Article

Inspiration behind Authoring the Book
Shri Rajiv elucidates:
“So, you know, when I did artificial intelligence as a computer science student in the US, nearly 50 years ago, it was a very basic field, not so advanced. Then I set it aside and I got into humanities. Social sciences, started a foundation, a think tank to promote ideas about our civilization and do a lot of original research myself. But about five years ago, I decided to go back and update my knowledge on AI and bring it in the context of Indian civilization, India, Indian thought issues in India, because I felt I knew lagging behind. And of course, India is now about 10 years behind China and the US in artificial intelligence. We have a large amount of manpower trained, but these people get outsourced. They’re working to create intellectual property for other people and not Indian intellectual property. And also, a lot of the work that the artificial intelligence train people in doing is very basic and low-level kind of work. So, I felt that this needs to be addressed, and I was not satisfied. I’m still not satisfied with the policies in India. On data protection on the way in [which it is] going about, managing his artificial intelligence program, and not fully aware of the dangers and
threats that a foreign artificial intelligence brings, for India’s national security.”
Indian Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law 12 Shri Rajiv explains that the 5 focus areas of his book are 5 different battle fields like Kurukshetra. He further explains:

“One of the legal issues is: if an algorithm makes a choice, you know, whether to turn left or right in a crisis mode, it’s driving a car. If I turn left, I killed this fellow had turned, right? I mean, just that fellow who made the choice, who decided which one, which one gets hurt, you know, so as algorithms make choices on hiring people who, how, what are the consequences of hiring X and not Y as algorithms decide that is a rare organ and organ transplant is to happen.” He further dives deep into the issue of algorithmic accountability and elucidates: “Who’s liable? (now you may say that) The Person who trained the desirable? But that’s not so clear who trained it because you know, when a child is growing up, there are many influences to any of the child’s bed and train them school training; friends trained him – media also trained him. So just like the child looks at so many examples and learns from them and it gets influenced and he’s a product of all kinds of influence […] So same way in the case of algorithmic training, training the machines up, you know, a machine gets big data and this big data gives us examples of what to do, what not to do. […] It’s constantly changing. It is not a fixed algorithm. The machine learning is a dynamic algorithm is learning from experiences. So, like for instance, if
you have an algorithm that learning about case law, In India and you keep feeding it case law. And so, it, it processes all the case. Law understands the language could be in the English, whatever language the case is written in. And that it’s able to derive, you know, what, what actions produce, what consequences, what’s the likelihood. If [you strategize] like this, then you get a favorable outcome or kind of a legal understanding, just like lawyers, human beings have. It can also, it can be augmented by algorithms. So, the question is somebody asked you, okay, show me logic in your algorithm, how you came up with this. The person cannot because [it is] just so complex. It is so complex. And the algorithm has learned from many, many cases [and] from many, many examples, much, so much big data. You cannot say that the algorithm works exactly this way. Algorithm works this way in some cases in that way, in another situation, in that case, in another
situation, and the algorithm is always learning. If I explained it to you today, how it’s working, then tomorrow, it’s different because it’s got new data. So, this is another challenge for the law.” Shri Rajiv elucidates that the algorithms in general used by the big tech and even in general by mainstream entities have a Westernized perspective, when it comes to studying India’s demography. He explains: “Another thing that I’m concerned about is that, these algorithms have been trained on [the basis of] Western [methodology & perception, i.e.,] the Western study of India. […] The community is looked at through what I call Western universalism,
which is the lens of Western, Western people, their history, their philosophy and what e-ISSN: 2582-6999 | isail.in/journal 13 happened in Europe. […] Based on all that, they’ve come up with a theory that this is normal for everybody in the whole world; but that’s not true. It’s normal for them, but
may not be normal for us. So, this is kind of training based on Western universalism, even of Indian culture is quite misleading.” About Vedic AI and Biological Materialism Shri Rajiv elucidates about biological materialism and explains how biological materialism develops in general, in the realm of AI as an industry. “The AI can understand you very well, better than human psychology scan. And then the, I can artificially give you that also. So, you know, people will end up with artificial life with some kind of fake life, and lot of people will become total moron, Stoker zombies. Living in this kind of world and the digital companies become worth even more. They’re already so rich, the richest companies in the world. Now they become even richer because they are hacking the deepest desire side of human beings. So you see the, the world becoming FIC experience becoming FIC less and less real away from the journey of a Dante is a serious issue and gurus need to understand it.” Shri Rajiv elucidates about the role of Vedic and Indic literature and scriptures in the fostering of technology & about the manipulation of the human mind: “It can help you in agriculture. It can help you in medical surgery. It can, you know, so many things it can do. It could also probably help in more efficient. It’s more [based upon] efficient energy generation and timing, change areas – all those kinds of things. […] But what concerns me is when it starts manipulating the human mind. When
[the companies] are doing it. When it is used by human mind to solve disease and to solve problems here and there, all of that seems to be fine; that is one thing. But when you turn the surveillance into the human person himself and then the person becomes an object, or the person becomes an object controlled by whoever is controlling this AI machine, then I think there is a serious ethical problem.” Shri Rajiv explains algorithmic biology:
“So, modernization means that as machines get smarter, people are getting dumber. Machines, getting smarter people getting dumber people saying, ah, we will ask Google, how do I need to know anything, sir? Why do I need to study law? […] You don’t even have to type; you just speak and you know, you get your answer. So, this business, the source of knowledge and authority is shifted to the digital algorithms at people. And these people who own these algorithms are feeding part of it, some other country, and they don’t have any [concern] in what is happening in India. They just do marketing and make money. So, the whole generation is being raised on these digital gurus, these digital “devtas”, you know, and we are getting dumb. Indian Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law 14 […] They can gamify this community, whether it is farmers, whether it is [of any identity]. They can take a community, understand what their hot buttons are, how
