AI and the Securitization of Critical Infrastructure: Implications of India's AI Summit
Artificial intelligence is no longer just a technological innovation. It has become a central concern in national security debates. The concept of securitization, developed by Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde within the Copenhagen School of international relations, explains how certain issues are framed as existential threats. Once an issue is presented as a threat to a state’s survival and accepted by the public, it justifies extraordinary measures beyond routine politics. This framework is increasingly applied to AI, especially as it becomes embedded in critical infrastructure systems. India’s approach to AI securitization, particularly through the AI Impact Summit held in New Delhi in February 2026, offers a rich example of how an emerging power is shaping this discourse.
India’s digital public infrastructure, or DPI, is a cornerstone of its governance model. Systems such as Aadhaar, the Unified Payments Interface, and DigiLocker form a deeply integrated digital stack that supports service delivery for over 1.4 billion citizens. These platforms are not just technical tools. They are political instruments that underpin the legitimacy of public services. When AI becomes central to managing these systems, any threat to its integrity is framed as a threat to national survival. This is the essence of securitization. It is not just about technical vulnerabilities but about the political consequences of system failure.
The AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, the fourth in a global series that began at Bletchley Park in 2023, was the first hosted by a Global South nation. Organized under the IndiaAI Mission by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the summit attracted delegations from 118 countries, more than twenty heads of state, and senior executives from leading AI firms including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind. The summit served as a key moment for India to showcase its vision of AI governance and infrastructure protection.
The IndiaAI Mission
The core of India’s AI strategy is anchored in the IndiaAI Mission, which was allocated approximately 1.7 billion US dollars in the 2026 budget. This mission is designed to build indigenous AI capabilities across seven pillars, such as,compute infrastructure, native AI models, datasets, application development, future skills, research, and startup financing. It is not just a technological initiative but a strategic long-term governance project.
In November 2025, the Ministry released the India AI Governance Guidelines, developed by a committee chaired by Professor Balaraman Ravindran of IIT Madras. These guidelines adopt a flexible regulatory approach, relying on existing legal frameworks rather than creating new legislation. The guidelines are built around seven principles: trust, human-centricity, innovation, fairness, accountability, transparency, and adaptability. They propose the creation of institutions such as the AI Safety Institute, which will coordinate with sectoral regulators like the Reserve Bank of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India to ensure safe AI deployment. For critical infrastructure, the guidelines emphasize systemic risks. These are risks that arise from the interconnected nature of AI systems, rather than from individual misuse. The guidelines argue that India needs a context-specific risk assessment framework because its diverse, multilingual, and uneven infrastructure landscape differs significantly from Western models. This insistence on tailoring governance to local conditions marks a shift in India’s approach. It is not simply adopting foreign frameworks but constructing its own.
The Safe and Trusted AI working group at the summit focused directly on infrastructure protection. A pre-summit roundtable titled “Securing India’s AI Future” brought together government officials, military experts, academics, and ethicists to discuss risk assessment, adversarial robustness, and ethical standards. The roundtable produced policy briefs and roadmaps for a national framework that prioritizes accountability, security, and responsible innovation. One notable example of AI integration into infrastructure is the STELLAR tool developed by the Central Electricity Authority. Launched in April 2025, STELLAR helps energy distribution companies plan generation, transmission, storage, and demand response. While it improves efficiency, it also introduces new vulnerabilities. The use of AI in grid management creates new attack surfaces, making its securitization both a technical and strategic necessity.
Pax Silica and Strategic Alignment
India’s domestic AI strategy is closely linked to global supply chain dynamics. On the final day of the summit, India signed the Pax Silica Declaration, a United States-led framework launched in December 2025 to secure supply chains for semiconductors, critical minerals, and AI infrastructure. The signing was attended by MeitY Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, U.S. Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, and U.S. Ambassador Sergio Gor. The Pax Silica framework includes the entire silicon stack, from raw materials to advanced manufacturing and logistics. Its goals include reducing supply chain concentration, preventing economic coercion, and ensuring that emerging technologies are governed by democratic societies. India’s accession to Pax Silica is significant. Although, initially excluded from the founding group, India joined after diplomatic engagement in early 2026. This move reflects both U.S. concerns about India’s reliance on Chinese technologies and India’s desire to access advanced AI systems.
