Data Wars: China, Cyber Espionage, and the Global Surveillance Economy
In the 21st century, wars aren't just fought with missiles and tanks—they're waged with data. The line between espionage, surveillance, and corporate data harvesting has blurred beyond recognition. The U.S. and China, as two of the most powerful digital states, are at the center of this clash. But citizens—especially in democracies—are left exposed to vulnerabilities from both state and non-state actors. Let's explore the scope of this digital battleground.
China’s Cyber Espionage: Beyond Industrial Theft
China’s cyber strategy is multifaceted. While corporate and industrial espionage is well-documented—targeting sectors like aerospace, semiconductors, and biotechnology—Beijing’s surveillance state also reaches deeply into profiling individuals across borders.
Targeting Individuals: Chinese cyber units are known to hack personal data from government databases, educational institutions, healthcare systems, and social networks in the U.S. The 2015 OPM breach compromised data on over 21 million U.S. federal employees and contractors—an unprecedented blow.
Profiling and Influence: The aim is to build long-term psychological, political, and behavioral profiles. This can enable influence operations, blackmail, recruitment of assets, or social destabilization. Chinese apps and platforms, including TikTok, are accused of harvesting data that could potentially feed such profiling systems.
Digital Propaganda on Social Media
The Chinese government spends an estimated billions of dollars annually on information operations, with a portion focused on social media influence campaigns. These efforts are aimed at reshaping global narratives around Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and China's global rise.
Platforms like YouTube, Twitter (X), Facebook, and TikTok have been hosts—wittingly or not—to bot networks, troll farms, and fake accounts that promote pro-China content or sow discord within U.S. society.
How Many Americans Are Profiled—and Why?
It’s impossible to know the exact number, but it’s safe to assume that tens of millions of U.S. citizens have been included in foreign data sets. The objectives range from:
Long-term intelligence gathering
Blackmail potential
Voter influence and manipulation
Military recruitment insight
Academic, technological, and diplomatic targeting
China’s Cyber Army vs Global Cybercrime Networks
China’s state-backed cyber force—reportedly over 100,000 strong—includes military, civilian contractors, and elite hacker groups like APT10 and APT41. But they’re not alone.
Globally, cyber scam groups from Russia, Nigeria, North Korea, and Eastern Europe also target U.S. citizens. These actors may not be political—but they are parasitic. Romance scams, IRS impersonation, tech support scams—these ploys steal billions annually.
Seniors: The Prime Targets
Seniors are especially vulnerable. Why?
Less familiarity with digital tools
More trusting behavior online
More likely to have savings or fixed income
Often socially isolated
The results: financial loss, identity theft, and emotional devastation.
The Next Wave: 5G, 6G, and Total Profiling
With 5G and eventually 6G, the amount of data collected per person will explode—real-time biometrics, location patterns, smart home behaviors, even neural interfaces. Profiling will no longer be retroactive—it will be predictive.
Governments and companies could know what you’re going to do before you do it. And this applies globally.
What Can Be Done?
For Individuals:
Use encrypted communications
Regularly update software and devices
Limit app permissions and delete unused accounts
Educate yourself and older loved ones about scams
For Governments:
Create cyber alliances akin to NATO—international cooperation against hostile state actors
Sanction and prosecute foreign cyber criminals
Promote privacy-first digital regulations and ethical AI standards
For Big Tech:
Move beyond self-regulation
Introduce global data justice frameworks
Compensate users in the Global South for data harvested
Embrace transparency in algorithmic design and content moderation
Is the U.S. Guilty Too? The Capitalist Surveillance State
Yes, and uncomfortably so. Google, Meta, Amazon, and others have turned data into the most valuable commodity on Earth. These companies often operate with little oversight, harvesting data in the Global South to train AI models, target ads, and sell insights—without meaningful compensation or ethical review.
This "data imperialism" risks creating a digital feudal system—where the richest nations and companies reap all the rewards, while the developing world becomes a data plantation.
Conclusion: A Fork in the Road
We’re at an inflection point. As technology races forward, societies must choose between surveillance capitalism and digital democracy. Between geopolitical weaponization of data and cross-border collaboration for privacy, fairness, and truth.
If left unchecked, the tools meant to empower humanity may instead enslave it. The battle for the soul of the internet—and the dignity of individual privacy—has only just begun.
