U.S. Export Control Unpredictability Is Testing the Limits of U.S.-India Tech Cooperation
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed several ambitious agreements for increased defense cooperation with India during a recent visit to New Delhi. In response to increased Chinese submarine patrols in the region, for example, Rubio and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar signed a comprehensive Underwater Domain Awareness roadmap and expanded current initiatives to monitor real-time activity in the Indo-Pacific with their two partners in the “Quad,” Japan and Australia. In a joint press conference, Rubio suggested the United States and India have “a tremendous strategic alliance” and noted the intention to move from simply a defense producer-buyer relationship to one of co-development of advanced military technology, something India has been seeking for decades.
While the diplomatic rhetoric may increasingly project a partnership of equals, the regulatory environment tells a different story. Washington’s shift from a rules-based export licensing regime to ad hoc horse-trading in a burdened Commerce Department pushes India’s defense tech ecosystem toward architectural choices that will make these agreements more difficult to implement.
Current Cooperation Promises
The Biden administration and both Trump administrations have courted India as a critical partner for a wide range of digital and defense cooperation efforts. Despite crushing 50 percent tariffs that have strained the relationship over the past year, Rubio asserted in the press conference with Jaishankar that India was one of the “most important strategic partners” in the world.
In 2023, the landmark U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) solidified the beginning of multi-billion-dollar joint projects on AI and cyber defense, including India’s deal for acquisition and domestic assembly of drones from American defense manufacturer General Atomics. Similarly, the TRUST Initiative and INDUS-X defense projects prioritize increased bilateral cooperation on critical and emerging technologies in several domains, including cooperation on sensitive artificial intelligence. These agreements and others are multi-administration commitments to solidify the relationship with India as an ally in everything but name, with faster and deeper access to the U.S. defense ecosystem.
Under President Barack Obama, the United States designated India in 2016 with the bespoke moniker of “Major Defense Partner,” elevating its trade authorization two years later to receive “license-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies regulated by the Department of Commerce.” But the partner designation is a technology transfer grey area, as defense partnerships are more flexible and transactional than agreements with formal allies. Note the hedging language in the White House announcement: “The United States will continue to work toward facilitating technology sharing with India to a level commensurate with that of its closest allies and partners.” (emphasis added) Relationships with traditional allies like those in the AUKUS agreement — Australia and the U.K. — come with a higher level of trust, which means that the export controls licensing process generally works quicker and with higher access than it does for lower-level partners. India’s partnership is something in between, which limits access and slows the processing of export licenses.
One of the highlights of Rubio’s recent visit to New Delhi focused on increased maritime surveillance cooperation within the Quad, which establishes a mechanism for joint efforts on real-time submarine tracking in the Indo-Pacific. These defense technologies require high levels of real-time intelligence sharing, radar technology, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collaboration.
Regulatory Mixed Signals
Under the Biden administration’s AI Diffusion Rule, there was a tiered approach to access to frontier semiconductors and compute required for any sustained high-level AI research. Despite the strong bilateral relationship, India was placed on a restricted access tier, signaling the limits of U.S. trust with sensitive technologies due to national security concerns of American technology falling into the hands of adversaries.
Under the Trump administration, the Diffusion Rule was discarded without a replacement strategy. Instead, an ad-hoc review of each license took its place. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security has been hemorrhaging staff responsible for reviewing these licenses, losing 20 percent of their employees in the past year. The licensing regime is also largely controlled personally by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler, with no published criteria. This has compounded bottlenecks and caused significant delays, eliciting complaints from semiconductor industry associations that have seen approvals that used to take weeks now being processed for months.
At the same time, while Indian firms are starving for compute access, Trump flew to a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to cut a special deal to increase Chinese access to American semiconductor chips. In Rubio’s visit to India, no such offer was made. Despite being hailed as a critical partner, Washington’s inconsistencies are causing Indian tech innovators to consider ways to reduce their dependencies on U.S.-controlled chips.
Indian Firms Pivot
The combination of unpredictability in the U.S. export control regime for both semiconductor hardware and compute access with domestic pressures to create a home-grown industry reflecting the values of the Indian government works to create strong incentives for a defensive hedging posture in AI development. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now in office more than 12 years, the domestic messaging on AI has been that India should be a producer of AI technology, not just a consumer market for Western companies.
India doesn’t currently have the capacity to build its own cutting-edge Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which operate using more than a trillion adjustable variables, nor is there the desire to pivot to Chinese models or hardware. In fact, Indian data protection law explicitly prohibits data being stored on Chinese servers. There is clearly an appetite for “sovereign AI” that would be less vulnerable to geopolitical interference in the chip supply chain, as illustrated by the numerous indigenous AI strategy panels at the most recent AI Summit in New Delhi and the announcement of the IndiaAI Mission, which aims to expand compute access and domestic semiconductor production in the country.
