By Andreas Kuehn
The contest for AI supremacy is no longer about who has the best models, but about who can fund, power, and scale the infrastructure behind them.
Who Builds, Wins: The Trillion-Dollar Contest for AI Infrastructure
The colours of capital
By Udaibir Das
Can capital take on purpose without money losing the fungibility on which markets depend? The question must be asked while the machinery is still being chosen.
Raising ambition in the India-New Zealand partnership
By Dhruva Jaishankar
The India-New Zealand partnership has benefited in recent years from top-down political attention, a strong people-to-people foundation, and external impulses compelling both New Delhi and Wellington to diversify their partnerships. The next few years represent an opportunity to build upon the foundations of an FTA and Strategic Partnership and construct a relationship that is more than two-dimensional.
A Pact Without Impact
By Vasabjit Banerjee
The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement faces all the classic challenges of an alliance with none of the unifying elements.
Net Zero Planning Needs an AI Update. COP31 is the Right Moment to Do That
By Piyush Verma and Andrei Covatariu
The COP31 presidency has proposed raising electricity’s share of global final energy demand, yet AI is largely missing from climate and energy planning. At COP31 in Antalya this November, that needs to change.
Who Stands Behind Tokenised Money?
By Udaibir Das
Technology changes the form of money. The institution behind the promise still sets its quality.
2026 Could be Landmark Year for India-EU ties, Courtesy China, US and Russia
By Dhruva Jaishankar
As official EU-India relations have surged ahead over the past year, the non-governmental sector will quickly need to catch up.
IBSA Offers Indonesia a Stronger Global South Role
By Piyush Verma
This diplomatic moment offers an opportunity built on the India-Indonesia relationship: closer cooperation with the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum, or IBSA.
ORF Global Quarterly: Energy and Tech: Powering the Future
Edited Volume
By Andreas Kuehn, Cauvery Ganapathy, Piyush Verma, Parul Bakshi, Lydia Powell, Gopalika Arora, Siddharth Yadav, Amoha Basrur, Pranoy Jainendran, Prateek Tripathi, and Sauradeep Bag
Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony
India and Taiwan’s Evolving Entente Commerciale: Trade and Informal Defense Cooperation Between Taiwan-India
By Benjamin Tkach and Vasabjit Banerjee
We evaluate cooperative steps that both India and Taiwan have taken in the defense arena, demonstrating how mutual antagonist China, economic ties, and budding security coordination are creating an entente.
India’s Defence Export Rise Opens a Door for Australia
By Dhruva Jaishankar
The new joint defense declaration between India and Australia articulated a more ambitious objective of defense industrial cooperation, including to “develop arrangements for advanced defense science and technology collaboration.” This may appear challenging, but India has made remarkable developments in its defense industrial capabilities over the past five years. These offer little-appreciated opportunities for many of its partners, including Australia.
Beyond the NZ-India Free Trade Agreement: What Comes Next?
By Dhruva Jaishankar
A world in which freedom of navigation or energy supplies can be imperiled by the actions of others will require more international partnerships. A consolidation of relations between the governments of India and New Zealand makes eminent sense in this context. While an FTA is a welcome development, it remains just one step toward what can be a much more broad-based and mutually-beneficial partnership.
The Energy Sector is AI's Natural Home. Right Now, it's Fumbling That Edge
By Piyush Verma and Andrei Covatariu
Much of the conversation in Geneva rightly focused on managing AI's growing energy demand. That work is essential, but it is only half the story. The larger opportunity lies in how AI can reduce energy use across industry, buildings, transport and power systems, while enabling greater integration of renewable energy.
Port of Hope
By Vasabjit Banerjee
China evidently recognises the Calcutta Port System as an economic force multiplier for India’s economic power in the region. The Indian government has recently advanced several solutions, from modernisation to expansion of the port system. Yet, more needs to be done by the Indian government and private investors to strengthen the port system to ward off Chinese influence.
Debt Office Overhaul Overdue in Low-Income Countries
By Udaibir Das
Two decades of relief and reform treated debt management as a capacity problem. In a low-income country, it is statecraft; the office must stand as an institution of the state, mandated, autonomous and accountable. Reforming it and holding the sovereign and parliament accountable for outcomes means the debt cycle finally has a circuit breaker.
Recasting EU-Global South Energy Cooperation: Mutually Beneficial Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships
Who is the Governor?
By Udaibir Das
If the governor is the last port of call, choosing one is not a staffing decision. The question is no longer who is senior or who is loyal, but who can fight a fire, who can say no and whose word the market will trust at three in the morning. Independence can be hollowed without being repealed. The clause reads perfectly while the substance is gone.
Securing Critical Minerals at Scale: Multilateral Solutions for Energy, Defense, and Semiconductor Supply Chains
Systemic Sovereign Financial Risk: Re-Anchoring Sovereign Funds in the Sovereign’s Policy Mandate
By Udaibir Das
Drawing on the public sector balance sheet literature, the economics of sovereign self-insurance, and the Knightian distinction between risk and uncertainty, this paper argues that conventional sovereign asset-liability management is necessary but incomplete.
ORF Global Quarterly: Disruption and Recalibration
Edited Volume
By Rachel Rizzo, Clemens Chay, Kartik Bommakanti, Vasabjit Banerjee, Aleksei Zakharov, Soumya Bhowmick, Arya Roy Bardhan, Jhanvi Tripathi, and Samriddhi Vij
Editors: Sharon Stirling and Eszter Karacsony