they respond, what they will respond to, who their leaders are, what their ideology is [in order] to manipulate them, how to make them think a certain way. And then they can bring in the kind of content to motivate them in a certain direction. They can have divide and rule. They can create divide and rule like the British East India company did. […] So this kind of insight information and the ability to manipulate while the public becoming morons becoming, you know, not leaders, not understanding this, our leaders don’t understand what I’m telling you about. […] People who’ve got this huge AI machinery going are 10, 15 years ahead of India. […] We are users of somebody else’s technology. We may have a largest number of cell
phones, but these are hardware to Chinese and the operating system is American. […] We are proud as consumers of somebody else’s product. […] If our community somewhere in the Amazon jungle has been using a particular plant to treat a certain disease, the pharma industry, [where] people go around the world looking for such things and they take cuttings from that tree and they bring it back to their labs [which they] find out which molecule out of all the plant complicated stuff, which is a molecule, they can
isolate that is active molecule. Then they get patent on it. And then they sell that medicine back to make a lot of money. [Under international IP & cultural law] the community can claim that because it was based on their plant product, even though they did not patent it, [their ownership matters since] it was based on their plant product, which they were using for a certain purpose. […] They get a certain percentage share of that intellectual property. Now the proposal that I’m making is that just like plant is raw material for discovering drugs, similarly, big data is raw material for discovering algorithms for making the algorithm stronger. So, if the foreign company comes, they do some surveillance, they got a lot of diversity of genetics. They got diversity of language and culture and economic strata and you know, all kinds of social situations. And there, the algorithm, the studying, all this, they’re really studying a very complex microcosm of the whole world in one place. […] So, they’re studying this and that’s very precious big data. Why are we giving it away free? Why are we even giving it at all? There is no shortage of smart people in India who could do all this. Why don’t you go to 5-10 Indian universities and put up tender and say, okay, we want to give three or four contracts to you. People come up with a proposal. Why would you outsource this to foreign people? I cannot understand why Yogi Adityanath did that [for the Kumbh Mela in 2017].
According to me, [it was] a serious blunder, especially after I had gone to him personally and briefed him what the problem is. Yet they still did it.
So that is my situation, my position on looking at biology as algorithms, as machines. […] So, the human being becomes a biological machine, which is, operated by some AI system, you know, and so this way they can treat so many people in India, e-ISSN: 2582-6999 | isail.in/journal 15 sort of, you know, biological objects that are working for them. And they are busy collecting data out of it. […] You know, there is research on making viruses that will only attack a particular DNA type. This is not science fiction. There are viruses that will spare a particular kind of DNA, which means that it’ll go for anybody, but this particular DNA, it will not attack that part of the DNA.
So, this, this is our big data. Biology has become part of AI.” Social Media Companies and Algorithmic Censorship Shri Rajiv elucidates: “The reason Facebook, (if you take Facebook as a competitor or let’s say Twitter as a competitor) – the reason they are able to invest so much in artificial intelligence is because they make a lot of money on advertising. So, you have to fund it. […] You cannot expect some government or somebody will fund you $50,000 a year. That’s the scale I’m talking about. […] And this requires several thousands of man years to develop this kind of ecommerce background because Facebook did not invent it overnight. […] So, they have the experience lead of 10-15 years. […] In 2022, Facebook is going to introduce augmented reality goggles and so will Apple. So, now Facebook will become a hardware-related company. So, they will combine, they will have a huge base like Apple and they will have these governments and they’re testing them. I know some people who are involved in the testing
of this, so this is pretty awesome stuff. They will give you amazing experiences, which is what Facebook is about: people wanting experiences, having friends and what not. So, these augmented goggles will give you that and eventually it will be implanted. Aesthetic & Pragmatic Influence of AI Shri Rajiv elucidates: “I started this philosophically. I started by asking, whether the universe is pragmatic. If all the things that moving very pragmatically, there’s no aesthetic aspect. […] If the universe is an algorithm, it’s all very pragmatic. So, I was actually studying this for all my life from a philosophical point of view. Then if it is a pragmatic algorithm, where does aesthetics fit in? What is the role of aesthetics and what is the role of pragmatics and how do they fit with each other? This is a kind of inquiry. Then I combine this inquiry with a different inquiry because Karl Marx came up with the idea of the theory of aestheticization of power. […] But AI is now getting into the emotional dimension in terms of understanding what kind of emotion this guy has, what is he like you to & how is his behavior being affected by his emotions. […] So, the Indian Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law 16 psychological warfare is getting better and involves the use of aesthetics. I think is a very big topic. I’m glad you mentioned it, but it deserves a lot of time.” Artificial General Intelligence
Shri Rajiv elucidates: “So, you know, the thing is that AGI is not as far away as many people might think, or let’s just say there is no disconnect between AGI and non-AGI. Yet there’s much continuum. It will be gradual. It’s like, you’re climbing the steps towards AGI, but you’re climbing some steps – you are five steps [ahead], then you will be seven steps [ahead]. So,
you will be approaching it. […] The algorithms are learning faster than human child can learn. It takes a long time to train the child. It doesn’t take that long to train an algorithm. […] AGI is still at an academic stage, such that. It’s an open book, more or less a large part of it is quite open. […] But I’m concerned about things that are very pragmatic, which are very near-term, which are now becoming closed, which are not open source anymore.”

