This episode is part of our curtain raiser series ahead of the tenth edition of the Global Technology Summit, Carnegie India’s flagship annual event, co-hosted with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, to be held in New Delhi from December 2 to 4, 2026.

Since 1990, the West’s share of the global economy has fallen from roughly 60 percent to just under 40 percent. While China has driven much of that shift, Cable argues that India will dominate the next generation of this transition. He presents three scenarios for what comes next: a reinvented global West that incorporates rising powers like India, a multipolar order of competing spheres of influence, and a reinvented multilateralism that reflects the new structure of global power. The scenario he finds most alarming is the one of multipolarity, where no single actor is responsible for the global commons and coordination on climate, trade, and crisis management becomes exponentially harder.

On technology and trusted partnerships, Cable points to a study suggesting China is ahead in the majority of upstream technology areas tracked, with the U.S. and China the only two countries with anything like technological dominance at the frontier. The challenge for countries like India is not just who to work with, but how to balance competition and cooperation, particularly in areas like medicine and renewable energy where collaboration makes more strategic sense than rivalry. On India’s growth outlook, Cable is notably optimistic, pointing to infrastructure investment, a strong digital backbone, a unified domestic market, and a large-educated workforce as the foundations of a fundamentally different trajectory from China, whose structural problems are now very real constraints.

Reading:

• Eclipsing the West: China, India and the Forging of a New World by Vince Cable

Every two weeks, Interpreting India brings you diverse voices from India and around the world to explore the critical questions shaping the nation's future. We delve into how technology, the economy, and foreign policy intertwine to influence India's relationship with the global stage.

As a Carnegie India production, hosted by Carnegie scholars, Interpreting India, a Carnegie India production, provides insightful perspectives and cutting-edge by tackling the defining questions that chart India's course through the next decade.

Stay tuned for thought-provoking discussions, expert insights, and a deeper understanding of India's place in the world.

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Jane opens with a framing that runs through the entire conversation: for Africa, the subsea cable story is not primarily about geopolitics. It is about connecting citizens and translating that connectivity into economic participation. Less than 40% of Africans use the internet, and while infrastructure investments are significant, the benefits tend to concentrate in urban hubs like Nairobi, Lagos, and Cape Town, while rural populations, women, and landlocked countries remain underserved. The 2024 cable cut that affected ten African countries brought into sharp focus just how fragile the system is. Africa has only one dedicated cable repair vessel for the entire continent, and mobilizing it costs millions of dollars and takes days. Jane walks through what is now being put in place: clearer government notification protocols, mandated interconnection between telecom operators, and cross-border coordination frameworks, with West Africa emerging as a model that the rest of the continent has not yet replicated.

On Chinese infrastructure, Jane is pragmatic. The framing of east versus west is, in her view, the wrong one for African policymakers who are already deeply invested in Chinese telecom towers, terrestrial fiber, and mobile devices across the continent. The more useful question is how to secure what already exists, ensuring cybersecurity safeguards are in place regardless of where the infrastructure comes from. On the ITU advisory body, whose final report was published in Geneva in July, the recommendations cover coordination, standards, and geographic diversity, but the document is non-binding. The real work, she says, now rests with national governments and regulators to take those recommendations forward.

Episode Contributors

Charukeshi Bhatt is a research analyst at Carnegie India, where her work focuses on the intersection of emerging technologies and international security. Her current research explores how advancements in technologies such as AI are shaping global disarmament frameworks and security norms.

Jane Munga is a Fellow in the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she leads research on technology policy. Her work addresses how African countries can harness digital technologies to advance inclusive and sustainable growth. Her work focuses on the nexus of digital policy, digital partnerships, and developing the foundational elements of digital development.

Readings

India’s Stake in the Global Subsea Cable Race
Subsea Cables, Trusted Networks, and India's Strategic Opportunity

Every two weeks, Interpreting India brings you diverse voices from India and around the world to explore the critical questions shaping the nation's future. We delve into how technology, the economy, and foreign policy intertwine to influence India's relationship with the global stage.

As a Carnegie India production, hosted by Carnegie scholars, Interpreting India, a Carnegie India production, provides insightful perspectives and cutting-edge by tackling the defining questions that chart India's course through the next decade.

Stay tuned for thought-provoking discussions, expert insights, and a deeper understanding of India's place in the world.

Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to join the conversation and be part of Interpreting India's journey.

The conversation opens with a useful baseline on both countries. Australia has world-class mining equipment, technology, and services capabilities, and its mining sector contributes roughly 10 to 15 percent of GDP, yet it remains predominantly a raw material exporter with limited domestic demand. India has a large and growing demand for minerals to fuel its manufacturing ambitions, a vast talent pool, and competitive labour and energy costs, but has historically underinvested in systematic exploration, reserve creation, and processing relative to its long-term needs. The complementarity is clear, but Professor Yellishetty is equally clear about what is missing: while government-to-government and university-to-university engagement is working well through mechanisms such as the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the Ministry of Mines MoU, and KABIL's engagement with Australia's Critical Minerals Facilitation Office, the business-to-business piece

On the Australia-India Critical Minerals Research Hub (AICMRH), the conversation traces its origins to a community of practice that came together during the COVID-19 lockdown, eventually growing to around 150 researchers. The Hub has since hosted national symposiums, submitted recommendations to ministries on both sides, and facilitated student exchanges, with institutional partnerships including Monash University's collaborations with IIT Bombay and IIT Hyderabad. Professor Yellishetty notes that the Hub's policy recommendations fed into discussions around India's first critical minerals list and the announcement of Centres of Excellence (CoE) under the National Critical Minerals Mission, launched in 2025. The next step, he argues, is institutionalising this through a Joint Centre of Excellence that can anchor commercial outcomes alongside research, including moving promising technologies such as environmentally benign processing methods like deep eutectic solvents from laboratory to pilot scale and eventually to commercial deployment.

Looking ahead, Professor Yellishetty organises the India-Australia opportunity into five buckets: policy and trade, technology research and development, investment and financing, skills and capacity building, and ESG learning. He sees particular promise in co-developing processing technologies rather than simply transferring them, spanning rare earth extraction, lithium value chains, and environmentally safer processing, as well as co-investing in third countries like Indonesia and Vietnam that hold significant mineral reserves. He also situates the bilateral relationship within the wider Quad framework, where Australia contributes mining and ESG expertise, Japan brings capital and downstream processing experience, and the United States offers technology and intellectual property, alongside India's scale and human capital. The ambition, ultimately, is to build India into not just a consumer of critical minerals but a processing hub capable of serving western markets.

Every two weeks, Interpreting India brings you diverse voices from India and around the world to explore the critical questions shaping the nation's future. We delve into how technology, the economy, and foreign policy intertwine to influence India's relationship with the global stage.

As a Carnegie India production, hosted by Carnegie scholars, Interpreting India, a Carnegie India production, provides insightful perspectives and cutting-edge by tackling the defining questions that chart India's course through the next decade.

Stay tuned for thought-provoking discussions, expert insights, and a deeper understanding of India's place in the world.

Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review to join the conversation and be part of Interpreting India's journey.