India and U.S. Advance iCET, AI Governance & Defense Collaboration for a Shared Future

The Consulate General of India in New York hosted a high-level roundtable titled “From Traction to Transaction: Bridging the Gap – Co-creating the Next Era of Innovation, Investment & Global Leadership,” bringing together senior policymakers, industry leaders, and academic experts from India and the United States to advance the next phase of bilateral cooperation in emerging technologies, investment, and talent exchange.

Hosted jointly by Primus Partners and Meridian International Center, the discussions marked a decisive shift in the India–U.S. partnership—from shared intent to tangible outcomes—focused on innovation, defense collaboration, responsible AI, and cross-border investment.

Opening remarks from representatives of both nations underscored the shared vision of advancing Mission 500, which seeks to double bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. The session explored how deeper integration in clean energy, digital infrastructure, manufacturing, and defense could reshape global supply chains and unlock new investment pathways.

India U.S. Roundtable NYC

Education and talent mobility emerged as a key pillar of long-term cooperation. Leaders emphasized the creation of a strong India–U.S. knowledge corridor through enhanced student exchange, academic partnerships, and skill development initiatives aimed at strengthening the global innovation workforce.

On the frontier of AI governance, participants discussed how the two democracies could co-develop frameworks that align ethics, data sovereignty, and technology standards—positioning India and the U.S. as partners in building a transparent and secure digital future.

Conversations on the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) reaffirmed the need to move beyond policy dialogue toward joint execution in deep-tech and defense manufacturing. With momentum from agreements like GE–HAL jet engine co-production, speakers called for regulatory alignment and joint R&D ecosystems to ensure delivery-driven cooperation by 2026–2027.

Reflecting on the dialogue, Nilaya Varma, Co-Founder and CEO, Primus Partners, said:

Talk is easy. What matters is turning ideas into impact. This U.S.–India dialogue did exactly that — real conversations to drive real outcomes.

Adding her perspective, Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs, Smriti Irani, remarked, “

India and the US don’t need a handshake — they need a steel frame of trust. A partnership grounded in shared ideals and respect for each other’s strengths, free from the shadows of old hierarchies, and focused on building a future of equal purpose.

In closing, representatives from both sides highlighted that the strength of the India–U.S. partnership now lies in its ability to deliver measurable progress—driven by innovation, investment, and shared democratic values.

About Primus Partners – Primus Partners is one of India’s leading management consulting firms with operations in India, the USA, UAE, and KSA. Built on the philosophy of Idea Realisation, Primus combines strategic insights with execution excellence to deliver long-term impact.

UN Forms New AI Advisory Board; iSPIRT's Sharad Sharma and Hugging Face's Nazneen Rajani Among the Members

On Thursday, the Secretary-General at a press conference announced the creation of a new Artificial Intelligence Advisory Body on risks, opportunities and international governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) . That body will support the international community’s efforts to govern artificial intelligence.

Among the members of AI Advisory Body, two are from India — Sharad Sharma (iSPIRT) and Nazneen Rajani (Hugging Face).

Sharad Sharma is a co-founder of iSPIRT, a non-profit think tank that wants India to be a product nation. He was the CEO of Yahoo India R&D and dubbed as the architect of Indian software products ecosystem.

About Nazneen Rajani, she is a Research Lead at Hugging Face, which is building an open-source alternative to ChatGPT called H4, a powerful LLM, "aligning language models to be helpful, honest, harmless, and huggy".

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday launched this 39-member advisory body of tech company executives, government officials and academics from countries spanning 6 continents.

The panel aims to issue preliminary recommendations on AI governance by the end of the year and finalize them before the U.N. Summit of the Future next September.

The full members list are as below:

• Anna Abramova, Director of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations-University AI Centre, Russian Federation
• Omar Sultan al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence of the United Arab Emirates, United Arab Emirates
• Latifa al-Abdulkarim, Member of the Shura Council (Saudi Parliament), Assistant Professor of Computer Science at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
• Estela Aranha, Special Advisor to the Minister for Justice and Public Security, Federal Government of Brazil, Brazil
• Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence of Spain, Spain
• Ran Balicer, Chief Innovation Officer and Deputy Director General at Clalit Health Services Israel, Israel
• Paolo Benanti, Third Order Regular Franciscan, Lecturer at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Italy
• Abeba Birhane, Senior Advisor in AI Accountability at Mozilla Foundation, Ethiopia
• Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group, United States
• Anna Christmann, Aerospace Coordinator of the German Federal Government, Germany
• Natasha Crampton, Chief Responsible AI Officer at Microsoft, New Zealand
• Nighat Dad, Executive Director of the Digital Rights Foundation Pakistan, Pakistan
• Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, United States
• Virginia Dignum, Professor of Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University, Portugal/Netherlands
• Arisa Ema, Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan
• Mohamed Farahat, Legal Consultant and Vice-Chair of MAG of North Africa IGF, Egypt
• Amandeep Singh Gill, Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology
• Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom
• Rahaf Harfoush, Digital Anthropologist, France
• Hiroaki Kitano, Chief Technology Officer of Sony Group Corporation, Japan
• Haksoo Ko, Chair of Republic of Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission, Republic of Korea
• Andreas Krause, Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• James Manyika, Senior Vice-President of Google-Alphabet, President for Research, Technology and Society, Zimbabwe
• Maria Vanina Martinez Posse, Ramon and Cajal Fellow at the Artificial Research Institute, Argentina
• Seydina Moussa Ndiaye, Lecturer at Cheikh Hamidou Kane Digital University, Senegal
• Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, Albania
• Petri Myllymaki, Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science of University of Helsinki, Finland
• Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, United States
• Nazneen Rajani, Lead Researcher at Hugging Face, India
• Craig Ramlal, Head of the Control Systems Group at the University of The West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
• He Ruimin, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and Deputy Chief Digital Technology Officer, Government of Singapore, Singapore
• Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem, Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa
• Sharad Sharma, Co-founder iSPIRT Foundation, India
• Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, Netherlands
• Jaan Tallinn, Co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Estonia
• Philip Thigo, Adviser at the Government of Kenya, Kenya
• Jimena Sofia Viveros Alvarez, Chief of Staff and Head Legal Advisor to Justice Loretta Ortiz at the Mexican Supreme Court, Mexico
• Yi Zeng, Professor and Director of Brain-inspired Cognitive AI Lab, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• Zhang Linghan, Professor at the Institute of Data Law, China University of Political Science and Law, China

“The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp,” Guterres said. He pointed to possible uses including predicting crises, improving public health and education, and tackling the climate crisis.

However, the UN Secretary-General cautioned, “It is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself.”