A Saner Immigration Policy: The Case for a Massive Seasonal Worker Visa Program
For decades, the American economy has quietly depended on the labor of undocumented workers—many of whom cross the southern border not to settle permanently, but simply to work. They harvest our crops, build our homes, staff our restaurants, and care for our elderly. Yet our immigration system continues to pretend that this labor demand does not exist in any legal form. It’s time to bring sanity, compassion, and economic logic back to the center of the conversation. The solution? A massive seasonal worker visa program.
The Problem We’re Ignoring
From California farms to New York construction sites, there’s a stark reality: there are not enough willing American workers to fill the jobs that undocumented laborers are currently doing. Crops rot in fields. Restaurants close early. Warehouses run short. These aren’t anecdotal events—they’re systemic failures rooted in policy denial.
Meanwhile, many migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border have no desire to become American citizens. They come because there is work. They come because there is a chance to earn and return—perhaps for nine months, perhaps for a year. The desire is not to stay forever, but to support families back home.
The Logical Solution: Seasonal Work Visas
Imagine a legal channel that acknowledges this need and structure: a seasonal worker visa program that allows millions to enter the U.S. to work temporarily, legally, and with dignity. This isn’t a radical idea. In fact, President George W. Bush proposed a similar initiative during his tenure—and he wasn’t alone. There was bipartisan support at the time. What changed? Not the economic need. Not the human migration patterns. Only the political climate.
Under such a program, applicants would need to pass background checks and be documented both by their home country and the U.S. government. The U.S. could assist in building infrastructure for secure ID systems across Mexico and Central America. This would help manage migration more effectively, increase national security, and uplift cross-border trust.
Economic Reality Check
Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—often labeled “sanctuary cities”—thrive in large part due to immigrant labor. Mass deportation of undocumented workers would do more than displace families—it would implode these local economies. Remove the invisible workforce, and the real economy shudders.
We've seen the consequences elsewhere. In one Alabama city, an anti-immigrant ordinance worsened an already existing labor shortage. Jobs remained unfilled. Businesses struggled. The short-sighted policy didn’t protect workers—it harmed everyone.
And look at Brexit: a nation that decided to restrict the very immigrant labor that powered its services and industries. The UK is now paying the economic price. America should learn from these mistakes, not repeat them.
Immigration: The Lifeblood of America
Immigration isn’t a problem to be solved—it’s a legacy to be honored and a resource to be managed smartly. From the railroads to Silicon Valley, immigrants have built, sustained, and reinvented the American economy. If we want to preserve our economic vitality, we need to legalize and facilitate the labor flow we already rely on.
A robust seasonal worker visa program is the humane, economically smart, and politically feasible path forward. It aligns with our values, meets labor demands, secures the border through legality, and affirms our commitment to lawful immigration.
If we truly want legal immigrants, then it’s time to pass the law that welcomes them. Let’s not punish ambition and labor. Let’s legalize it. Let’s structure it. And let’s benefit from it—together.
There Are Two Chinas, and America Must Understand Both The technological success that has captured the attention of many in the United States is one aspect of the Chinese economy. There’s another, gloomy one. ....... The other China — gloomy China — tells a different story: sluggish consumer spending, rising unemployment, a chronic housing crisis and a business community bracing for the impact of the trade war. ....... China’s solutions come with a lot of pain ......... Just like the United States, China is a giant country full of disparities: coastal vs. inland, north vs. south, urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, state-owned vs. private sector, Gen X vs. Gen Z.
The ruling Communist Party itself is full of contradictions. It avows socialism, but recoils from giving its citizens a strong social safety net.
