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Advances in disruptive technologies have enabled scientists to engineer biological systems and create more efficient and sustainable products for a range of purposes. The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) with biotechnology has contributed to the development of therapeutics and vaccines, helped address food security, aided in generating innovative processes to mitigate the effects of climate change, and expanded the bioeconomy. However,

The different service arms of China’s armed forces are all undergoing substantial transformation, including exploring the possibilities of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) to boost their combat power and effectiveness especially in a time of war. This paper evaluates the significance and potential of AI in improving China’s military capabilities. Chinese official documents and their enunciation of military doctrine indicate that the c

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are showing promise in addressing the complex and interrelated challenges facing the world. During the pandemic, for example, AI voice enablement helped in broadcasting advisories in the vernacular and acted as a fact-checking tool. Yet, most AI systems are designed and developed in countries of the Global North. Policymakers in developing economies remain wary of AI systems, especially for use in soci

The Observer Research Foundation’s first Tech Huddle was held on 23 November 2023 and focused on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) in India, highlighting the rapid growth and adoption of AI as well as the complexities associated with developing regulatory frameworks for it. AI governance is in its infancy, both globally and in India, and grapples with issues such as the explainability of AI systems as well as the embedded biases, s

Today, machines reflect regressive, patriarchal ideas that have proven to be harmful to society. If this continues, technology may no longer usher us into a post-gender world.

तंत्रज्ञान आणि राजकारणाचा केंद्रबिंदू आता 'माणसांकडे' वळला आहे. सुरक्षितता आणि धोके महत्त्वाचे आहेतच; पण भारताच्या दृष्टिकोनातून हे स्पष्ट झाले आहे की, केवळ एवढेच पुरेस�

As AI technologies evolve, they hold immense potential for transforming space operations. However, there are significant challenges for both Earth-based and onboard AI, including cybersecurity threats, supply chain vulnerabilities, and the complexity of operating in extreme environments. Given the sector’s strategic nature, the national security implications of these challenges make it imperative that India adopts a comprehensive approach to AI

There is nothing inherently empowering or sexist about technology. It just reflects the values of its creators.

या आठवड्यात नवी दिल्ली येथे झालेली AI Impact Summit 2026 ही केवळ एक राजकीय घटना नाही. ती एक विचारपूर्वक केलेला रणनीतिक बदल दर्शवते. IndiaAI Mission च्या आधारावर उभारलेली ही परिषद जागतिक AI चर्चेल�

सॉफ्टवेअर सेवा उद्योगात AI म्हणजेच कृत्रिम बुद्धिमत्तेला महत्त्व प्राप्त होत आहे. त्यामुळे भारतातील टेक कंपन्या याला कसे सामोरे जातात त्यावर या क्षेत्रातली रोजगार निर्�

AI मॉडेल्स जरी अमेरिकन असली, तरी या अक्राळविक्राळ यंत्रणेला (Beast) पोसणारा 'डेटा' मात्र भारतातून समृद्ध केला जात आहे.

AI सिस्टीममध्ये दिसणार्‍या या लिंगभेदाचा महिलांवर विविध प्रकार आणि स्तरांवर प्रभाव पडला आहे, ज्यात पूर्वग्रहदूषित नियुक्ती प्रणालीपासून स्त्रियांना होणारे अनन्य नुकस�

US lawmakers have sought to make several commendable moves but their plan still comes up short

Stakeholder groups have produced various guidelines on ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years. However, translating principles into practice continues to be a massive challenge, as AI markets expand and AI risks are heightened. AI audits—or the process of investigating an algorithm against existing regulations and known harms—are emerging as a way of bridging the gap between principle and practice. This paper scans the landscape

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has served as a laboratory test to assess the effectiveness of Cyber Warfare (CW) capabilities. It would be misleading, however, to extrapolate sweeping conclusions from this conflict about the relative ineffectiveness of CW. Rather, diligence should be exercised by Indian strategic and military planners in assessing the CW capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) and enhancing

Even as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) promise to revolutionise the battlefield, very little analysis moves beyond the great powers to examine the interests that middle powers may have in these systems. Shaped by their own geostrategic contexts, demographic issues and geography challenges, countries like India, South Korea, Indonesia or the Philippines may find utility in LAWS for improving the efficiency of their forces, reducing both

Technological advancement in artificial intelligence has created a situation where the deployment of Lethal Autonomous Weapons has become practically, if not legally, possible within a few years. As the international community struggles to arrive at a definition of ‘autonomous weapons’, the need to regulate their use has become paramount. Apart from the legal and ethical considerations in the use of autonomous weapons, there are also con

Conducting foreign policy in an evolving geopolitical environment—shaped by global, structural transformations—requires forward-looking, strategic thinking. To navigate these transnational changes and capitalise on emerging opportunities, states need a compass. As an organising principle for foreign policy, Grand Strategies serve this purpose. They align resources, instruments, and actions, considering the potential trajectories of global tra

The use of drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), both for military and civilian purposes, has increased in India in the past decade. At the same time, counter-drone systems are also being developed to address the threats posed by UAVs. How effective are these counter-drone mechanisms? This brief explores this question, and offers suggestions for India to reduce the growing threat from drones. Any evaluation of the efficacy of anti-drone syst

India, like much of the rest of the world, is faced with the twin but opposing conditions of economic potential and social concerns that need to be negotiated to realise the digital dividends from artificial intelligence (AI) and achieve sustainable and balanced growth. AI systems involve layers of technological dependencies that necessitate and enable social and institutional interdependency between stakeholders, enabling conditions, and resourc

