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By:

Rajiv Shah

22 September 2025 at 8:32:23 pm

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger...

New Alliances, New Pressures, New Fault Lines

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger geopolitical churn in which alliances, energy, trade, currencies and economic coercion are becoming interconnected. India finds itself almost at its centre. The emerging Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan security equation deserves particular attention. Saudi Arabia brings enormous financial and energy influence; Türkiye possesses considerable military strength, NATO experience and an expanding defence industry; Pakistan brings a large military establishment and nuclear capability with the open support of Washington. Any arrangement containing a collective-defence commitment naturally acquires significance beyond ordinary diplomatic cooperation. Alongside it, another strategic convergence has gradually developed among India, Israel and the UAE. It would be incorrect to describe this as a formal military alliance. Yet geopolitics does not operate through defence treaties alone. India's extensive defence and technology relationship with Israel, its rapidly expanding economic and strategic partnership with the UAE, and the UAE-Israel relationship following the Abraham Accords have created considerable common ground. I2U2—bringing together India, Israel, the UAE and the United States—added another institutional dimension. Thus, without necessarily becoming opposing military camps, two interesting strategic formations are visible across West Asia: Saudi Arabia–Türkiye–Pakistan and the looser India–UAE–Israel convergence. Balancing Challenge India faces a similar balancing challenge. The Gulf is not a distant geopolitical theatre for New Delhi. Nearly nine million Indians live and work there. India's energy security, investments, trade and remittance flows are closely connected with the region. The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor also requires relative stability across this geography. Polarisation in West Asia can therefore rapidly become an Indian economic and strategic problem. There is another question Indian planners cannot ignore. If a future India-Pakistan confrontation escalates, how would any collective-defence commitment involving Pakistan be interpreted by Saudi Arabia and Türkiye? It would be alarmist to assume that either country would automatically enter a conflict against India. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has substantial economic and strategic interests in maintaining good relations with New Delhi. Nevertheless, defence planners are paid to examine possibilities before they become crises. While these equations develop in India's neighbourhood, economic pressure is emerging from Washington. The US Senate has voted 86–11 for legislation intended to increase pressure on Russia by targeting major purchasers of Russian energy. The measure could authorise tariffs reaching 100 per cent against goods from countries continuing large-scale purchases of Russian oil and gas, with India among those potentially exposed. China is powerful enough to shrug off similar challenges from the West." However this does not mean that America has already imposed a 100 per cent tariff on India. Further legislative steps remain necessary, and presidential waiver provisions are important. But the overwhelming Senate vote carries a political message that New Delhi cannot dismiss. Tariffs are no longer merely tools of trade protection; they have become instruments of geopolitical coercion. Washington's argument is understandable: revenues from Russian petroleum help sustain Moscow's economy during the Ukraine war, and reducing those revenues increases pressure on Russia. But in that case what about European countries who too were/are customers of Russian oil? India's question is equally legitimate: who should determine where India purchases the energy required by more than 1.4 billion people? If Russian crude remains commercially advantageous and helps contain domestic energy costs, New Delhi cannot reasonably be expected to make every energy decision according to another country's geopolitical priorities. Strategic partnership cannot become strategic obedience. This is where BRICS enters the larger picture. India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and will host its leaders at an unusually sensitive moment. BRICS is no longer merely the original grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its expansion has considerably increased its demographic, energy and geopolitical weight. More importantly, discussions around BRICS increasingly touch a sensitive nerve in Washington: alternative payment mechanisms, local-currency trade, development finance and the possibility of gradually reducing dependence upon the dollar-dominated international financial system. The BRICS Summit this time is poised to take some decisive steps which may affect western interests especially US. (The writer is an advocate, legal, geopolitical and public policy analyst. Views personal.)

China’s Propaganda Tool Disguised as AI Innovation

Updated: Feb 3, 2025

AI Innovation

Until recently, Liang Wenfeng was a name virtually unknown. His meteoric rise from the world of hedge funds to one of the most talked-about names in artificial intelligence has dramatically captured the attention of the global tech elite. As the founder of DeepSeek, China’s latest and most ambitious large language model (LLM), Liang has positioned himself at the forefront of Beijing’s push for AI self-sufficiency. DeepSeek is being hailed as China’s answer to OpenAI’s GPT-4, a model that could rival, or even surpass, its Western counterparts. Yet beneath the technological prowess lies the troubling reality that DeepSeek is not just an AI breakthrough but an extension of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda machine.


In the late 2010s, Liang co-founded a hedge fund that leveraged artificial-intelligence models to deliver impressive returns. His firm attracted billions of dollars, marking him as a shrewd investor and strategist in China’s fast-paced financial world. Despite the fund’s success, Liang was not immune to the shifting tides of Chinese regulation. He made a bold move by investing heavily in A.I., particularly in A.I. chips, and assembling a team with a singular mission to build China’s answer to Silicon Valley’s OpenAI.


Liang’s journey also mirrors the seismic shifts in China’s technology landscape over the past decade. His 2010 thesis at Zhejiang University focused on a subject that would later dominate the A.I. discourse in China: improving tracking algorithms for surveillance cameras. That early work would foreshadow a career increasingly centered around artificial intelligence, but it was his decision to seize the moment in 2023 in turning his focus to A.I. chips and generative models that may yet define him as one of China’s foremost tech pioneers.


From its inception, DeepSeek was designed to align with the CCP’s strict information controls. Unlike Western AI models, which, despite their own moderation policies, still allow room for open discourse, DeepSeek operates under Beijing’s censorship regime. It refuses to acknowledge politically sensitive events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, parrots the state’s position on Taiwan and Tibet as inseparable parts of China, downplays human rights abuses in Xinjiang while questions on Indo-China border problems. This is not a mere byproduct of training data selection but a deliberate function of its design. Liang’s company, deeply embedded in China’s state-directed AI ecosystem, has ensured that DeepSeek is programmed to reinforce official narratives rather than challenge them.


For the CCP, DeepSeek is a powerful new tool in its long-running effort to control public discourse. Traditional censorship methods rely on human moderators and automated keyword filtering, but AI offers a more sophisticated approach. DeepSeek does not simply delete unwanted content; it rewrites history, repackaging state propaganda as AI-generated analysis. The technology can be deployed across state media, social platforms and even education systems, shaping public opinion at scale.


Despite its role as a digital enforcer of state ideology, DeepSeek is no technological backwater. By some metrics, it surpasses Western models in Mandarin-language comprehension, mathematical problem-solving, and industry-specific applications. Chinese companies have been quick to adopt it for enterprise solutions, from customer service bots to automated content moderation. More troublingly, the model is expected to integrate with China’s vast surveillance apparatus, enhancing its ability to monitor and suppress dissent in real time.


Western sanctions have restricted Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductor technology, forcing the country to develop its own AI ecosystem. Liang Wenfeng and his team have managed to train a state-of-the-art LLM despite these constraints, marking a significant step forward for China’s technological ambitions. However, this very success highlights a core contradiction in China’s AI strategy. While DeepSeek is technically advanced, it operates in an environment where knowledge is artificially constrained. AI models thrive on open data and diverse perspectives, yet DeepSeek is deliberately starved of both.


Unlike Huawei’s hardware, which found markets in developing countries, an AI model must be trusted to provide unbiased, accurate information. The model’s limited access to uncensored information presents long-term challenges. DeepSeek will struggle to match the broad capabilities of its Western rivals if it is forced to ignore politically inconvenient facts. True AI innovation requires openness, collaboration, and a willingness to challenge existing ideas - qualities that are incompatible with the CCP’s rigid ideological framework.

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