.............. Despite the trade war, the Chinese tech entrepreneurs and investors I talked to over the past few weeks were more upbeat than any time in the past three years. Their hope started with DeepSeek’s breakthrough in January. Two venture capitalists told me that they planned to come out of a period of hibernation they started after Beijing’s crackdown on the tech sector in 2021. Both said they were looking to invest in Chinese A.I. applications and robotics. ............. But they are much less optimistic about the economy — the gloomy China. ........... they believed that China’s advances in tech would not be enough to pull the country out of its economic slump ........ Advanced manufacturing makes up about only 6 percent of China’s output, much smaller than real estate, which contributes about 17 percent of gross domestic product even after a sharp slowdown. .............. When I asked them whether China could beat the United States in the trade war, nobody said yes. But they all agreed that China’s pain threshold was much higher. ............. It’s not hard to understand the anxiety felt by Americans frustrated with their country’s struggles to build and manufacture. China has constructed more high-speed rail lines than the rest of the world, deployed more industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers than any country except South Korea and Singapore and now leads globally in electric vehicles, solar panels, drones and several other advanced industries. ............ China’s top-down innovation model, heavily reliant on government subsidies and investment, has proved to be both inefficient and wasteful. Much like the overbuilding in the real estate sector that triggered a crisis and erased much of Chinese household wealth, excessive industrial capacity has deepened imbalances in the economy and raised questions about the model’s sustainability, particularly if broader conditions worsen. .......... In 2018, the country had nearly 500 E.V. makers. By 2024, about 70 remained. Among the casualties was Singulato Motors, a start-up that raised $2.3 billion from investors, including local governments in three provinces. Over eight years, the company failed to deliver a single car and filed for bankruptcy in 2023. ........... The Chinese government tolerates wasteful investment in its chosen initiatives, helping fuel overcapacity. But it is reluctant to make the kind of substantial investments in rural pensions and health insurance that would help lift consumption. ........ “Technological innovation alone cannot resolve China’s structural economic imbalances or cyclical deflationary pressures” ...... “recent advances in technology may reinforce policymakers’ confidence in the current path, increasing the risk of resource and capital misallocation.” ............ The Chinese leadership’s obsession with technological self-reliance and industrial capacity is not helping its biggest challenges: unemployment, weak consumption and a reliance on exports, not to mention the housing crisis. .......... Youth unemployment is 17 percent. The real numbers are believed to be much higher. This summer alone, China’s colleges will graduate more than 12 million new job seekers. ........... Trump was not wrong in saying factories are closing and people are losing their jobs in China. ......... In 2020 Li Keqiang, then the premier, said the foreign trade sector, directly or indirectly, accounted for the employment of 180 million Chinese. “A downturn in foreign trade will almost certainly hit the job market hard,” he said at the onset of the pandemic. Tariffs could be much more devastating. ........... In April, Chinese factories experienced the sharpest monthly slowdown in more than a year while shipments to the United States plunged 21 percent from a year earlier. .......... Mr. Chen lives in the gloomy China. He stopped taking the vaunted high-speed trains because they cost five times as much as a bus. Flying is often cheaper, too. ........ many local governments, even in the wealthiest cities, are deeply in debt. ............... Because he’s in his late 30s, Mr. Chen is considered too old for most jobs. He and his wife had given up on buying a home. Now with the trade war, he expects that the economy will weaken further and that his job prospects will be dimmer. ........ “I’ve become even more cautious with spending,” he said. “I weigh every penny.”
Prompt to ChatGPT Image Generator: Generate in the style of Artist Leonid Afremov. Topic: walking in the rain.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
I do it. You just do it. Just get started. Make a walk from machine to machine. I think the trick is to not try to lift too heavy. Start light. Do some weight you can do. For a few weeks. Then increase.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
Cancer research has been accelerating and on the news with discoveries, better diagnostics and smarter treatments. It’ll take time to see it all implemented, but I’ve never been more hopeful about what’s coming.
— Peter H. Diamandis, MD (@PeterDiamandis) May 15, 2025
Is this debate time sensitive?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
Do you angel invest?
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
A lot of people that never traveled to China are shocked when they realize their entire perception of China was based on government propaganda. pic.twitter.com/F4MAhwFFoZ
Twitter for many years has been a place for polarized ideas clash, supported by algorithm that loves engagements and arguments. Its a place where commons sense and reality die. I wish I could have followed the advice from this video 5 yrs ago. pic.twitter.com/mYJy3SWIRI
For the past month I debated with many people on Twitter about Tariffs and China. I sadly learned that sentiment in this video is common for progressive left leaning Americans. CCP & Democratic party are closely aligned in their belief that Americans are lazy and cant work. https://t.co/jKCtWLhCnL
Trump strutted into the weekend tariff talks like a peacock, chest puffed, promising to drag factories back to American soil and make Uncle Sam’s economy roar. But what did we get? A pathetic wet noodle of a deal where China just tossed a few tariff cuts our way, like crumbs to a…
Trump capitulated today. China who exports very little and consumes very little from US will lower Tarrifs. And That is it. I support Trump more than Dems. But lets call a spade a spade.... pic.twitter.com/mYxKNY2fYg
(1) Used Smartphones & Electronics (2) Pre-Owned Fashion (Clothing & Accessories) (3) Used Furniture & Home Appliances (4) Pre-Owned Vehicles (Two-Wheelers & Cars) (5) Kids & Baby Products
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 16, 2025
it is amazing and exciting how much software one person is going to be able to create with tools like this.
