ORF America Comments

Behind the Billions: Understanding the AI Infrastructure Buildout

Behind the Billions: Understanding the AI Infrastructure Buildout

By Andreas Kuehn and Tara Chawla

The AI buildout is not simply a race for more advanced accelerators, but an infrastructure-centered contest to turn technology, energy, and capital into usable computing capacity. The decisive measure will not be announced spending or planned capacity, but how quickly those commitments become reliable, operational computing capacity.

Quantum Codebreaking Moves One Step Forward

Quantum Codebreaking Moves One Step Forward

By Prateek Tripathi

Though the field of quantum computing is not mature enough to provide remarkable practical applications at the moment, recent developments serve to exemplify the asymmetric nature of quantum technology development and how multiple incremental advancements can potentially lead to overall progress.

Power Up: How Spintronic Nanodevices Can Fuel the Future

Power Up: How Spintronic Nanodevices Can Fuel the Future

By Amoha Basrur and Pranoy Jainendran

With applications already spanning the automotive, aerospace, and data-centre sectors, spintronics has become a strategic priority for countries with the manufacturing capacity to compete for it, driving targeted R&D funding, national roadmaps, and industry partnerships aimed at securing technological leadership and supply chain resilience.

Global AI: A Story of Fragmentation

Global AI: A Story of Fragmentation

By Siddharth Yadav

Global corporate AI investment reached US$581.7 billion in 2025, more than double the previous year’s total, with most of it flowing to the economies that already dominate research and hardware. Economies with nascent domestic digital infrastructure, investment vehicles, research ecosystems, and governance frameworks risk being marginalized by the AI-driven future.

Who Will Pay for Climate Action Now?

Who Will Pay for Climate Action Now?

By Gopalika Arora

The retrenchment of finance is not merely a result of a temporary slowdown in climate finance commitments by the developed countries. It may also signal a deeper restructuring of the climate finance architecture driven by changing institutional priorities within the multilateral system that was expected to anchor the transition.

Choke Points: How Security and Politics are Impacting Supply Chains

Choke Points: How Security and Politics are Impacting Supply Chains

By Parul Bakshi and Lydia Powell

Over the past decade, three structural shifts have been reordering global energy trade, encompassing not only traditional oil and gas flows but also the rapidly growing cross-border trade in electricity and clean energy goods.

Ten Fault Lines That Will Define the Global Energy Transition

Ten Fault Lines That Will Define the Global Energy Transition

By Piyush Verma

For the Global South, the stakes are particularly high: the energy transition could unlock industrialization, resilience, and strategic bargaining power, but it could also reproduce older patterns of dependency through new technologies, standards, minerals, and financial asymmetries.

Building AI into the Energy Future

Building AI into the Energy Future

By Andreas Kuehn and Cauvery Ganapathy

While the integration of AI offers benefits for the optimization of energy systems through grid management, renewable energy integration, predictive maintenance, and accurate forecasting of alternative forms of energy, its energy-intensive nature could also negatively impact the countries and ecosystems seeking to adopt it.

How the UAE’s Exit from OPEC Exposes the New Realities of Energy Diplomacy

How the UAE’s Exit from OPEC Exposes the New Realities of Energy Diplomacy

By Medha Prasanna

The oil age will not end because the world runs out of oil, but because oil reserves stop being worth pumping. The UAE has moved fast, not as just a knee-jerk reaction to the conflict in the region, but as a strategic divergence.

As South America Shifts Right, Environmental Concerns Take a Back Seat

As South America Shifts Right, Environmental Concerns Take a Back Seat

By Andre Nicola

Across South America, governments are increasingly framing environmental regulation as a constraint on growth, investment, and national competitiveness. South America's political direction over the next several years will be an early test of whether economic development can be reconciled with environmental stewardship throughout the region.

Brains Over Brawn: A Smarter Approach to the AI Buildout

Brains Over Brawn: A Smarter Approach to the AI Buildout

By Uma Vatsa and Shailesh Mishra

The AI industry is making large, long-lived bets on future demand, even as the technology itself is becoming more efficient. If AI systems become cheaper to run, more efficient to train, or less dependent on massively centralized compute, some of today’s infrastructure may prove oversized, poorly located, or economically fragile.

Demystifying the India-U.S. Trade Negotiations

Demystifying the India-U.S. Trade Negotiations

By Ashita Jain

The proposed India-U.S. trade deal discussions are distinct from traditional FTA negotiations, for they resemble a strategic economic partnership being negotiated under tariff pressure and in pursuit of an increasingly elusive sense of predictability for Indian exporters.

Challenges to Implementing the U.S.-Iran MoU

Challenges to Implementing the U.S.-Iran MoU

By Samriddhi Vij, Akram Zaoui, and Mahdi Ghuloom

In the early hours of June 15, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed an announcement by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that a peace deal between the United States and Iran had been reached, iterating that both sides had declared “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” ORF Middle East experts offer their quick takes.

Overcoming Hurdles in U.S.-India AI Infrastructure Cooperation

Overcoming Hurdles in U.S.-India AI Infrastructure Cooperation

By Dhruva Jaishankar and Jeffrey D. Bean

Earlier this month, India was among the first countries to receive expanded access to Anthropic's Claude Mythos large language model, but the White House decision to block all foreign access to Anthropic’s new Mythos and Fable models via export control elevates concerns regarding reliability of U.S. partnership and AI dependency. 

The EU’s Green Industrial Policy Goes on the Defensive with Industrial Accelerator Act

The EU’s Green Industrial Policy Goes on the Defensive with Industrial Accelerator Act

By Sarah Salah

As the IAA continues to undergo amendments, its ultimate success will hinge on careful calibration. The EU will need to preserve channels for strategic foreign investment, especially in capital-intensive sectors where domestic capacity alone may fall short. If the Act is overly complex or restrictive, it risks deterring the very investment it seeks to shape.

How the United States and India Can Overcome the Sovereign Compute Trap in AI

How the United States and India Can Overcome the Sovereign Compute Trap in AI

By Rohan Sharma

The United States’ and India’s commitments are clear: pro-innovation regulation, joint next-generation data centers, and cooperation on advanced compute. But agreements do not operationalize themselves. What is needed is not another forum, but an interface. A jointly staffed mechanism, anchored in implementation agencies, becomes the only viable bridge.