Where does this leave Indian deep-tech defense firms? Instead of waiting for more access to hardware in an unpredictable and expensive licensing queue, they are building software pipelines that can be trained and run on cheaper, legacy-node hardware rather than U.S.-controlled chips. Currently, users of Nvidia hardware are forced to also use their operating software. To avoid being locked into dependency on American hardware, Indian firms are building more domain-specific Indian models that are built to be “chip-agnostic,” meaning that they can be run on domestically produced chips or older processors. This pivot is not only a domestic political move, but also a technical necessity. Practically, however, this means that the software-heavy systems the two countries are investing in are being deliberately decoupled from U.S. hardware.
Interoperability Challenges
If Indian firms continue investing in chip-agnostic software as a hedge against U.S. export unpredictability, this presents several challenges for the United States in executing the ambitious defense cooperation with New Delhi. The potentially growing divergence between U.S. and Indian advanced computing hardware and software has the potential to cripple the interoperability required for complex joint ISR and maritime drone operations. Maritime drone systems, in order to operate well as a swarm, rely on sensor information that changes by the millisecond and can’t afford to be buffering in translation with other software systems.
For joint development of automated cyber defense systems, the U.S. zero-trust model will reject plugging into a cyber defense system that wasn’t built on American software and hardware. The INDUS-X initiative has already begun facilitating co-production of maritime autonomous systems between Indian and U.S. defense firms to enable more effective submarine tracking. However, if the software foundations of these systems continue to diverge, we may end up with maritime drone swarms unable to operate smoothly with each other in the water during a real-time Indo-Pacific contingency.
These challenges persist at every level of the new cooperation agreements: the Underwater Domain Awareness roadmap, Quad maritime surveillance efforts, cyber defense initiatives, and co-development of advanced military technology. In order to ensure that U.S. defense cooperation with India stays on track, it is critical that the two countries ensure that their tech stacks are also moving forward together.
Paths Forward
Rubio’s visit underscored the genuine desire to keep India engaged in supporting American interests in the Indo-Pacific, but the lack of clarity and predictability is creating more of a wedge than a bridge.
Quicker and more transparent rules for export controls could slow the Indian pivot away from the heavy reliance on U.S. technology. Recently introduced in Congress, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Licensing Efficiency Act of 2026, aims at increasing speed and transparency in license administration at the Commerce Department, which could potentially decrease some of the hardware access issues for the Indian market. At the very least, it would signal a consistent standard that partners could rely on rather than forcing them to read tea leaves while China cuts deals for more access.
More broadly, it may be time to address the regulatory grey area of India as a “Major Defense Partner” even beyond the trade partnership. This designation attempts to hold India’s importance and nonalignment at once, but has never been fully defined in terms of what the partners can expect of one another. As the scope of the U.S.-India defense cooperation agreements continue to expand into one of co-development of autonomous systems and high-sensitivity ISR cooperation, this regulatory ambiguity is becoming increasingly untenable. The United States can’t expect India to build its defense future on American technology while treating semiconductor and compute access like a trade bargaining chip.
FEATURED IMAGE: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) and India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar shake hands after signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi on May 26, 2026. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)Read Next:
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Jun. 26, 2026 Lucas GuttentagBadenoch blasts 'moaning' female Labour MPs over Burnham jobs 'quota'
Kemi Badenoch has told Labour women to earn a job in Andy Burnham's Cabinet instead of demanding they are handed jobs because of their gender.
The Tory leader lashed out today amid reports that female MPs are demanding the de-facto new prime minister introduce a 50:50 gender split 'quota' in his government.
Amid reports that former foreign secretary David Miliband is being lined up to return to the role, possibly with his brother Ed as Chancellor, one female minister also complained that Burnham could not have 'more Milibands than women' in the top posts.
But in a scathing article in the Times today Mrs Badenoch told them to 'stop moaning' and get chosen on merit instead of retreating into 'more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country'.
'There are many, many reasons why you shouldn't have any Milibands in the cabinet,' she said.
'But complaining that the boys haven't given them the right jobs or that the boys are taking all the jobs, just shows that Labour's women still don't get it.'
The idea of quotas was also attacked by Baroness Jacqui Smith, Labour's Skills Minister.
Asked by Times Radio if Mr Burnham should reserve jobs for women, she said: 'No, I think what Andy Burnham should be doing is building the very best team around him to change this country.'
A letter written by the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party has called on Mr Burnham to ensure a 50:50 split between men and women in government jobs
Amid reports that former foreign secretary David Miliband (above, right, in 2010) is being lined up to return to the role, possibly with his brother Ed as Chancellor, one female minister complained that Burnham could not have 'more Milibands than women' in the top posts
But Mrs Badenoch told them to pipe down and get chosen on merit instead of retreating into 'more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country'
A letter written by the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party and seen by the BBC has called on Mr Burnham to ensure a 50:50 split between men and women in government jobs after he succeeds Sir Keir Starmer.
'We are asking you to demonstrate this change from day one and address the toxicity and misogyny within our own party and government,' it said.