Is the dependence on technology moronising a generation of Indians? At least Rajiv Malhotra, Founder of Infinity Foundation and author of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power believes so. A speaker at TNIE’s ThinkEdu Conclave 2021, Malhotra was in conversation with Author and Senior Journalist Kaveree Bamzai.

“Artificial Intelligence is making machines smarter. What is not well known is that people are becoming dumber. They’re becoming more dependent on Google Devta,” said Malhotra, adding, “People think that a person with more views and tweets and followers (on social media) will be the definition of truth. The traditional sources of authority are not important to this generation. They have outsourced the criteria of truth to social media.”

Touching upon the algorithm that runs social media, he said that the machine figures out what one likes and doesn’t like, based on a user’s clicks. “I call this the modernisation of the masses. People have outsourced their agencies. People have started running their lives on autopilot,” he said.

Explaining why his book says that the Indian public is “highly moronised”, he said that the perfect “moron” will let Netflix decide what movie he must watch and a network figure out whom he should date or where he should go on vacation.  “It is a dream come true for digital marketing people, digital politics, digital ideological warfare… all of them using AI as a weapon,” he said.

While he says that the millennials are the most affected by the phenomenon, he agrees that his generation has left behind  “a very messy world for the next generation”.

Malhotra said that Indians are so far behind in the fundamental principle of AI. “Yet, when you go to these companies, you will find a lot of Indian brains. But they are not working for India. Even Sundar Pichai is an employee at the end of the day,” he said.

But who is responsible for this? He holds the politicians, industrialists and the likes of the RSS activists accountable. He asked how the ones who talk about being the keepers of the Rashtra haven’t thought about AI for the last ten years.

India currently has a disappointing level of artificial intelligence (AI) development and it needs to embark on a rapid program to catch up, says a new book by researcher-author Rajiv Malhotra.

In “Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Power: 5 Battlegrounds”, he argues that AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity and for countries like India, where a large percentage of the population lacks the education that is vital to survive a technological tsunami, the adverse effects could be shattering.

