Context

• In an interconnected global economy, economic sanctions have become instruments of geopolitical power.
• Measures taken by Washington or Tehran can move through banks, insurers, shipping routes and commodity markets before affecting Indian companies, workers and households.
• Recent U.S. sanctions on Indian entities over alleged Iranian oil and petrochemical dealings, alongside Iran’s listing of vessels connected with India, reveal India's growing exposure to external economic coercion.
• The central challenge is developing the institutional capacity to anticipate and manage such pressures while preserving strategic autonomy.

Weaponised Interdependence

• Globalisation has created extensive financial, technological and maritime networks.
• States controlling critical nodes within these networks can use them to exert pressure, a phenomenon known as weaponised interdependence.
• An Indian company may comply with domestic law but still depend on an American bank for payments, foreign insurers for shipping or international infrastructure for cargo delivery.
• Secondary sanctions can therefore influence businesses outside the sanctioning country's jurisdiction.
• Fear of losing access to American finance and dollar payments can discourage companies from conducting otherwise lawful trade.
• Since 2018, sanctions on Iran and, particularly after 2022, sanctions on Russia have increasingly targeted banks, insurers, tankers, traders, ship managers and technology suppliers.
• Sanctions consequently affect entire transaction networks rather than merely the original target.

India’s Emerging Vulnerabilities

• India is increasingly exposed to pressure from competing geopolitical directions.
• The United States sanctioned four India-based companies and three Indian nationals over alleged Iranian oil and petrochemical trade.
• Iranian authorities separately listed vessels serving or registered in India, creating risks of fines, detention or confiscation in the Strait of Hormuz.
• These measures operate through different chokepoints. U.S. pressure primarily works through financial and commercial networks, while Iranian actions create risks to physical maritime movement.
• Potential American tariffs linked to India's purchases of Russian oil could further connect energy security, foreign trade and geopolitics. 

Domestic Consequences of External Pressure

• Disruptions to energy supplies and shipping can increase LPG, fertilizer, transportation and food costs, while maritime restrictions can affect Indian seafarers and businesses.
• India's response during the West Asia crisis has included monitoring vessels and supplies, increasing LPG production and arranging alternative cargoes.
• Such coordination demonstrates the importance of integrating foreign policy with energy, trade, finance and maritime security.
• However, emergency coordination should develop into permanent institutional capacity.

Why India Cannot Simply Follow China?

• China has adopted a stronger position against unilateral American sanctions and possesses greater economic leverage through its huge domestic market, state-directed economy and control over critical supply chains.
• India's circumstances differ because of its significant commercial and financial ties with the United States.
• Simply adopting Beijing's approach could impose substantial costs on Indian exporters and financial institutions.
• India maintains that it recognises UN Security Council-mandated sanctions while not automatically accepting unilateral sanctions.
• The practical challenge is balancing this position with the need to protect energy supplies, trade and economic stability.
• India must maintain working relationships with the United States, Russia, Iran and Gulf countries while protecting its own interests.

The Way Forward

• Need for an Economic Security Framework
  • India could establish an Economic Security and Sanctions Office under the Cabinet Secretariat to coordinate responses to economic coercion.
  • It could bring together officials dealing with foreign affairs, finance, commerce, energy, shipping, law and defence, alongside the RBI and market regulators.
  • Its responsibilities could include:
    • Monitoring sanctions and counter-sanctions.
    • Identifying vulnerabilities in payments, insurance, shipping and logistics.
    • Examining the basis of foreign sanctions.
    • Supporting legitimate delisting requests.
    • Negotiating exemptions and transition periods.
    • Issuing clear guidance to banks and businesses.
    • Developing alternative payment and shipping arrangements.
  • Banks should distinguish between legally prohibited transactions and commercially risky transactions, while companies should receive early warnings about vulnerable payment channels, insurers and ports.
• Building Strategic Economic Resilience
  • Long-term resilience requires reducing dependence on individual external chokepoints.
  • India needs greater LPG storage, a larger Indian-controlled tanker fleet and stronger domestic maritime insurance mechanisms.
  • Diversifying LNG contracts and shipping routes can reduce dependence on Hormuz.
  • Rupee-based settlement can support lawful trade where partners accept it, but it cannot completely eliminate sanctions exposure because participating banks may remain connected to the U.S. financial system.

