Jacob Helberg/ Tucker Foote / USISPF

A senior U.S. official on June 29 described India as uniquely positioned to rival China in engineering talent, highlighting its growing role in the United States' technology and supply chain strategy.

Speaking at the ninth U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) Leadership Summit, Jacob Helberg, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, said, "India is especially interesting because it's not only a country with whom we have a deep values alignment, but India, obviously, is the only country on Earth that fundamentally rivals China with respect to the depth of its engineering workforce and talent pool."

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In the fireside conversation moderated by Mastercard Chief Government Affairs and Policy Officer Tucker Foote, Helberg added that India also has "a very deep mineral refining industry by ex-China standards" and a rapidly growing technology ecosystem that makes it an indispensable partner for the United States.

AI and supply chains

Helberg said India was among the early signatories to the Pax AI declaration and recalled his visit to New Delhi in February for the AI Action Summit, where the two countries announced a joint statement on AI opportunity. 

He said the Pax AI initiative has since expanded into a broader declaration adopted by 35 countries, reflecting growing international cooperation on artificial intelligence.

Describing Pax AI as a "coalition of capabilities," Helberg said the initiative is built on the idea that countries contribute their unique strengths toward a shared technology ecosystem rather than competing against one another.

"We want to seize the opportunities of the future because we see technology and AI as being a significant tailwind to the global economy," he said, adding that participating countries recognize existing supply chains have become overly concentrated geographically and must be diversified to reduce vulnerabilities and single points of failure.

Helberg said India occupies a unique position within that effort because of its engineering workforce, rapidly expanding digital economy, mineral-processing capabilities, and the scale of its domestic market.

"The reason that India is such an important partner in this endeavor is because it has so many engineers," he said. India's large and fast-growing economy, he added, provides enormous opportunities for developing new AI applications and digital services that can accelerate technology adoption globally.

On the manufacturing side, he pointed to India's growing investments in semiconductor memory fabrication and critical mineral refining, saying the United States wants to expand production capacity outside China to reduce supply-chain concentration.

"Broadly speaking, we want to increase production capacity outside of China in order to de-risk our overall overconcentration with China," he said.

At the software level, Helberg described India as "a transformative partner" in building a vibrant AI developer ecosystem, saying broader adoption of American AI platforms by Indian entrepreneurs would strengthen innovation in both countries while supporting the creation of products tailored to the Indian market.

He stressed that the United States does not view technological advancement as a zero-sum competition, arguing instead that innovation creates opportunities for all participants.

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"Our tech industry is a pie that grows," Helberg said. "We don't view it as a zero-sum game. Therefore, we are not threatened by the success of other companies in that space." 

Looking ahead, Helberg said the United States wants to work alongside India to build what he described as a shared developer ecosystem, enabling engineers and companies in both countries to create new AI applications and technologies for global markets.

"We want to promote, alongside India, what we have called a developer ecosystem," he said, describing it as the foundation of future U.S.-India technology cooperation.

Ecosystem-based approach

Responding to a question on digital sovereignty, Helberg cautioned governments against interpreting sovereignty as the need to build every layer of the technology stack domestically.

He said some countries are being encouraged to spend billions of dollars recreating technologies that already exist, a strategy he described as economically inefficient and ultimately counterproductive.

"The danger is that that concept is being weaponized," Helberg said. Countries that seek to rebuild entire technology stacks in-house, he argued, risk diverting engineering talent and financial resources away from future innovation toward replicating outdated technologies.

Instead, he advocated what he called an ecosystem-based approach, in which countries specialize in areas of comparative advantage while relying on trusted international partners for other components of the technology supply chain.

Citing the example of 5G, Helberg said the United States chose to work with trusted partners such as Ericsson and Nokia rather than recreate an American company in the sector, allowing it to focus resources on emerging technologies, including satellite communications.

"Our companies use SK Hynix memory chips. We're fine using SK Hynix memory chips," he said, arguing that collaboration among trusted partners leads to stronger innovation and greater economic resilience than technological self-sufficiency.

"We think having an ecosystem-based approach, where there is a cross-pollination of expertise, actually leads to the multiplication of success rather than the addition and will ultimately leave all of us better off," he added.

He added that the United States intends to compete through "a strategy of abundance and supply chain reliability" rather than dependence on constrained supply chains.

Discover more at New India Abroad.