“It felt like the last day of school,” quipped a close observer and stakeholder of the India-United States Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, or iCET. U.S. National Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan had delivered a speech—his last outside of the U.S. before the new administration takes office—on January 6, 2025, where he recounted the events of the past two years since the iCET’s official launch in January 2023. “I believe,” the cool-minded forty-eight-year-old underlined, “this partnership [between the U.S. and India] will be the most consequential of the 21st century.” Yet, and as he also emphasized, “we’re just getting started.”
The iCET was merely a few sentences in a readout following a meeting between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the summer of 2022, on the sidelines of a QUAD Leaders Summit in Tokyo. In a little more than two years, it evolved into a structure for strategic technology cooperation in specific domains such as artificial intelligence, semiconductor, space, defence, and other critical and emerging technologies. Uniquely, it is anchored by the respective NSAs. The key was to encourage the private sector and research institutions in both countries to engage in projects and ventures designed to create a trusted and joint ecosystem for innovation.
Sullivan’s speech was clearly designed to signal the achievements of the past—from the time of the George W. Bush administration and the conclusion of the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement; the recent past—underscored by the iCET; and the promise of a future that “we haven’t yet imagined.” For him, the potential of this unique partnership is immeasurable.
