that could not have been introduced at a better moment in the geopolitics of technology, shaped by the need to diversify and find new markets amongst “trusted technology partners.”

In the end, this is a whole-of-society approach. It needs different parts of the government in both countries to work in cohesion with different parts of the private sector, academia, and distinctive brain trusts to deliver a range of functional and beyond-the-horizon outcomes. By design, there is no singular outcome for the iCET. It is, in its construction, a multi-domain effort that has the promise to deliver multiple kinds of technology-driven results.