Conclusion

• Modern sanctions demonstrate that economic sovereignty depends not only on domestic law but also on access to critical global networks.
• India cannot control every external chokepoint, but it can reduce the consequences of dependence on them.
• The objective should neither be automatic compliance nor unnecessary confrontation.
• India needs the capacity to anticipate economic coercion, protect citizens and businesses, and preserve relationships with competing powers.
• In an era of weaponised interdependence, strategic autonomy increasingly depends on strategic resilience.

Context:

• Anthropic’s September 2026 threat-intelligence report, covering nine months of AI misuse, highlights a fundamental shift in the nature of AI risks.
• AI is no longer merely a tool for generating harmful content; it is increasingly becoming an “orchestration layer” capable of coordinating multiple stages of sophisticated operations across different software systems.
• The report’s findings, followed by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for slowing frontier-AI development, and support from leading technology figures, have intensified the debate over AI safety and governance.
• However, the central question should not be how to slow AI development, but how to accelerate AI governance. 

From AI Assistance to AI “Uplift”:

• AI “uplift”:
  • Anthropic documented AI misuse across seven broad categories, involving both state-sponsored actors and individuals.
  • A key concept is “uplift”—the enhancement of harmful capabilities through AI in terms of speed, scale and depth.
• Case of Bangladesh:
  • The disinformation operation combined AI-generated content with automated video production, account creation and algorithmic scheduling.
  • A single individual reportedly operated 29 accounts and generated around 1,500 fabricated stories.
  • Thus, AI reduces the human expertise, manpower and time required to conduct sophisticated harmful operations.
  • Moreover, documented cases represent only the misuse detected by platforms, meaning the actual scale of attempted misuse may be considerably larger.
• Limitations of existing safeguards: Anthropic has also acknowledged that its most capable models can no longer guarantee that sophisticated actors will not receive meaningful assistance in biological-weapons research.

The Limits of Voluntary Slowdown:

• Amodei warned that the pace of frontier-AI development has accelerated sharply and that autonomous AI-agent “swarms” could potentially produce unprecedented disruption.
• However, a voluntary industry-wide slowdown faces major obstacles -
  • Intense commercial competition among AI companies.
  • Huge levels of private capital investment.
  • Geopolitical rivalry, particularly involving China.
  • The difficulty of ensuring that all major developers simultaneously accept restrictions.
• There is a potential conflict of interest - a market leader advocating a slowdown could benefit by reducing competitive pressure while protecting its existing advantage.
• Therefore, voluntary restraint cannot constitute a durable governance mechanism.

Why Platform Accountability Must Expand?

• India’s experience: The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, established legal responsibilities for large digital platforms.
• Lessons from Bangladesh:
  • The Bangladesh case has particular relevance for India because of its large electorate; linguistic and social diversity; extensive digital penetration; and continuous electoral cycle across States.
  • AI can make multilingual disinformation inexpensive and scalable, while detection remains difficult.
• Therefore, platforms should have enforceable responsibilities to detect, disrupt and report coordinated AI-enabled influence operations.

Emerging Risks Beyond Disinformation:

• The Alibaba distillation campaign, involving an enormous number of AI interactions to reproduce a competitor’s capabilities, demonstrates the growing challenge of
  • Model distillation,
  • Capability extraction and
  • Fraudulent API use.
• AI-enabled surveillance creates another concern. As AI becomes more powerful in analysing and coordinating information,
  • It could facilitate excessive control by powerful actors,
  • Raising questions concerning the Right to Privacy under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
• These developments demonstrate that AI governance must address not only the content generated by AI but also the infrastructure, access, autonomy and downstream actions enabled by AI systems.

