The agreement, hailed as a “watershed arrangement” between the two sides, came after what officials described as a “personal” and “emotional” farewell meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden at the latter’s private residence in Delaware.Biden will be demitting office on January 20, 2025, after strengthening bilateral ties advanced by a succession of US Presidents going back to Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
A joint fact sheet issued after the meeting said the fabrication plant will be enabled by support from the India Semiconductor Mission as well as a strategic technology partnership between the US Space Force and the private sector 3rdiTech and Bharat Semi. The “fab,” with the objective of manufacturing infrared, gallium nitride and silicon carbide semiconductors, will focus on advanced sensing, communication, and power electronics for national security, next generation telecom, and green energy applications.
The collaboration will be a giant leap for two countries that have made rapid progress in defense and strategic ties, overriding the last remnants of residual and institutional doubts about sharing advanced, critical, dual-use technology. It also comes at a time Washington is becoming increasingly guarded about critical technologies, legislating to boost domestic research and manufacturing through the Chips Act to counter China.
In a clear indication that there is an “India exception” to this, the, fact sheet said Biden and Modi “directed their governments to redouble efforts to address export controls, enhance high technology commerce, and reduce barriers to technology transfer between our two countries, while addressing technology security, including through the India-US Strategic Trade Dialogue.”
The galloping US-India collaboration is powered in part by mutual trust engendered by the growing number of Indian-Americans in US defense sector, including General Atomics (led by Dr Vivek Lall), which has tie-up with 3iTech, which was founded in IIT Delhi and works across Indian and US tech eco-systems. Indian officials acknowledged that the joint venture will involve national security products but “whether you can call it a national security fab, I will leave the labeling and adjectives to you.”
“We have always been known as a repository of design talent in so far as semiconductors are concerned. But this shows we are breaking into the fabrication part of it and with the right support, right incentives and right access to technology and partnerships from outside, Indian startups can actually make a global mark,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said at a briefing after the Biden-Modi meeting.
Several antiques from a cache of 297 that were stolen from India which the US is returning, including a 10th century sandstone Apsara and a 15th century bronze Jain Tirthankar, were lined up at the Biden home, as the two leaders powered bilateral ties forward with a series of technology partnerships for a future that is tying the two countries at the hip. They include collaboration in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum, biotechnology, and clean energy.
The two sides also announced a range of measures towards bringing about a transition to clean energy, both in the bilateral context and beyond, including a new initiative to accelerate the expansion of safe and secure clean energy supply chains through U.S. and Indian manufacturing of clean energy technologies and components.
In its initial phase, the U.S. and India would work together to unlock $1 billion of multilateral financing to support projects across the clean energy value chain for renewable energy, energy storage, power grid and transmission technologies, high efficiency cooling systems, zero emission vehicles, and other emerging clean technologies, the joint fact sheet said.
Much of this will go out of the window if Donald Trump, who is wedded to hydrocarbons, returns to the White House.