Editor’s note: This article is based on a speech delivered by the author at IIT Kharagpur, in which he said modern wars are often invisible and technology-driven, with algorithms as today’s weapons. He urged India to become self-reliant, warning that a single geopolitical shock could restrict the nation’s growth.
My dear friends, in 1947, we broke the chains of our land, yet in the 21st century, a nation can be independent and still be bound by dependence. Just three days ago, we marked our 79th Independence Day, and it is clear we stand at a major inflection point. The world is moving from conventional wars to technology-driven wars of power, and our ability to prepare will decide our future.
Because the wars we have to fight today are often invisible. They are fought in our server farms, not in trenches. The armies, the weapons, are algorithms, not guns.
Empires are not built on land; they are built in our data centres. The armies are botnets, not battalions. And here is the uncomfortable truth.
In terms of technological dependence, 90% of our semiconductors are imported. One disruption or sanction can freeze our digital economy. In the case of energy vulnerability, we import 85% of our oil.
A single geopolitical incident can restrict our growth. Whenever data crosses India’s borders, every bit of this data becomes raw material for foreign algorithms, generates foreign wealth, and strengthens foreign dominance. In terms of military dependence, many of our critical systems are imported, placing our national security at the mercy of other nations’ political will and supply chains.
This is the freedom we must now fight for: the freedom of self-reliance, the freedom of atma nirvarta, if we are to be truly free. Eighty years ago, here in the Islijel, young men and women fought for the right to govern our land. That same fight continues.
Only the weapons have changed. And this is what I want every student here to take back. You are the next generation of freedom fighters.
Your innovations, your software code, and your ideas are today’s weapons. You will decide whether India takes command of its destiny or surrenders it to others. My dear friends, I have been an entrepreneur since the age of 16.
I have navigated multiple cycles of disruption, many moments of transformation, and built businesses through both crisis and opportunity. But I can tell you with absolute conviction that the age of transformation now unfolding before us is unlike anything I have seen. And the battlefield is not just about protecting our nation’s borders.
It is about securing our technology, leadership, and ensuring we remain at the forefront of global innovations. It is about redesigning every business, reimagining every industry, and rewriting every rule of the game so we lead, not just participate as low-cost players in the global race. Because, as we all know, in a world of robotics and AI, cost advantages will vanish overnight.
And we can quickly lose our ability to compete. This is not a transformation at 1x speed. It is 10x.
It is 100x. And it is accelerating toward 1000x as AI starts to build AI, LLMs start to write LLMs, robots start to build robots, code starts to write code, machines start to teach machines, and discoveries fuel more discoveries. And this is why I call it our second freedom struggle. The world has never seen an industrial and intelligence revolution of this scale.
Here is what I can tell you. Tomorrow’s trillion-dollar value disruptors will bend others to their will. Some of them will go on to dominate the world like no company ever has before.
Companies will become more powerful than many nations. And over the next decade, several companies that today seem unbeatable will vanish. They will disappear, not because they lack resources, but because they could simply not compete at the pace and scale required.
And I will say the same stands true for educational institutions, because educational institutions too must transform. They must move at the speed of change, drive cutting-edge research, and be accountable to real-world impact. This is no longer about producing brilliant graduates.
It is about producing brilliant patriots, armed with ideas, discipline, and the will to make India unshakeable. The brutal truth is: when knowledge is a commodity, when skills can be downloaded, and when AI can solve engineering problems in seconds, we must ask what the future value of an engineering or technical degree is. How should we prepare? The lifespan of our technical knowledge has collapsed from years to months, maybe even weeks. This means the gap between academic theory and industry reality is widening faster than ever before.
The new currency is abundance: abundance of bold ideas, abundance of lightning-speed adaptations, abundance of relentless reinvention. In this new round of battle, it is the most brilliant minds that India will need. And you, my dear professors, are the custodians of these minds.
Minds trained on this very ground, trained to think beyond the textbook, trained for rapid invention, and trained to carry the courage of discovery as a national duty. While this is not a call to give up the heritage of our top institutions, it is indeed a call to design a different future before it is too late.
Let me now talk about Indian corporates.
It begins with the honest admission that we in industry must share equal responsibility for the innovation deficit India faces. After all, we hire from these colleges, and the best among them are government-funded. We stand on the shoulders of public institutions like ISRO, BARC, DRDO, ICMR, NCL, and many more.
These have given us the inventions, breakthroughs, and discoveries that form our launchpads. From ISRO’s Chandrayaan to Aadhaar, from UPI to vaccine research, from freight corridors to renewable grids, it is worth reflecting that it is the government that has built the foundation of our modern economy. And this model will not adequately sustain the race we are entering.
If India is to lead in transformative technologies such as advanced materials, biotechnology, deep tech, and more, we must carry our share of the nation’s innovation burden. Not translated into marketing slogans, but into budget allocations, world-class laboratories, and risk capital. We must provide platforms where young minds can explore and even fail without fear. If we corporates do not step up, we will remain users of foreign breakthroughs and never originators.
This is a future we cannot accept. So what is our path forward? If speed and scale are the defining challenges for academic institutions, then the answer lies in blurring the lines between where education ends and enterprise begins. In the industrial era, institutions and corporates operated in parallel.
Academia produced graduates. Industry consumed them. In the world we now inhabit, victory will often belong to the owners of IP, and nations will weaponise this IP, with governments controlling its distribution.
Therefore, we must master partnerships that unite diverse stakeholders, enable seamless talent flow between labs and industry, and embed IP sharing and funding models that reward both groundbreaking research and rapid commercialisation. There are many examples to learn from. In Silicon Valley, Stanford’s deep ties with venture capital and industry have seeded tech companies from Google to Tesla, with startups and academia feeding each other’s growth.
In biotech, the Boston-Cambridge cluster saw Moderna and its vaccines emerge directly from MIT and Harvard labs, accelerated by corporate funding. Universities must push the boundaries of research, and corporates must push the boundaries of execution. Universities must focus on breakthroughs, corporates must focus on scaling them.
Together, we must create impact, not just in markets, but in the very fabric of Indian society.
