Navigating Technology, Geopolitics, and Global Competition
When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, many expected a revival of his emblematic economic nationalism. Few, however, foresaw his outrageous move to impose a $100,000 H-1B visa fee. For three decades, the H-1B program had been the conduit of America’s technology industry, allowing firms to hire engineers, programmers, and researchers from abroad, the majority of them from India. By setting the fee at a level that makes the program extortionate, Trump struck at the heart of the U.S.–India innovation marketplace. The immediate reaction was shock. Silicon Valley warned of talent shortages. Infosys and Wipro shares fell, while students in Indian tech institutions suddenly saw their American dreams blurred.
Nevertheless, the visa shock seems more than an immigration reform. It’s a metaphor for a new geopolitical era, a world where technology, trade, and people could be instrumentalised. A world where the United States is both an indispensable partner and a ruthless, unpredictable power, where India must navigate volatility without compromising its strategic autonomy.
Trump’s protectionism narrows India’s choices, but also creates opportunities. By turning disruption into renewal, India can emerge as a new pole of global innovation, shaping rather than merely adapting to the twenty-first-century techno-(dis)order.
Trump’s tariffs go beyond trade balances. During his first term, India lost preferential access under the Generalised System of Preferences, costing exporters hundreds of millions annually. Now, Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff since India continues to buy discounted Russian oil. This is economic coercion cloaked as international trade policy. It reflects a world of strongarm interdependence, where commerce becomes provisional. Beijing punishes Australia by blocking coal imports, Brussels imposes carbon border taxes, and Washington links tariffs to geopolitical alignment, for example.
India’s dilemma is unenviable. Russian crude supplies 35 percent of its energy. Abandoning it would spike fuel prices and retard economic growth. But defying Trump risks U.S. tariffs on textiles, pharmaceuticals, and IT services. New Delhi’s response has been rather timid, ineffectual hedging: trade pacts with the UAE and Australia, talks with the EU, and deeper ties with Southeast Asia. But the U.S. remains India’s largest export market. Dependency can be reduced, not eliminated. In a tariff-ridden world, India needs to build its massive domestic capacity to withstand shocks. Strategic autonomy must be measured in resilience, not rhetoric.
Nowhere is the tension between dependency and autonomy clearer than in technology. Semiconductors are the brains of the digital age. India has long been absent from the scene, but projects like Micron’s $2.7 billion ATMP facility in Gujarat and Applied Materials’ $400 million R&D centre in Bengaluru indicate a promising foothold. Nevertheless, Trump’s America First instincts may cap India’s role at assembly only, keeping high-value fabrication at home.
India must push beyond hosting foreign projects toward ecosystem building. It must design and establish firms in Bengaluru, upstream partnerships with Japan, and collaboration with Taiwan and the EU. Self-reliance, Atmanirbhar in Modi’s lexicon, does not mean autarky. Even the U.S. depends on Dutch lithography. But self-reliance can mean shaping interdependence on favourable terms.
After the Galwan clash in 2020, India excluded Huawei and ZTE from its 5G rollout, betting instead on Open RAN with U.S. and European partners. The Bharat 6G Alliance’s partnership with the U.S. Next G Alliance reflects a goal to co-create standards. If successful, India could move from consumer to standard-setter in global telecom. But Open RAN faces hurdles, integration costs, interoperability issues, and Trump’s transactionalism. Unless reciprocity is genuine, with shared IP and joint pilots, India risks being reduced to a market rather than a co-developer.
India’s space program embodies both prestige and pragmatism. The Chandrayaan–3 lunar landing (2023) showcased ambition, while the NASA–ISRO NISAR satellite (2025) delivers data for agriculture and climate resilience. An Indian astronaut aboard the ISS would symbolise U.S.–India cooperation. But Trump could treat space partnerships as transactional deals, demanding cost-sharing or restricting technology transfers. For India, the lesson is that collaboration must be a platform for domestic innovation. Like Airbus in Europe, India must embed partnerships into its indigenous capacity.
China is India’s big trading partner and fiercest rival. The Galwan clash of 2020 reignited border hostility; nonetheless, Chinese goods dominate Indian imports, fueling an $80 billion trade deficit. India has banned several Chinese apps, tightened FDI rules, and barred Huawei, but remains dependent on Chinese hardware from smartphones to solar panels. Trump’s hawkishness toward Beijing seems to give India cover. Export controls may slow China’s rise, and multinationals may seek “China-plus-one” strategies, often landing in India. But Washington’s zero-sum framing risks reducing India to a stand-in status. India must diversify, engaging Europe, Japan, ASEAN, and the Global South, to preserve its real autonomy.
Artificial intelligence is becoming a ubiquitous technology, getting embedded into all facets of life. India’s partnerships with NVIDIA, Reliance, and TCS aim to build vernacular AI, democratizing access for farmers, students, and patients. But AI’s bottleneck is compute. GPUs are dominated by NVIDIA and AMD, fabricated in Taiwan and South Korea. Washington’s export controls, aimed at China, constrain India as well. If Trump tightens restrictions, India risks being starved of the tools it needs to innovate. India’s response must be threefold: domestic compute clusters, diversified partners (Japan, EU), and open-source ecosystems. Otherwise, AI risks replicating dependency rather than breaking it.
The deepest U.S.–India corridor is not chips or satellites but people. About 71 percent of H-1B visas went to Indians in 2024. Indian Americans now number 4.5 million and lead global companies from Google to Microsoft. Trump’s $100,000 visa fee disrupts this channel. Students are uncertain about U.S. degrees and remittances are threatened. But the long-term effect may be reverse brain drain. Engineers who once saw Silicon Valley as the only path may build careers in Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Pune. If managed wisely, this becomes brain circulation. Returnees bring skills, networks, and capital. Indian startups are already attracting Silicon Valley veterans home. The task is to provide fertile soil: world-class universities, startup-friendly regulations, and incentives for returnees. Human capital is the most resilient force for autonomy. Chips can be denied, visas restricted, supply chains disrupted. But a skilled population cannot easily be intimidated. Strategic autonomy, then, is not a slogan. It is the embedding of resilience in society, through skills, institutions, and multipolar engagements.
Trump’s new visa proclamation symbolised the end of an era of assumed openness. But shocks can be catalysts. If tariffs, visa barriers, and tech chokepoints force India to invest in its own capacity, diversify ties, and refurbish talent, they may strengthen rather than weaken autonomy.
India has the scale, talent, and traditions to emerge as a hub of innovation. By converting its youthful demographic dividend into an innovation dividend, leveraging joint projects for domestic capacity, and anchoring autonomy in capabilities, India can rise as a force multiplier of the twenty-first-century order. The Trump age reminds India that technology is power, freedom is capability, and autonomy must be built and rebuilt continuously. If India seizes this moment, the H-1B challenge will become not the closing of a door but the opening of another, toward an India that is both a democracy of scale and a shaper of the global techno-age.
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