US, India to expand cooperation on advanced technology

As the Biden administration looks to strengthen its links with Asian allies and offset China's dominance of cutting-edge technologies, officials from the United States and India agreed on Tuesday to expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing, semiconductors and other high-tech fields.

The agreements followed two days of high-level meetings between government officials and executives from dozens of companies in Washington, the first under a new dialogue on emerging technologies that President Biden and India announced in May.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the goal was for technological partnerships to be the next big milestone in the US-Indian relationship after a 2016 agreement on nuclear power cooperation. He described the effort as a big foundational piece of an overall strategy to put the whole democratic world in the Indo-Pacific in a position of strength. The agreements will be a test to see whether or not the Biden administration can meet its proposal for Friendshoring by shifting the manufacturing of certain critical components to friendly countries. Biden officials expressed concerns about the United States' continued reliance on China for semiconductors, telecommunications parts and other important goods. In recent months, they have clamped down on the sale of advanced semiconductor technology to China in an effort to stymie an industry that the White House says could give China a military advantage.