"US-China AI Dialogue Raises Strategic Questions for India"
AI Action Summit
Global summit on AI governance co-chaired by India and France in Paris in 2025.
WAICO
China-launched World AI Cooperation Organisation promoting AI access for developing countries.
Global AI governance has evolved through a sequence of summits since the UK-hosted Bletchley Park Summit in 2023, followed by the Seoul Summit in 2024, and the AI Action Summit at the Grand Palais, Paris, in February 2025, co-chaired by India and France. These forums shifted emphasis from safety alone toward access, openness, and diffusion of AI capacity to developing economies; at the Paris summit, the US and UK notably declined to sign the joint declaration on inclusive and sustainable AI, signalling a widening gap between safety-first and access-first camps. Earlier this year, India hosted the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, whose declaration was organised around seven pillars, or Chakras, including Access for Social Empowerment and Secure and Trusted AI, reflecting India's attempt to bridge frontier AI powers and the Global South.
Parallel to this multilateral track, the United States and China have run a separate, narrower dialogue on AI risk since 2023. At Woodside, California, the two countries' presidents opened a channel on AI, and a year later at Lima, they affirmed the principle that humans, not artificial intelligence, must retain control over decisions on the use of nuclear weapons. This bilateral track continues today, now expanding into a formal dialogue on frontier-model risks, incident notification, and possible guardrails, even as trade, chips, and export controls remain entangled with the safety conversation.
India's own AI strategy, anchored in the IndiaAI Mission, focuses on compute infrastructure, curated datasets, and domain-specific applications built on existing digital infrastructure such as Aadhaar and UPI, rather than competing at the frontier-model scale. India has no unified AI law and instead relies on sector-specific regulation, keeping it distinct from the binding, risk-tiered EU AI Act.
Global AI politics is organised along two axes that intersect but do not fully overlap. One axis is about access and diffusion, championed by China through platforms like the World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO) launched in Shanghai, and its outreach to BRICS members, positioning Beijing as the partner of choice for developing countries seeking affordable AI models. The other axis is about managing catastrophic and security risk from frontier AI, an area where only the US and China possess the compute, data, and model capacity to matter, and where their bilateral dialogue increasingly functions like a strategic-stability channel.
This dual structure is not new to great-power technology politics. …
Consider the following statements regarding the AI Action Summit held in Grand Palais, Paris in February 2025:
I.Co-chaired with India, the event builds on the advances made at the Bletchley Park Summit held in 2023 and the Seoul Summit held in 2024.
II.Along with other countries, US and UK also signed the declaration on inclusive and sustainable AI.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements with respect to the AI Impact Summit, 2026 held in New Delhi:
1.The Summit's intellectual framework was based on three foundational Sutras: People, Planning, and Progress.
2.The Preamble of the Summit stresses Democratising AI Resources, which acknowledges the Charter for Democratic Diffusion of AI as a binding framework to support locally relevant innovation and strengthen resilient AI ecosystems while respecting national laws.
3.The New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact was structured around seven Chakras (Pillars), which included Access for Social Empowerment, AI for Science, and Secure and Trusted AI.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
"China is using its economic relations and positive trade surplus as tools to develop potential military power status in Asia." In the light of this statement, discuss its impact on India as her neighbour.
Match List-I (AI Summit) with List-II (Year/Host) and select the correct answer using the code given below:
List-I:
A.Bletchley Park Summit
B.Seoul Summit
C.AI Action Summit
D.AI Impact Summit
List-II:
1.2023, UK
2.2024, South Korea
3.2025, France (Paris)
4.2026, India (New Delhi)
Consider the following statements regarding the 2024 Lima meeting between the US and Chinese presidents on Artificial Intelligence:
1.It affirmed that humans, not AI, must control decisions on the use of nuclear weapons.
2.It resulted in a binding treaty banning autonomous weapons systems.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements about the World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO):
1.It was launched by China in Shanghai.
2.India is a founding member of WAICO.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Which of the following best describes India's core AI strategy under the IndiaAI Mission?
India's participation in the 'Pax Silica' initiative primarily relates to:
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