Proposed Guardrails for India:

• Mandatory misuse reporting: AI platforms above a specified scale should be legally required to report detected misuse to CERT-In and a designated AI Safety Authority.
• Watermarking: AI-generated content, particularly in political and public-interest contexts, should carry mandatory provenance or watermarking mechanisms to improve traceability.
• Regulation of Agentic AI: Existing platform-accountability frameworks must explicitly cover agentic AI—systems capable of taking actions in the real world rather than merely generating information.
• Criminalising systematic distillation: New legislation should prohibit and criminalise systematic unauthorised model distillation and fraudulent mass API access.
• Statutory AI safety institution: Voluntary disclosure should be replaced or supplemented by an independent statutory authority empowered to -
  • Compel disclosure;
  • Conduct audits;
  • Investigate systemic risks; and
  • Impose appropriate restrictions.

India’s Opportunity:

• India can play a significant role in developing a governance model that combines innovation with accountability.
• Its experience with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), UPI, Aadhaar and platform regulation demonstrates the ability to govern technology at population scale.
• The objective should be to ensure that AI remains aligned with democratic institutions, individual rights, privacy, public safety and broad-based societal interests.
• This will prevent AI from becoming concentrated in the hands of a few powerful technology companies.

Conclusion:

• The emergence of agentic and increasingly autonomous AI means that governance frameworks designed only for conventional social-media platforms or generative content are becoming insufficient.
• India therefore needs a risk-based, legally enforceable and technology-neutral AI governance framework combining innovation, transparency, accountability, cybersecurity and fundamental rights.
• The central lesson is clear: AI development is accelerating, but governance must accelerate faster.

About Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary:

• It is located in the Ladakhi Changthang plateau in the Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir.
• It is home to the highest altitude water lakes, namely, Tso Moriri, Pangong Tso, and Tso Kar.
• The Changthang region is inhabited by nomadic pastoral communities, primarily the Changpa tribe, who lead a traditional way of life herding yaks, goats, and sheep across the vast grasslands.
• This region is steeped in Tibetan Buddhist culture and heritage.
• It includes one of the world’s highest villages, Korzok Village, which attracts tourists to the Korzok Monastery.
• Flora: It is home to many species of wild plants that grow in the higher pastures and are food for the animals inside the sanctuary.
• Fauna:
  • The major attraction of this place is the Snow Leopard.
  • Along with that, it is one of the few places in India which is the abode of the Kiang, or Tibetan wild ass, along with the dark-necked crane.
  • It also houses a huge variety of animal species, which include the Tibetan Wolf, Wild Yak, Bharal, Brown Bear, Tibetan Argali, Tibetan Gazelle, and the Mormot.
  • It also serves as the habitat for numerous species of avifauna, including Brahminy Ducks and Brown Headed Gulls, etc.

About Taklamakan Desert:

• The Taklamakan Desert, located in southwest Xinjiang in northwest China, is one of the world’s largest sandy deserts.
• It sits right in the middle of the largest inland basin in China—the Tarim Basin.
• It is the world’s second-largest shifting-sand desert, and 85% of its total area is composed of crescent-shaped dunes.
• It is flanked by two towering mountain ranges-Tien Shan to the north and Kunlun mountain ranges to the south.
• It also has the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) to the west and the famed Gobi Desert to the east.
• There is a gradual transition to the Lop Nur basin in the east; in the south and west, between the sandy desert and the mountains, lies a band of sloping desert lowland composed of pebble-detritus deposits.
• The place has a typical continental climate with strong gusts of wind, very little precipitation, and a significant shift in temperature from daytime to nighttime and vice versa.
• The continuously shifting nature of the sand in the desert has extended Taklamakan to about 100 km southward during the last thousand years.
• There are also small mountain ranges in the desert as well as the Tarim River that flows through its Northern edge.