"you can just do things" is one of my favorite memes; i didn't think it would apply to AI itself, and its users, in such an important way so soon. https://t.co/6QrZkV4oo9
Actually what is unfortunate is that with your blind lust to try to score cheap publicity points & please some people sitting across the border, you refuse to acknowledge that the IWT has been one of the biggest historic betrayals of the interests of the people of J&K. I have… https://t.co/j55YwE2r39
While our social media army is urging a boycott of Turkey, Ankara is at the heart of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations and placing itself at the centre of the multi polar new world order. Turkish drones were used by Ukraine in war but that hasn’t stopped Russia, our…
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) May 16, 2025
As someone involved in academic research on AI, it is notable to me that most of the key experiments showing the impressive abilities of AI on work, medicine, psychology, and so many other fields were done on GPT-4… a model that is now so obsolete that it is gone from ChatGPT. pic.twitter.com/kt7gatmbEB
There Are Two Chinas, and America Must Understand Both The technological success that has captured the attention of many in the United States is one aspect of the Chinese economy. There’s another, gloomy one. ....... The other China — gloomy China — tells a different story: sluggish consumer spending, rising unemployment, a chronic housing crisis and a business community bracing for the impact of the trade war. ....... China’s solutions come with a lot of pain ......... Just like the United States, China is a giant country full of disparities: coastal vs. inland, north vs. south, urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, state-owned vs. private sector, Gen X vs. Gen Z.
The ruling Communist Party itself is full of contradictions. It avows socialism, but recoils from giving its citizens a strong social safety net.
.............. Despite the trade war, the Chinese tech entrepreneurs and investors I talked to over the past few weeks were more upbeat than any time in the past three years. Their hope started with DeepSeek’s breakthrough in January. Two venture capitalists told me that they planned to come out of a period of hibernation they started after Beijing’s crackdown on the tech sector in 2021. Both said they were looking to invest in Chinese A.I. applications and robotics. ............. But they are much less optimistic about the economy — the gloomy China. ........... they believed that China’s advances in tech would not be enough to pull the country out of its economic slump ........ Advanced manufacturing makes up about only 6 percent of China’s output, much smaller than real estate, which contributes about 17 percent of gross domestic product even after a sharp slowdown. .............. When I asked them whether China could beat the United States in the trade war, nobody said yes. But they all agreed that China’s pain threshold was much higher. ............. It’s not hard to understand the anxiety felt by Americans frustrated with their country’s struggles to build and manufacture. China has constructed more high-speed rail lines than the rest of the world, deployed more industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers than any country except South Korea and Singapore and now leads globally in electric vehicles, solar panels, drones and several other advanced industries. ............ China’s top-down innovation model, heavily reliant on government subsidies and investment, has proved to be both inefficient and wasteful. Much like the overbuilding in the real estate sector that triggered a crisis and erased much of Chinese household wealth, excessive industrial capacity has deepened imbalances in the economy and raised questions about the model’s sustainability, particularly if broader conditions worsen. .......... In 2018, the country had nearly 500 E.V. makers. By 2024, about 70 remained. Among the casualties was Singulato Motors, a start-up that raised $2.3 billion from investors, including local governments in three provinces. Over eight years, the company failed to deliver a single car and filed for bankruptcy in 2023. ........... The Chinese government tolerates wasteful investment in its chosen initiatives, helping fuel overcapacity. But it is reluctant to make the kind of substantial investments in rural pensions and health insurance that would help lift consumption. ........ “Technological innovation alone cannot resolve China’s structural economic imbalances or cyclical deflationary pressures” ...... “recent advances in technology may reinforce policymakers’ confidence in the current path, increasing the risk of resource and capital misallocation.” ............ The Chinese leadership’s obsession with technological self-reliance and industrial capacity is not helping its biggest challenges: unemployment, weak consumption and a reliance on exports, not to mention the housing crisis. .......... Youth unemployment is 17 percent. The real numbers are believed to be much higher. This summer alone, China’s colleges will graduate more than 12 million new job seekers. ........... Trump was not wrong in saying factories are closing and people are losing their jobs in China. ......... In 2020 Li Keqiang, then the premier, said the foreign trade sector, directly or indirectly, accounted for the employment of 180 million Chinese. “A downturn in foreign trade will almost certainly hit the job market hard,” he said at the onset of the pandemic. Tariffs could be much more devastating. ........... In April, Chinese factories experienced the sharpest monthly slowdown in more than a year while shipments to the United States plunged 21 percent from a year earlier. .......... Mr. Chen lives in the gloomy China. He stopped taking the vaunted high-speed trains because they cost five times as much as a bus. Flying is often cheaper, too. ........ many local governments, even in the wealthiest cities, are deeply in debt. ............... Because he’s in his late 30s, Mr. Chen is considered too old for most jobs. He and his wife had given up on buying a home. Now with the trade war, he expects that the economy will weaken further and that his job prospects will be dimmer. ........ “I’ve become even more cautious with spending,” he said. “I weigh every penny.”