The framework promises access to the full AI stack without licensing barriers for trusted partners. This matters for infrastructure security because India’s AI-enabled systems, including grid management and satellite communications, rely on foreign chips such as NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs and Google’s TPUs. These are not produced domestically, highlighting India’s dependence on external suppliers. Similarly, India’s ambition for technological sovereignty is evident in its support for indigenous AI development. Initiatives such as Sarvam AI, backed by the IndiaAI Mission, have launched large language models with 30 billion and 105 billion parameters using a mixture-of-experts architecture. These efforts signal a shift from being an AI consumer to becoming an AI creator.
However, India’s foundational compute infrastructure still depends on foreign hardware. The country lacks the advanced chip design and fabrication capabilities found in nations like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands. While Pax Silica offers strategic alignment, it is not a binding industrial agreement. Its impact will depend on whether diplomatic commitments translate into manufacturing investments. Some Indian commentators have criticized the suggestion by U.S. policy adviser Sriram Krishnan that allied nations should build their AI systems on the American stack. They argue that true securitization requires indigenous capabilities, not just access to foreign technology. This tension between aspiration and dependency is a recurring theme in India’s AI strategy.
Conclusion: A Strategy in Progress
India’s AI securitization strategy is multi-layered. It combines domestic governance reforms, infrastructure resilience planning, and global partnerships. The AI Impact Summit, the IndiaAI Mission, and the Pax Silica Declaration together form a framework that positions India’s AI as both a tool and a target of national security policy. However, the strategy is still evolving. The gap between ambition and capability remains wide. The governance guidelines are non-binding and rely on existing laws that may not fully address AI-specific risks. The Pax Silica framework, while promising, does not guarantee industrial transformation. India’s success will depend not only on policy design but also on sustained investment in indigenous technology. In this sense, India’s securitization of AI-enabled infrastructure could be well understood as a work in progress in the current situation. It is a dynamic project that reflects both the opportunities and the constraints of building a secure and sovereign AI ecosystem.
Endnotes:
1. Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998.
2. India AI Impact Summit 2026. Seven Chakras of the India-AI Impact Summit 2026. Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2225069
3. MeitY. India AI Governance Guidelines. IndiaAI Mission. November 2025. https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2025/nov/doc2025115685601.pdf
4. India AI Impact Summit 2026. Safe and Trusted AI Working Group. https://impact.indiaai.gov.in/working-groups/safe-trusted-ai
5. Press Information Bureau. India Joins Pax Silica at India AI Impact Summit 2026. February 20, 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2230648
6. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. India Signs the Pax Silica — A Counter to Pax Sinica? March 2026. https://carnegieendowment.org/china/posts/2026/03/india-signs-the-pax-silicaa-counter-to-pax-sinica
7. Brookings Institution. Sovereignty, Safety, and Scale: Takeaways from the India AI Impact Summit. March 2026. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/takeaways-from-the-india-ai-impact-summit/
8. Observer Research Foundation. 2026, A Turning Point for the Indian Space Programme. January 2026. https://www.orfonline.org/research/2026-a-turning-point-for-the-indian-space-programme
9. United States Department of State. Pax Silica.https://www.state.gov/pax-silica
10. NBC News. India's AI Summit Draws Global Leaders, Big Pledges and Some Chaos. February 24, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/indias-ai-summit-draws-global-leaders-big-pledges-chaos-rcna259855
(The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views of CESCUBE)
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Vivetha Jayaseelan is an International Relations researcher specializing in the securitization of critical infrastructure and Indo-Pacific security architecture. Her research investigates the intersection of sub-sea strategic autonomy, AI space diplomacy, and non-traditional regional security threats using OSINT and quantitative analysis.
