As artificial intelligence looms large over our lives, three different frameworks are emerging to explain how its development and governance might unfold—techno-capitalism, techno-feudalism, and techno-anarchism. Each offers a distinctive logic, and each carries deep implications for India’s strategic ambitions in the AI age.
Techno-capitalism dominates American thinking, though its expression varies across the political aisle. The Trump administration sees the future of AI being driven by an unconstrained Silicon Valley. Regulation, for Trump’s team, risks slowing innovation and undermining US primacy. The Biden administration’s instinct was different. While recognising Silicon Valley’s centrality, Biden emphasised tighter regulation—linking AI governance to liberal goals at home (worker rights, racial equity) and abroad (international cooperation with allies, including arms-control-style engagement with China). Biden’s approach aligned more closely with Europe’s tilt towards intensive regulation embodied in the EU’s AI Act of 2024. US Vice President J.D. Vance told the Paris AI Summit in February 2025 that he was “not here to talk about AI safety” but to promote the “AI opportunity”. For the new administration, American dominance of global AI development is the central objective. The contest within techno-capitalism, then, is over how much to regulate and how to exercise America’s international leadership.
India must craft its own model of AI development and governance, managing tensions between the state and capital, citizen rights against the temptations of an overbearing state, promotion and regulation, and the natural antinomy between national sovereignty and international collaboration
Techno-feudalism, in contrast, stems from anxiety about the extraordinary concentration of digital power in a handful of American firms. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, argues that digital technology has not extended capitalism but supplanted it. In his account, a small number of tech giants—Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft—have become modern aristocracies presiding over vast digital fiefdoms. Competition has given way to rent-seeking monopolies, and consumers have been reduced to data-producing vassals. At the global level, these corporate monopolies acquire political weight once associated with great powers: influencing national economic strategies, shaping domestic politics, and exercising structural leverage over states.
Techno-anarchism, or techno-libertarianism, is radical and seeks to liberate technological innovation from the constraints of the state system altogether. Its proponents insist that national bureaucracies and multilateral institutions are too slow and too conservative to realise AI’s full potential. The future, in this vision, belongs to sovereign entrepreneurs empowered by cryptocurrencies and the freedom to innovate freely in private cities operating outside state control. What seems utopian is already taking shape—in crypto-friendly micro-jurisdictions, venture-backed city-states like Prospera in Honduras, and ambitious projects such as Indian-American entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan’s proposed “network state” on private land near Singapore.
Where does this leave India?
The question is not which model Delhi should endorse. Instead, India must recognise the structural forces shaping global AI development and craft its own model of managing the inherent challenges. These include the tensions between the state and capital, citizen rights against the temptations of an overbearing state, promotion and regulation, safety and growth, and the natural antinomy between national sovereignty and international collaboration.