There will be new winners and losers, new haves and have-nots, resulting in an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. There is a real possibility that AI may trigger an unprecedented level of unemployment and precipitate social instability, he claims.

According to Malhotra, India is an important case study on the impact of AI because that is where all the battles come together into one large and complex battleground.

“Indian society has forsaken its metaphysical roots in dharma to chase the Americanisation of artha (material pursuits) and kama (gratification of sensual desires). As a result, it is neither here nor there – having lost its traditional strengths both individual and collective, it is at best a poor imitation of the American dream,” he says.

Overpopulation, unemployment and poor education make India especially vulnerable, he says, adding many of its industries are technologically obsolete and dependent on imported technologies.

“India presently has a disappointing level of AI development and it needs to embark on a rapid program to catch up,” Malhotra writes in the book, published by Rupa Publications.

He also claims that India is not only lagging behind China in AI by at least a decade, but it also has routinely given away its unique data assets to foreign countries because of the ignorance of its leaders.

“If the present trajectory continues, India could be heading toward re-colonization, this time as a digital colony under the domination of the US and/or China,” he says.

Malhotra says AI is amplifying human ingenuity and is the engine driving the latest technological disruption silently shaking the foundations of society.

“My use of the term is not limited narrowly to what AI is specifically in the technical sense, but also includes the entire ecosystem of technologies that AI propels forward as their force multiplier. This cluster includes quantum computing, semiconductors, nanotechnology, medical technology, brain-machine interface, robotics, aerospace, 5G, and much more,” he says.

Malhotra uses AI as an umbrella term because it “leverages their development and synergises them”.

On the one hand, AI is the holy grail of technology; the advancement that people hope will solve problems across virtually every domain of our lives and on the other, it is disrupting a number of delicate equilibriums and creating conflicts on a variety of fronts, he argues.

Given the vast canvas on which AI’s impact is being felt, he says one needs a simple lens to discuss its complex ramifications in a meaningful and accessible way.

After several rounds of restructuring the book, Malhotra zeroed in on using the following key battles of AI as the organising principle.

“Artificial Intelligence plays a pivotal role in each of these disruptions, and each of these battlegrounds has multiple players with competing interests and high stakes: battle for economic development and jobs, power in the new world order, psychological control of desires and agency, metaphysics of the self and its ethics, and battle for India’s future,” he says.

These battles, he says, already exist but AI is exacerbating them and changing the game.

“In each case, the prevailing equilibriums are disintegrating, and as a result, creating tensions among the parties held in balance. We are entering an epoch of disequilibrium in which a period of chaos is inevitable. Eventually, however, a new equilibrium will be established, and a new kind of world will emerge,” he writes.

India currently has a disappointing level of artificial intelligence (AI) development and it needs to embark on a rapid program to catch up, says a new book by researcher-author Rajiv Malhotra.

In “Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Power: 5 Battlegrounds”, he argues that AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity and for countries like India, where a large percentage of the population lacks the education that is vital to survive a technological tsunami, the adverse effects could be shattering.

There will be new winners and losers, new haves and have-nots, resulting in an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. There is a real possibility that AI may trigger an unprecedented level of unemployment and precipitate social instability, he claims.

According to Malhotra, India is an important case study on the impact of AI because that is where all the battles come together into one large and complex battleground.

“Indian society has forsaken its metaphysical roots in dharma to chase the Americanisation of artha (material pursuits) and kama (gratification of sensual desires). As a result, it is neither here nor there – having lost its traditional strengths both individual and collective, it is at best a poor imitation of the American dream,” he says.

Overpopulation, unemployment and poor education make India especially vulnerable, he says, adding many of its industries are technologically obsolete and dependent on imported technologies.

“India presently has a disappointing level of AI development and it needs to embark on a rapid program to catch up,” Malhotra writes in the book, published by Rupa Publications.

He also claims that India is not only lagging behind China in AI by at least a decade, but it also has routinely given away its unique data assets to foreign countries because of the ignorance of its leaders.

“If the present trajectory continues, India could be heading toward re-colonization, this time as a digital colony under the domination of the US and/or China,” he says.

Malhotra says AI is amplifying human ingenuity and is the engine driving the latest technological disruption silently shaking the foundations of society.

