The Dutch and Japanese would reveal their own sweeping controls over semiconductor manufacturing equipment, including ASML’s DUV machines and nearly two dozen tools produced in Japan. Since then, both countries have sworn that they were acting in their own (very real) national security interests. (A spokesperson for the Dutch Foreign Ministry told much the same thing to WIRED, and Japan’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.) But to anyone paying attention, Sullivan’s influence was obvious.
just a few Days after the Blair House meeting, Sullivan was down the street, sitting inside another historic Washington, D.C., institution: this time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The building’s intricate interior murals commemorate renowned explorers responsible for advances in global trade. Now Sullivan was also trying to chart new territory.
Sitting a few meters away from him was Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval. Dubbed India’s James Bond, Doval is a mustachioed former spy nearly twice Sullivan’s age, but the two men had formed an unexpectedly close relationship over the Biden years. This meeting, the launch event for a new US-India technology partnership, was a product of their bond.
If the first aspect of Biden’s technology agenda was to protect sensitive technologies from reaching China, the second was to promote the American technology ecosystem almost everywhere else.
The Biden administration saw India as one of the best prospects. It is the world’s largest democracy and, as a neighbor of China, has fought the Chinese military over disputes along the border. What better partner to resist President Xi’s half-hidden threats of inevitable “reunification” with Taiwan?
At the Chamber of Commerce, senior officials from both countries and top technology executives gathered at long tables configured in a giant square. Together, they brainstormed how to break down old trade barriers that still stood in the way of closer collaboration. Sullivan encouraged the group to think big and said he wanted “a list of firsts.”
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Washington for a state visit five months later, the White House was ready to lay out that list, including collaborations on Micron semiconductor assembly, GE jet engine production and even NASA space missions. “On the issues that matter most and that will define the future,” President Biden said at a joint news conference with Modi, “our nations look to each other.”
But this moment of solidarity between two old Cold War adversaries masked a tangle of compromises. Even as the United States promoted India as a key partner in building the technologies of the future, its government constantly abused current technologies. Under Modi’s leadership, India changed laws to increase online censorship, led the world in internet shutdowns since 2016, and allegedly used spyware in attempts to hack journalists and dissidents.
There was little evidence that the White House’s overtures to the Modi government had any moderating effect on these authoritarian tendencies. “If anything, India has continued to move in a direction that runs counter to U.S. foreign policy interests with respect to technology,” said Jason Pielemeier, former special adviser at the State Department and current executive director of the non-profit organization Global Network Initiative, which works on digital issues. rights issues.