Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Quick notes: What's in the Report-to-Congress?

US panel’s report claims Pakistan’s "success" over India in May 7-10 clash. PDF link
Pakistan’s military "success" over India in its four-day clash showcased Chinese weaponry. While characterization of this conflict as a “proxy war” may overstate China’s role as an instigator, Beijing opportunistically leveraged the conflict to test and advertise the sophistication of its weapons, useful in the contexts of its ongoing border tensions with India and its expanding defense industry goals.

As Pakistan’s largest defense supplier, China provided approximately 82 percent of the country’s arms imports from 2019 to 2023.204 This clash was the first time China’s modern weapons systems, including the HQ-9 air defense system, PL-15 air-to-air missiles, and J-10 fighter aircraft were used in active combat, serving as a real-world field experiment.205 China reportedly offered to sell 40 J-35 fifth-generation fighter jets, KJ-500 aircraft, and ballistic missile defense systems to Pakistan in June 2025.206 That same month, Pakistan announced a 20 percent increase in its 2025–2026 defense budget, raising planned expenditures to $9 billion despite an overall budget decrease.

In the weeks after the conflict, Chinese embassies hailed the successes of its systems in the India-Pakistan clash, seeking to bolster weapons sales. Pakistan’s use of Chinese weapons to down French Rafale fighter jets used by India also became a particular selling point for Chinese Embassy defense sales efforts despite the fact that only three jets flown by India’s military were reportedly downed and all may not have been Rafales.

According to French intelligence, China initiated a disinformation campaign to hinder sales of French Rafales in favor of its own J-35s, and it used fake social media accounts to propagate AI and video game images of supposed “debris” from the planes China’s weaponry destroyed. Chinese Embassy officials convinced Indonesia to halt a purchase of Rafale jets already in process, furthering China’s inroads into other regional actors’ military procurements.

China Opportunistically Used Pakistan’s Military Crisis to Test and Promote Its Own Defense Capabilities

The Indian Army claimed China helped Pakistan with “live inputs” on Indian military positions throughout the crisis and effectively used the conflict as a testing ground for its own military capabilities.



The Jeruselam post: How Pakistan shot down India's cutting-edge fighter using Chinese gear

Prof Bharat Karnad: In retrospect, Modi made the gravest strategic error by calling the White House after the Indian missiles had been fired at the terrorist facilities in Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7 to inform the US President that the Indian strikes were limited retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre.

Modi was telling him nothing he did not already know. But the act of Modi telling him is what marked India out in the pecking order as a subsidiary power trying to preempt Trump from lashing out. It did not work.

Not sure why Modi feels it imperative to please the US President, when Trump insults and humiliates in return. Because going strictly by his transactionalist tilt, it is Trump’s America that will be hard put strategically to replace India in the Indo-Pacific, to economically find a market as vast as India’s to sell to.


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Sunday, November 9, 2025

Quick notes: Anti-India hate | AfPak tensions...

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Saturday, November 8, 2025

Quick notes: Dimmer skies | Stock valuations...

  • Bye-Bye Blue Skies: India is getting dimmer. Sunshine hours have been steadily declining across most regions for the past three decades. Aerosols from sources like vehicles and industries block sunlight — a phenomenon scientists call “solar dimming”. The consequences include reduced solar power output and reduced agriculture yields apart from health impact.



  • "India is the dumbest IPO market" "The millions and billions of small investors coming in. Someone has to extract money from them, so these IPOs come and take money from you".


  • The world’s most expensive stock market: In terms of Shiller P/E (a long-term measure of valuation that uses 10-year earnings figures), India is the most expensive equity market in the world, surpassing even the US. . . Buffett Indicator.


  • Incentive wars: Why walking away can be wiser. Karnataka’s refusal to outbid Andhra Pradesh for Google’s $15 billion AI data centre may seem like a loss, but in game theory – and governance – wisdom often lies in knowing when not to play. Around the world, multinational firms have mastered the art of triggering incentive wars between governments, extracting concessions that can erode public value. . . . The Hidden Cost of Google’s $15 Billion AI Data Center in Vizag.


  • China gets Swadeshi: China bans foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers.


  • "India is just screwing the parts together": Are we truly manufacturing, or just assembling parts? We destroyed our electronics industry and turned to a 100% importing nation. The real state of ‘Make in India’.



  • Showing spine: Vietnam Is Building Islands to Challenge China’s Hold on a Vital Waterway


  • Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math".


  • Indian students in the US: Parents burn fortunes, US gains skills, India loses both capital & talent.
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Saturday, October 18, 2025

Quick notes: GM corn | Whites-only...

  • Arm-twisted: US trade talks may be cracking India’s opposition to GM crops. Concessions offered by the Indian trade team already included the possible easing of some restrictions on the import of GM corn. “GM is a life and death issue for Indian farmers.”... are we Trump's dumpyard?


  • ‘It could feed the world’: Amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization.. The Spanish believed that amaranth was a satanic food of natives. 1521: Spanish conquistadors ban amaranth cultivation under penalty of having hands severed, destroying temples where 200,000 people annually consumed tzoalli (amaranth-honey statues) during ceremonies. . . Rajgira could be game-changer for Indian farmer.



  • White Right-wingers Only: Trump considers overhaul of refugee system that would favor white people. Importing white South Africans and European Nazis.


  • Trump immigration plan may wipe out 15M jobs by 2035: Fewer workers in the labor force could have dramatic effects on the U.S. economy, from lower economic growth to reductions in the nation's goods and services produced.


  • Soft on Beijing: Trump has purged the National Security Council of many advisers who advocated a tougher line toward China and diminished the role of the council. China hawks grow queasy over Trump’s push for deals with Beijing.