“My use of the term is not limited narrowly to what AI is specifically in the technical sense, but also includes the entire ecosystem of technologies that AI propels forward as their force multiplier. This cluster includes quantum computing, semiconductors, nanotechnology, medical technology, brain-machine interface, robotics, aerospace, 5G, and much more,” he says.

Malhotra uses AI as an umbrella term because it “leverages their development and synergises them”.

On the one hand, AI is the holy grail of technology; the advancement that people hope will solve problems across virtually every domain of our lives and on the other, it is disrupting a number of delicate equilibriums and creating conflicts on a variety of fronts, he argues.

Given the vast canvas on which AI’s impact is being felt, he says one needs a simple lens to discuss its complex ramifications in a meaningful and accessible way.

After several rounds of restructuring the book, Malhotra zeroed in on using the following key battles of AI as the organising principle.

“Artificial Intelligence plays a pivotal role in each of these disruptions, and each of these battlegrounds has multiple players with competing interests and high stakes: battle for economic development and jobs, power in the new world order, psychological control of desires and agency, metaphysics of the self and its ethics, and battle for India’s future,” he says.

These battles, he says, already exist but AI is exacerbating them and changing the game.

“In each case, the prevailing equilibriums are disintegrating, and as a result, creating tensions among the parties held in balance. We are entering an epoch of disequilibrium in which a period of chaos is inevitable. Eventually, however, a new equilibrium will be established, and a new kind of world will emerge,” he writes

With Artificial Intelligence helping “biological materialism sneak in through the back door”, the world is witnessing a real clash of civilisations with “the battle between algorithm and being” writes Rajiv Malhotra, an internationally acclaimed author and public intellectual, in this seminal deep dive into a phenomenon that is only partially visible, like an iceberg.

Lamentably however, most of India’s leaders, public intellectuals, media personalities, policy makers, think tanks and authors are “ignoring the dangers” that lie ahead, “living securely in their comfort zones with like-minded peers”, Malhotra, the founder of the Princeton-based Infinity Foundation that specialises in the field of civilisational studies, writes in “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power – 5 Battlegrounds” (Rupa).

Noting that China had created a vast ecosystem of domestic intellectual property in next generation technologies including AI, 5G, nanotechnology, robotics, Virtual/Augmented Reality, aerospace and biotechnology, Malhotra writes that all this while, “the brutal reality is that India’s newly minted billionaires were shortsighted – the products of jugaad and selfishness. They achieved instant wealth but failed to anticipate global trends. They became intoxicated with their status as popular icons that were glorified by the media and the government” and even received Padma awards “because they built personal fortunes even though they made precious little contribution toward nation-building”.

Until a decade ago, Malhotra notes, India’s tech giants had a strong lead in software development, many private and corporate fortunes were made, and Indians were justifiably proud of their advantage.

“It was touted as the superpower status. However, the country squandered its lead and allowed China to surpass it in AI and related technologies. Consequently, India has become dependent on the US and others for the latest technology needed in AI,” the author states.

Thus, while India may have recently clamped down on Chinese investments, this was more in retaliation for border tensions “and not a strategic shift in R&D emphasis. It is a defensive move that can at best prevent further Chinese investments to slow the spread of China’s influence. But this by itself does nothing to upgrade the global competitiveness of India’s products. The fact remains that while China is a major disruptor of the world order by using AI as a weapon, India is at the receiving end of this disruption and having to be reactive”, Malhotra maintains.

Disruption, in fact, is what this 486-page tome, with an extensive reference section, is all about, as it lists the five battlegrounds of the future in an AI-driven world: Economy, industry, education and jobs; Geopolitics and military – USA, China and India; Moronization of the masses – bowing down to the digital deities, i.e., Google-devta, Twitter-devta and Facebook-devta; Loss of selfhood to artificial emotions and gratifications – this is the crash of civilisation; and Stress-testing the Indian Rashtra.

At the bottom line, it raises a troubling question: Is the world headed toward digital colonisation by the US and China? Quite obviously, this should be of immense concern to India.

To this end, the book is in two parts – the first dealing with the four battlegrounds in 255 pages in the first part and the second part, all of 138 pages, focusing on Battleground India.

“India cannot afford further delay in coming to terms with the fact that the control of most big data (the raw material required to develop machine understanding of human desires and their artificial manipulation) and deep learning is effectively in the hands of companies based in the US or China.

“Americans primarily own the software algorithms , data bases and operating platforms; the hardware is mostly Chinese. India is at the mercy of their technologies. And the foreign owners of the AI technology and digital platforms have no legal accountability in India, nor do they have the interests of Indians at heart to the same extent as their vested interests in their home countries.”