........... Onshoring or relocation of manufacturing to a home country is a very complex decision for companies. It is based on the costs of doing business in different countries; tariff and non-tariff barriers of doing business; proximity of production to markets; availability and cost of resources such as raw materials, finance and labor; and companies’ long-term strategies. ......... Onshoring decision analysis itself takes months if not years, and must be cleared by multiple levels within organizations, and by country regulatory agencies at local and national levels. ........ reshoring to America will require investments in land, buildings, equipment and workforces within the U.S. Higher costs on these was a major reason why offshoring occurred in the first place. Costs of all these factors of production have escalated over the past few decades. With under 17 percent of the U.S. economy in the manufacturing sector, some of these factors, and a manufacturing ecosystem, are simply no longer available in America. .......... Reshoring would also require rebuilding the supply chain. Global supply chains are complex and multi-leveled. There are many layers of suppliers based in different countries with different tariff rates. Large companies have thousands of suppliers. Renegotiating contracts can take months or even years. Higher tariffs will increase the cost of supplies from even home-based suppliers, if those suppliers are using imported goods. ........... A third complexity that companies cannot necessarily trust that the current Trump tariffs will remain stable for long enough to match corporate calculations for return on investment. Large-scale investments involved in moving manufacturing across nations run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. These sunk costs take upwards of 10 years to recoup. .......... Trump’s flip-flopping on tariff rates, application dates, delays and reversals in his first administration — and his current attitude that countries can individually negotiate lower tariff deals with him — presents no guarantee of stability. Instead, it injects enormous uncertainty into the decision for any corporate board to accept. Shareholders would likely sue corporate boards that approve such uncertain investments. ..........
the hope that tariffs will lead to onshoring of manufacturing to the U.S. is a fantasy.
......... What can companies to do to minimize the disruption from these tariffs? There are many variations of onshoring that they can consider — re-shoring, friend-shoring, partial onshoring. Companies can re-shore from a present location to a lower-tariffed nation in their current vicinity. They can move to tariff-advantaged friendlier shores. ..... the most likely response for now is for companies to continue rationalizing and diversifying their supply chains.
Trump's tariff strategy can work but America still needs deeper economic reform President Donald Trump’s tariff diplomacy has been a shock treatment to the global economic order, intended as a kind of radiation and chemotherapy to kill the cancer that created the Rust Belt. But overdoing the treatment can kill the patient instead, without removing the carcinogens in the economy. Fortunately, the administration’s negotiators have called a truce, and we can reevaluate the treatment’s effectiveness. .......... President Trump has also used the threat of tariffs very effectively to help secure America’s southern border and stem the flow of fentanyl, which had become the number-one killer of young people. .......... the drama around tariffs has had side effects, like chemotherapy killing off healthy cells in the body. This collateral damage could be found in survey data from the regional Federal Reserve Banks and purchasing manager indexes, all of which pointed to sharp declines in business optimism and planned capital expenditures. ........ the on-again-off-again nature of these tariffs has made it extraordinarily difficult for businesses and consumers to plan. There has also been substantial turbulence in Treasury markets, gold prices, and equities. ........ Just throwing tariffs at the problem is like undergoing chemotherapy and radiation without any lifestyle changes. Imagine enduring all the painful side effects of such treatments while smoking cigarettes, maintaining a poor diet, avoiding exercise, and exposing yourself to asbestos and too much sunlight—that’s the equivalent of what’s happening today!........ the regulatory compliance cost for manufacturers in America is about $50,000 to $60,000 per worker, and then there’s a tax burden on top of that. Reducing trade abuses is insufficient to reform the domestic policies which have made American workers unemployable in many industries.