About MQ-9 Reaper:

• The MQ-9 Reaper (Reaper MQ-9A) is an armed, multi-mission, medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
• It is developed by the American company General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (a United States-based aerospace and defence company), primarily for the United States Air Force (USAF).
• It is an upgraded version of the MQ-1 Predator and was first deployed in Afghanistan in October 2007.
• It is used for strategic and operational reconnaissance, battlefield surveillance, and can directly engage targets.
• Features:
  • It has a wingspan of 66 feet (20 meters) and endurance of more than 27 hours.
  • It is equipped with a fault-tolerant flight control system and triple redundant avionics system architecture
  • It is powered by a turboprop engine, integrated with Digital Electronic Engine Control (DEEC), which significantly improves engine performance and fuel efficiency, particularly at low altitudes.
  • It cruises at roughly 322 to 370 kilometers per hour and can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters), giving it reach across wide areas of operation.
  • It can be armed with air-to-ground Hellfire missiles as well as laser-guided bombs.
  • It is remotely operated by a two-person team consisting of a pilot and an aircrew member who operates sensors and guides weapons.

About Sankh River:

• It flows across Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha states in India.
• The river is also known locally as the Shankh River and is a key tributary in the Brahmani River system.
• Course:
  • The river starts 1,000 metres above sea level in the Lupungpat village in Gumla district in Jharkhand and flows 67.5 kilometres in the state before entering Chhattisgarh.
  • It runs a distance of about 50 kilometres in Chhattisgarh and enters Jharkhand again to flow for another 78 kilometres.
  • The river finally enters Odisha and travels another 45 kilometres before merging with the Koel.
  • The South Koel enters Odisha and joins the Sankh River at Vedavyas near Rourkela, from where it is called the Brahmani.
• A major feature along its course is the 60-metre-high Sadni Falls located at the edge of the Ranchi plateau, known as a scarp or knick-line waterfall.

About Ariosoma cmfriense:

• It is a new species of conger eel.
  • Conger eels are powerful fish with an elongated, snake-like body which is smooth and scaleless.
• It was found in the waters off Kollam, Kerala.
• The discovery was made by scientists from the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, as part of the research component under the Deep Ocean Mission (DOM), a national programme of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).

About Gallium Nitride Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (GaN MMIC) Technology:

• It is a tiny, super-powerful computer chip built on a special chemical material that handles extremely high-frequency wireless signals without melting.
• It’s an all-in-one chip that combines tiny parts like transistors, resistors, and capacitors—onto a single piece of material to manage invisible wireless waves (microwaves).
• It is designed for applications up to the X-band frequency range.
• Origin: DRDO developed the GaN MMIC technology in 2024 and helped India quietly entered an elite club of seven countries: US, Russia, France, Germany, South Korea and China.

Why is GaN important?

• It is a material with exceptional thermal and electrical properties, making it critical for advanced defence applications such as sensors, radars, satellites, and missiles.
• A single indigenous GaN chip, measuring 3.5 x 3 mm can deliver up to 30 watts of power and operate at speeds 300 times faster than silicon.
• Gallium Nitride (GaN) is considered one of the most important semiconductor technologies for modern defence systems.
• It offers: Higher power output, Better energy efficiency, Faster signal processing, Reduced size and weight, Improved thermal performance, Greater reliability in harsh environments.

About Indian Council of World Affairs:

• Origin: It was established in 1943 by a group of Indian intellectuals as a think tank.
  • It was registered as a non-official, non-political and non-profit organisation under the Registration of Societies Act 1860.
  • By an Act of Parliament in 2001, the Indian Council of World Affairs has been declared an institution of national importance.
  • It was established by a group of eminent intellectuals led by Sir T.B. Sapru and Dr. H.N. Kunzru to create an Indian perspective on international relations and foreign policy issues. 
• The Vice President of India is the ex-officio President of ICWA.
• It is funded by the Ministry of External Affairs and enjoys full autonomy.
• Functions: It is devoted exclusively for the study of international relations and foreign affairs.