Regretfully, the book says, India’s data policies “have been weak and have allowed the drain of its precious data assets. In some ways, India is slipping to become the world’s largest digital colony with lifestyles, discourses and commerce controlled by foreign digital giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon and Flipkart. The foreign organisations maintain a lead of one generation of technology, and India is forever trying to catch up”.

“This is causing social and political interventions in India with the use of AI-driven platforms whose strings are pulled and manipulated from abroad. Especially those who feel disenfranchised, or who are dysfunctional as productive members of society, are highly vulnerable to succumbing to AI-based digital platforms; such platforms offer feel-good free services in exchange for capturing their privacy and their agency,” Malhotra writes.

Noting that the present conditions are a “playground for the breaking India forces” that he has discussed in his work over a quarter of a century, Malhotra adds: “Their foreign nexuses are well-funded and AI savvy, have experience in the use of technologies for creating social upheavals, and their machine learning systems have been using Indian big data to build and test psychological models for digital manipulation.”

India’s fabric, the book says, “in its current state is fragile and demands an increasing amount of resource allocation merely to keep it from imploding. There is far too much reliance on soft power as the solution, but soft power is always contingent on hard power”.

The lesson to be learned from the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata” is precisely this: Lord Ram failed to convince Ravana using all the soft power at his disposal but had to end up using hard power to defeat him. Likewise, Sri Krishna in the “Mahabharata” tries hard to use soft power arguments to win over Duryodhana, but eventually had to advocate the use of hard power to fight till the end.

“Therefore, even the avataras have needed hard power after being unsuccessful in producing the dharmic outcome with soft power alone. Indian spiritualists and political leaders should understand this and stop over-playing the soft power hand. It has made India society wooly-headed and lazy, and caused the kshatriyata to atrophy,” Malhotra writes.

Still, all is not lost.

“I am presently writing a sequel to this book that gives concrete ideas for not merely catching up in AI innovation but also using India’s special capabilities to leapfrog ahead by ten to twenty years. In many ways, this book is intended to prepare the ground for the way ahead,” Malhotra concludes.

With every passing year, humans become more dependent on technology. That has several advantages but also some dangers, which Rajiv Malhotra reveals in his book, ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power’.
An internationally acclaimed author who has studied computer science and done extensive research on India’s history, Rajiv Malhotra has interesting insights on what artificial intelligence is doing to our nation and how it will affect us in the future. He looks into how artificial intelligence will alter every aspect of our lives, from an international, to national to a personal level.

Here is an excerpt of the book to give you an idea on it:
Excerpts from ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power’ by Rajiv Malhotra

The AI-based concentration of power has taken on a terrifying new aspect. When we think of global power, countries like the US, China, and Russia readily come to mind. But today, private companies are accumulating immense power based on their ability to leverage AI and big data as tools to influence, manipulate and even control the minds of people.

Some of these private companies may soon become more powerful than many nation-states, but the shift will not be obvious. They will not fly a flag or manage a currency (although some are attempting to launch their own cryptocurrency), and they will not wield military power, at least not directly. However, their unprecedented knowledge of people and things around the world, coupled with their ability to disrupt and alter the physical world and manipulate people’s choices, will lead to a new nexus of power. Such companies will decide who will, and who will not, be given access to this new form of power, and on what terms.

Not one Indian company is a player in this league. Most unfortunate is that a large number of talented Indians work for American and Chinese companies in an individual capacity, including in top executive positions, but not as owners. Indians who do own companies tend to sell their stake when the right offer comes along. Whenever innovative entrepreneurs anywhere in the world develop a promising breakthrough, digital giants or venture firms that serve as their proxies are waiting to buy them out. As a result, hundreds of instant millionaires are being created at the individual level, including many living in India.

I view this trend as the return of Britain’s East India Company, which started out in 1600 as a modest private company for the purpose of making profit from lucrative trade with India. Over its 250-year history, the East India Company became the world’s largest private business, amassing more wealth, income and military power than even its own British government. Despite being a private company, it became a colonial power—collecting taxes, operating courts, and running the military and other functions of state across many kingdoms within India. At the time, the East India Company had more ships, soldiers, money and territory under its control than any European government, though now it is remembered as a rogue machine. Since then, the lines between government and private companies have often blurred.