Labour has never had a female leader, while the Conservatives have had three, and Mrs Badenoch urged the government to follow its meritocratic example.
'If you run a meritocracy, then you do not have to worry about jobs for the boys,' she wrote.
'Every woman who is a Conservative MP, every woman who has ever won the leadership, has had to fight to get where she is.
'By contrast, Labour women are demanding guarantees from Burnham. But the truth is he doesn't have to give any guarantees.
'If none of Labour's women are prepared to get their hands dirty and challenge him for the leadership, their demands are toothless.'
'In fact, it's quite revealing that the women's parliamentary Labour Party has written to Burnham asking him to commit himself to at least 50 per cent female ministers.
'This has nothing to do with meritocracy. It is yet more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country.'
Venezuela Fury and Noah Price subsidising their life by livestreaming
Venezuela Fury and her husband Noah Price look to be making their own way in the world by raking it in from their lucrative social media accounts.
The influencer daughter of Tyson and Paris Fury, 16, has become an internet sensation after tying the knot with her husband Noah, 19, earlier this year.
Since getting married and moving in together the couple have been earning thousands of pounds a month, livestreaming their life as newlyweds in their static caravan in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
And fans can't get enough of their regular life updates on TikTok and Kick, which have proved to be very profitable for the pair.
They look to be supporting themselves after Noah denied that he was given £5million by Venezuela's family as a wedding gift.
Despite his wife's huge family wealth, an estimated combined £160 million, Noah recently told his Kick followers that he 'pays for everything' for the couple.
Making light of the claims about Venezuela's millionaire financial status, Noah said: 'I actually pay for everything unfortunately. You'd expect the millionaire to pay for it wouldn't you.'
Venezuela Fury and Noah Price are earning thousands livestreaming their caravan life - after her new groom insisted he pays all the bills and denied he had £5m handout from her dad
The influencer daughter of Tyson and Paris Fury , 16, has become an internet sensation after tying the knot with her husband Noah, 19, earlier this year
Venezuela then asked their fans: 'Do you think I am a millionaire?'
Noah joked: 'She isn't a secret millionaire guys', before she broke into song and sang: 'But I live like a millionaire!'
But it seems according to estimated calculations from their social media work, Noah and Venezuela can more than afford to support themselves.
Noah has been livestreaming on platforms such as Kick and TikTok, where viewers can send paid gifts or donations.
He was previously encouraging viewers to send gifts on his honeymoon during livestreams, suggesting this is one revenue stream.
Both Noah and Venezuela have built substantial followings on Instagram and TikTok. They can potentially earn money through sponsored posts, brand collaborations, affiliate links and creator payouts.
Kick allows its creators to take home 95 per cent of the £4.99 subscription cost that fans pay.
Streamers keep 100 per cent of direct tips and donations, minus minor standard payment processing fees.
It is unclear how many subscribers Noah currently has because this information is hidden, but he does have 7,200 followers which is publicly viewable.
An industry insider has suggested Noah is making around £400 per video on TikTok, while Venezuela is likely to make £2,000 due to her following count of 1.3 million.
An industry insider has suggested Noah is making around £400 per video on TikTok, while Venezuela is likely to make £2,000 due to her following count of 1.3 million
In one video on their honeymoon, Noah asked his followers if they'd give them some more gifts now that they were married.
In a TikTok live viewed by 20,000 he said: 'Keep liking our videos people, keep sending gifts.'
After saying thank you to several of his followers he joked they should stick around on the livestream and 'watch Venezuela punch me in the mouth'.
The other half of the honeymooning couple said: 'I am, honestly!'
Noah previously confirmed that the pair don't share their finances after they were asked whether they have a shared bank account.
'She earns her money, I earn mine,' said Noah, as Venezuela joked: 'Yeah, what you gonna do about it.'
Noah went on to debunk the rumour that Tyson gave him £5million when he tied the knot with his daughter as he insisted: 'No Tyson did not give me £5million'.
Meanwhile Venezuela is being eyed up by executives for a fly on the wall TV series.
Noah went on to debunk the rumour that Tyson gave him £5million when he tied the knot with his daughter as he insisted: 'No Tyson did not give me £5million'
Boasting 1.3 million TikTok followers, Venezuela is already entertaining fans with her honest musings and candid moments, from cooking to kitting out her and Noah's static caravan home.
And following the success of the Netflix series At Home With The Furys, it is no wonder bosses are wanting to draw on the Fury popularity.
A TV insider said: 'The couple are not A-list celebrities but everyone has become obsessed with their love story.
'People are genuinely intrigued by them. Whether it’s the fact they have married so young, Venezuela’s famous family or their gypsy lifestyle, they have the ‘X factor'.
'Several TV executives think a proper fly-on-the-wall series following their lives as newlyweds in the gypsy community would be fascinating,' they told The Sun.
It is thought Netflix would be likely to produce the series due to their already established relationship with the Furys.
Venezuela's representatives told The Daily Mail: 'We have many offers on the table regarding Venezuela which we are discussing.'