The real breakthrough in U.S.–China trade talks is much bigger than just tariffs Quietly, Washington and Beijing agreed to establish a formal "trade consultation mechanism," a permanent bilateral platform to hold structured talks on currency policies, market access, and non-tariff barriers. While bureaucratic in tone, this institutional move may prove to be the most consequential economic shift in years. ......... The U.S.–China imbalance isn’t simply a matter of bad trade deals or American overconsumption. It’s a structural problem embedded in the international monetary framework, and for the first time in a generation, both countries appear ready to talk about it seriously. ........... This deeper imbalance is something Stephen Miran—who now serves as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers—laid out in extraordinary detail in a 41-page report published in November 2024. Titled "A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System," the paper explains how the current dollar-centric model locks the United States into persistent trade deficits while encouraging surplus economies like China to underconsume and overproduce. These excess savings are then recycled into U.S. financial assets, particularly Treasuries, which props up the dollar and erodes American manufacturing. ......... The result? A lopsided economic order where the U.S. acts as consumer of last resort and global debtor-in-chief, while countries like China flood the world with goods but face chronic domestic stagnation. .......... a "Triffin World," referencing economist Robert Triffin’s famous dilemma: When a national currency is also a global reserve, it eventually becomes impossible to balance domestic and international obligations. To satisfy global demand for safe assets, the U.S. must run deficits, which hollow out its own economy. Meanwhile, surplus nations avoid necessary reforms at home because the system rewards their export-heavy models. ........... What Miran proposes is a structural recalibration—realigning currency values to reflect underlying economic conditions, discouraging excessive reserve accumulation, and encouraging more balanced capital flows. ............. The fact that this new U.S.–China mechanism explicitly includes discussions on currency and non-tariff measures suggests that Miran’s framework is already influencing policy. This is more than a détente—it’s the first real move to unwind Bretton Woods II. ..........
Could it be deliberate? As in, a decision that more people should see it? Just like you open up Twitter and the first thing you see is an Elon Musk tweet.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 15, 2025
For 40 years, we’ve believed the best technology is built with accessibility in mind.
We’re proud to share new accessibility features to help more people navigate the world, express themselves, and stay connected. #GAADhttps://t.co/W6YW81e962
First and foremost, I want to thank President @RTErdogan for organizing the opportunity for direct negotiations – that was exactly the signal we had received. The Ukrainian side confirmed its readiness, and today, we are here in the capital, in Ankara.
But I'd still make an argument for a Wikipedia killer, a Khan Academy disruptor (note: I am fans of both). There is still massive room to present well. What AI generates is like accessing a database.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 15, 2025
If the US Is Serious About the China Trade War, It Must Bet Big on India
As tensions between the United States and China escalate in the realm of global trade, there is one strategic pivot that remains underleveraged: India. If Washington is truly serious about reshaping global supply chains and reducing dependency on Beijing, it must aggressively pursue a $500 billion trade relationship with India and catalyze a historic wave of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the world’s largest democracy.
Why India?
India is not just an alternative to China—it is a democratic, youthful, and rapidly digitizing powerhouse with untapped potential. With over 1.4 billion people and a growing middle class, it offers both a massive consumer market and a deep labor pool. But potential doesn’t realize itself. A partnership of this scale demands that both sides rise to the occasion.
What the U.S. Must Do
For starters, the U.S. must elevate trade with India from opportunistic engagement to strategic priority. This means:
Fast-tracking trade agreements that reduce tariffs and ease market access for both Indian and American companies.
Deploying strategic FDI into Indian manufacturing, especially in semiconductors, green energy, EVs, and AI hardware.
Offering policy advisory and tech transfer to support India’s transition into high-tech industrial production.
Just as the U.S. once helped rebuild post-war Europe and later facilitated China's rise through WTO inclusion and investment, it can now architect India’s ascent—this time, within a rules-based democratic framework.
What India Must Do
India, on its part, must accelerate internal reforms to meet the moment:
Ease of Doing Business must become more than a slogan—it must be the national mission. Streamlined regulations, reduced red tape, and faster contract enforcement are non-negotiables.
Investments in health, education, and infrastructure need to scale dramatically. Without a healthy, skilled workforce and efficient logistics, India can’t compete at China’s scale.
The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor must become the template for industrial excellence, integrating smart cities, rail, roads, and ports into a seamless manufacturing ecosystem.
The Modi government’s Production Linked Incentives (PLI) are a step in the right direction, but without parallel investment in human capital and basic services, these incentives won’t translate into global competitiveness.
A Defining Decade
The next 10 years will determine whether the global economy remains entangled in Beijing’s web or shifts toward a multipolar, democratic industrial base. A $500B India-US trade corridor is more than numbers—it’s a geopolitical bet on open societies, democratic collaboration, and resilient global supply chains.
If the U.S. and India act with vision and urgency, they can together reshape the architecture of 21st-century trade—and ensure that the rules of commerce are written not in autocracies, but in the open halls of democracies.