  • 'DOGE was all about collecting data for Musk's Grok': Tariffs are way up. Interest on debt tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE didn’t do much.


  • Japanese Monster: Shohei Ohtani’s historic performance sends LA back to World Series.



  • How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs. Unlike India's history debate clubs


  • GOP's true colors: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat. “Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers”. ‘I love Hitler’


  • Trump Organization Expands in India: Where Many of Its Partners Face Accusations


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Sunday, October 12, 2025

Death blow to Indian defence industry

  • Prof Bharat Karnad: Modi’s atmnirbharta policies are cementing India’s reputation as a classic sucker.

    “In a move that could severely undercut India’s domestic defence industry, the Modi govt is considering allowing wholly owned local subsidiaries of foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to qualify as ‘Indian vendors’ in defence procurement. This long-pending demand of multinational arms makers threatens to hand the lucrative defence market to global giants while sidelining homegrown firms.”

    That Modi cannot distinguish between “Made in India” — where the entire weapon system is designed, developed, and produced in the country, and “Make in India” where any foreign goods can be imported in disaggregated kit-form and screw-drivered, was pointed out by me when the PM first started talking about atmnirbharta. 11 years later we know what that means.

    Modi publicly disclosed what he meant by atm nirbhar — his “Make in India” policy, he said, involves “Indian toil”. So, for the PM it is enough that Indians employed in these Indian factories of foreign arms companies, being set up here in the hope of getting the exact bonanza they are getting now, will be screwdrivering vintage second rate military hardware. But, this policy wrinkle will simplify procurement by bypassing the “jhanjat” of tech transfer. Welcome to India — the dumping ground for antique Western weaponry!

    But this development seems in the mainstream of the Modi government’s recent initiatives that see nothing wrong in signing Free Trade Agreements left and right drawn up by that shortsighted commerce minister, Piyush Goel, and his bunch of babus, with provisions in them to permit British and European companies to bid for all Indian govt procurement contracts at the central, state and local levels worth $750 billion annually, which will void the Indian industry.

    There are other provisions in them that will bar Indian entities from demanding the transfer of source codes as part of sales deals to enable the re-engineering, say, of weapons and other systems for retrofitment on imported hardware and weapons platforms, to fit India’s needs and requirements.

    Hence, Dassault Avions’ refusal to part with source codes for the Rafale aircraft means that DRDO cannot integrate Indian designed and produced missiles and ordnance into the IAF Rafales. And even for the most minor modifications the IAF will have to go to the French company — an endless revenue stream for Dassult! Apparently Paris had alerted the French defence industry to New Delhi’s agreeing to such provisions in the soon to be formalised FTA with EU (and also with the UK and the US).



  • India and China, a study in contrast: MNCs forced to do JV with locals in return for market access is at the heart of China model. In India, not only do we surrender our markets to MNCs, we also put up with their transfer pricing/royalty shenanigans


  • IAF and the French Defence industry: Recently, we learnt from defence minister Rajnath Singh that the French jet engine maker, Safran would help India design and develop its own jet engine — no, not by building on the Kaveri 35VS engine that produced 81 kiloNewtons (kN) of thrust in a dry test — which, incidentally, is some 9kN more than the 73kN thrust developed by the engines on the Rafales flying with the IAF currently. And, notwithstanding some Rupees 20 BILLION the country has sunk into the Kaveri project, including setting up the impressive jet engine facility at the GTRE, Bengaluru. But rather by forking over $10 BILLION to Safran for passing off the Snecma M88-4 engine with some tinkering, as some new fangled power plant for the Tejas 1A and Mk2.

    Except, the M88 is a design product of the 1970s, that is, it is an over 50 year OLD jet engine!

    The defence minister very proudly declared that the indigenous twin-engined advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) would be powered by this engine. Sure its power is going to be increased to 120kN but on the same old design. In other words, by the time the AMCA — a supposedly 5th generation aircraft is airborne realistically no earlier than 2040, the engine it will be outfitted with will already be 70+ years old!!!

    The Free Trade Agreement the Piyush Goel-led commerce ministry negotiated with the UK and is negotiating with the EU and the US, permits Western supplier firms to deny transfer of source codes for their wares!


  • Blundering again: It takes a special talent in our politicians to make Leh’s Tibetan Buddhists so belligerent




  • Forever dependent on phorenware: Do unto America what America does to China




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Saturday, September 27, 2025

Emboldened Evangelists

Evangelists try to conquer Silicon Valley: Many in the tech-Christian nexus are vocal Trump supporters – or at least sceptical of the more excessive liberal tendencies of Silicon Valley.

Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley: To have two of the world’s richest technologists, worth a recently estimated $400 billion (Elon Musk) and $14 billion (Peter Thiel), speak admiringly about biblical teachings challenges the view that Christianity is anti-capitalist or even anti-intellectual.

Antichrist, yeah! Peter Thiel, the gay billionaire Christian evangelist CEO of Palantir is spreading the word about the rise of the Antichrist. This week, Thiel launched the first of a four-part lecture series he’s doing about the Dark Lord.

"Moral crisis in tech industry": The Silicon Valley Christians Who Want to Build ‘Heaven on Earth’

Meanwhile...: AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula—No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun... going San Francisco-sober to 'lock in' for 'grind mode'

The Stupidity of GDP per Capita: What does GDP NOT tell us?


Ye nahi sudhrega: India seeks people access in US trade talks after H-1B visa row. . . . . "the less Modi talks of the H1B visa the better. Everybody and his proverbial uncle in the leadership circles in the US and the West has about had it with the Indian PM’s pleadings to let in more Indian engineers and science grads as a way of pleasing his middle class voter base".

Modi’s effusive response to Trump sets India up for more humiliation


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