India and the UK firmed up a landmark ‘Technology Security Initiative’ that sets out a bold new approach for collaboration in a range of priority sectors, with a broader aim to elevate their strategic partnership to the next level.

The decision on the UK-India Technology Security Initiative was made public following wide-ranging talks between Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar and his British counterpart David Lammy in New Delhi.

UK-India Technology Security Initiative

• Technology Security Initiative (TSI) aims to elevate the Strategic Partnership  between the two countries to the next level. 

• The TSI builds upon the ambitious bilateral cooperation agenda set out in the India-UK Roadmap 2030, and will bring into sharper focus collaboration in critical and emerging technologies (CET) across priority sectors. 

• It will reinforce existing collaborative efforts in various technologies, broaden the mandates of existing mechanisms, and establish new mechanisms for cooperation.

• The TSI will be coordinated by the National Security Advisers (NSAs) of both countries through existing and new dialogues. The NSAs will set the priority areas and identify interdependencies for cooperation on critical and emerging tech that will, in turn, help build meaningful technology value chain partnerships between our two countries. 

• The progress made on the initiative will be reviewed on a half yearly basis at Deputy NSA level. Both sides  will also set up a bilateral mechanism led by India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the UK government for promotion of trade in critical and emerging technologies, including resolution of relevant licensing or regulatory issues.

• Both countries view TSI as a platform and a strong signal of intent to build and grow sustainable and tangible partnerships across priority tech sectors.

• To expand and deepen technology security partnership, the UK and India will launch new bilateral initiatives and accelerate bilateral cooperation between all relevant stakeholders within government, technology and research centres, industry and academia, across the following domains:

1) Telecoms

The UK and India will build a new and enhanced Future Telecoms Partnership in order to:

• Collaborate on joint research on future telecoms, focussed on Open RAN systems, testbed linkups, telecoms security, spectrum innovation, software and systems architecture.

• Launch a partnership between UK’s SONIC Labs (a joint programme between the Digital Catapult and Ofcom), India’s Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and DOT’s Telecoms Startup Mission. This will aim to boost security, resilience and performance of telecom networks and development of totally disaggregated Open RAN, including through collaboration on approaches to testing and development of products and solutions.

• Encourage pilot projects by Indian and UK companies in each other’s 4G/5G/6G stack and enterprise connectivity, connected devices, edge computing and adoption of green and sustainable telecommunications and their scale up in both countries.

2) Critical Minerals

• Both countries will expand our critical minerals collaboration, driving forward policy exchanges on both countries’ critical mineral strategies, working together to improve supply chain resilience, exploring possible research and development and technology partnerships along the complete critical minerals value chain (including exploration, processing and manufacturing), and sharing best practices on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. 

• Develop collaboration between the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Geological Survey of India (GSI), along with IREL (India) Limited. 

3) Semiconductors

• Both sides will work towards a broad UK-India semiconductor partnership.

• The partnership will seek opportunities for facilitating trade missions between UK and Indian semiconductor companies to boost trade and investment flows.

4) Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Together, the UK and India will work towards safe, responsible, human-centric and trustworthy AI, which can promote global good and strengthen interoperability between our AI governance frameworks. 

5) Quantum

• The UK and India recognise that quantum is an important area for discussion. Both sides will respond to the rapidly changing technological landscape by establishing a high-level dialogue to gain an in-depth understanding of our national quantum strategies, to shape the contours of possible future research and industry and collaboration opportunities between our two countries.

6) Biotechnology and HealthTech

• The UK and India will strengthen biotechnology cooperation. Both sides will launch a high-level partnership on engineering biology, with the aim of sharing knowledge to help facilitate research advances. 

• This partnership will strengthen biotechnology cooperation. This will include genomics, genomic prediction and precision medicine, cell and gene therapy, biotherapeutics (including bio-manufacturing), smart bio-sensors and bio-electronics, biomaterials and bio-fabrication in line with respective ethical and legal frameworks and requirements of both countries.

7) Advanced Materials

• The UK and India will establish a high-level dialogue on advanced materials, to identify specific R&D collaboration on materials/composites and collaboration on research, responsible innovation and standards in Advanced Materials.

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