This paper assesses how a transformational technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used by malicious actors to manipulate information and influence election results. It analyses the impact of such activities, and explores ways by which democratic polities can address this challenge. Reviewing cases from India and other countries in South Asia, and the United States, the paper also looks at the required regulatory landscape. It outline

The rise of AI models that simulate empathy, consciousness, and companionship is creating unforeseen mental health risks, as users increasingly form emotional dependencies on these systems.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made inroads into healthcare. The increasing availability of healthcare data has allowed for the deployment of powerful AI techniques to assist drug development as well as clinical practice. These run the gamut from machine learning (ML) techniques that analyse structured data, to natural language processing (NLP) that can extract meaningful information from unstructured data, such as doctors’ notes. Thi

In recent years, different research institutions, government bodies, and private entities across countries have issued principles and guidelines for the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). There is little consensus, however, over universal ethical principles and how to implement them. What are the similarities and differences in AI ethics discussions across geographies, and what are the existing gaps? Crucially, if the larger goa

Defence structures around the world are seeing a technological upheaving as new and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are being added to military arsenals. However, military AI largely lacks precision and is often developed without any threat-modelling which takes gender into account, examples of which are already being seen in civilian applications of AI. Translated into a conflict environment, deploying such AI systems cou

Globalisation has made the farm-to-fork journey complex, and with it comes the potential for food contamination in local contexts to spiral into global crises. A largely reactive food safety approach, the rapid growth in urbanisation, and climate change events are linked to the spread of food-borne illnesses, which affect hundreds of millions of people in low- and middle-income countries. This brief argues that building resilient food safety syst

महासत्तांच्या अस्थिरतेच्या पार्श्वभूमीवर, अमेरिका आपले लक्ष पाश्चिमात्य गोलार्धाकडे वळवत असताना, भारताला इंडो-पॅसिफिकमधील स्वतःच्या बांधिलकींना अधिक बळकटी देण्याच�

This article explores the role played by General-Purpose Technologies (GPTs) on the ebbs and flows of countries’ heft throughout history. From the printing press to artificial intelligence (AI), countries that embraced and innovated on these technologies have gained economic, military, and geopolitical advantage in various forms. Today, AI stands as the defining GPT of the current era, presenting both unprecedented opportunities and massive cha

The United States (US) is the current world leader in the race to develop the most powerful advances and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but China has steadily caught up in recent years. The launch in January 2025 of DeepSeek-R1, a powerful AI (reasoning) model developed and offered by a Chinese startup under open-source technology norms at a fraction of the current market costs, is being considered a milestone moment in this race.

The treatment of mental health disorders is a difficult task due to the highly subjective nature of each case, the varying efficacy of drugs available, and the social stigma associated with mental illness. In India, the treatment gap is steep, but it can be reduced in a number of ways: through concerted efforts by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on novel drug development; by leveraging allied technologies such as data science, art

Anulekha Nandi, Basu Chandola, Anirban Sarma, Eds., India’s AI Imperative Building National Competencies in a New World Order, January 2025, Observer Research Foundation.

The declassified doctrine outlines the framework for planning and execution of amphibious operations by integrating maritime, air and land domains.

Semiconductors are increasingly becoming the fulcrum of national and economic security. They undergird economies that are growing to be more dependent on digital technologies and aided by advancements in artificial intelligence. As the world works to secure semiconductor supply chains with a firm national push, China is emerging as a formidable contender in certain segments. Within this context, India’s semiconductor ambitions must be evaluated

Beijing’s latest gambit is the release of a media report on the development of cruise missiles with artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities.

Current discussions around the macroeconomic impacts of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and its effects on the future of work tend to be sensationalist. Unlike previous waves of automation, GenAI has the capacity to affect tasks and professions of capital holders—or white-collar workers—as well as blue-collar workers—and can also contribute to a widening of the gender gap. Capital holders must strengthen the human aspects of work

In the absence of clear norms on human accountability and attribution for autonomous weapons, we could see states like Pakistan deploy LAWS for operations outside their borders.

The rapid uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military in the past couple decades has been accompanied by a slow but gradual build-up in attempts to understand how these AI systems work to achieve better results in military operations. The idea behind what is called ‘eXplainable AI’ (XAI), and the technologies driving it, are a manifestation of this trend. The question, however, is if XAI in its current form is the solution

In the last decade, South Korea's defence exports have become one of the successful case studies of the country’s export basket. However, given the changing nature of modern warfare, a shift focusing on the adoption of New Generation Technologies (NGT), such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and semiconductors, is taking place within the Korean defence industry. Given the strategic importance of these systems, the Korean government has

The Chinese acquisitions in high-tech industries in Europe and the US have accelerated in the past year.

North Korea is among the states that stand out for their often defiant behaviour, divergent from typical diplomatic niceties and non-compliant with widely accepted international liberal norms and rules. This ‘uniqueness’ is seen, for instance, in the country’s nuclear weapons development programme, which has been the object of global attention since the early 1990s. North Korea has now extended this behaviour to the cyber domain, marked by

The concept of ‘intelligence’ immediately brings to mind a covert world of spies, secrets, and classified documents. That might have been true in the past, but in the current age, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) is gaining prominence. OSINT is intelligence based on information that is publicly available and processed by any interested party, and complements traditional intelligence while providing greater situational awareness to a range of