Saturday, June 20, 2026

Quick notes: India's off switch | Own goal...

  • Someone Else Owns India's Off Switch: Around 70 per cent of our cloud runs on three American hyperscalers, every byte reachable under the US CLOUD Act.

    We do not operate a single DNS root server, so every query from Indian soil is resolved on infrastructure we neither own nor can audit.

    And since a breach in 2014, we have had no trusted sovereign Root Certificate Authority, which means foreign corporations decide what the Indian internet is allowed to trust.

    The cloud, the certificates, the DNS, the navigation, the silicon. We rent all of it.

    Nayara Energy, July 2025. Microsoft suspended services to an Indian refinery that handles 8 per cent of the country's refining capacity, to comply with European Union sanctions over its Russian shareholding. It was a kill switch, and we had no override.


  • MBA era is over: India has historically placed greater value on academic credentials while overlooking vocational professions and skilled trades. Countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Japan, South Korea and China have traditionally shown greater respect for occupations involving practical skills.

    "The globalising world gave a certain advantage to software, computer science and MBA education, but that era is over". Young people should focus on developing skills that remain valuable even as technology transforms industries.


  • India's Biggest Economic Challenge Is not Inflation, Oil, or War - It is an Unskilled Population Addicted to Distraction. It is a generation that spends more time consuming content than creating value. The biggest theft today is not of money. It is of attention. Every notification fragments concentration. Every endless scroll delays mastery.

    Modern economies reward deep work, specialized knowledge, creativity, and disciplined execution. Algorithms reward emotional reactions. Unfortunately, millions choose the algorithm.


  • Own goal - Rupee's Pain Is Self-Inflicted: Indian firms investing abroad contributed roughly $30 billion to the capital outflow. Why would a country that requires close to $90 billion in net foreign capital annually to sustain rapid growth permit $30 billion of capital to flow abroad, thereby contributing to pressure on the rupee?


  • End to Rafale mess? Only 40-50 Rafales will be bought, if at all; rest MRFA Su-57E. The reason Delhi has stiffened its stance and is pushing Paris on this issue is because two other offers are on the table — Russia’s complete with tech-transfer, including source codes, for its 5th generation fighter — Su-57E, and Sweden’s for its Saab 4.5 gen Gripen E.


  • ‘The future isn’t manned vs unmanned’: If Pakistan does induct the J-35, it would change the regional air power equation. The Su-57 is one platform that comes into the conversation, given its operational status and India’s familiarity with Russian-origin systems.

    It is worth remembering that fifth-generation capability goes well beyond the airframe. Sensors, mission systems, weapons integration and networking define it as much as stealth does. An aircraft without that ecosystem solves only half the problem. Importantly, AMCA is and must remain India’s long-term answer.


  • Ashtavakra Gita: One small shift in understanding can dissolve a lifetime of inner struggle.


  • Taboo on crossing the sea? Andhra Pradesh HC stays order restricting priests who travelled abroad from temple rituals.


  • Mohammed's Own Country: Deaths outpace births among Kerala’s Hindus and Christians as population growth turns negative


  • BikAss: Over 2.8 million trees on forest land were approved for felling or recorded as felled in less than three years


  • Iran deal: Trump is back to square one, but the cards are now in Tehran’s favor.

    “Over the three-month trajectory, what Iran showed is that, yes, they were the underdog, attacked by two nuclear powers with military supremacy. But they also had their own cards to play.

    The defining point in this war is the strategic geographic advantage that Iran has over the Strait of Hormuz. And it seems like President Trump and the US just couldn't get them to reopen the strait with force. This brought [the US] to the negotiating table and, essentially, back to square one, because the Strait of Hormuz wasn't even a problem before the war.”

    "We're back to the original sin of Donald Trump: out of obsession or jealousy of Barack Obama, tearing down an agreement that was much better negotiated.”

    - Iran gets major economic lifeline for minimal concessions.

    - Trump’s Deal Sidesteps Key Reasons He Went to War With Iran


  • The Great State Tax experiment:


  • Advantage China: CEO of Chinese Anthropic rival tells Elon Musk that China will have a Fable 5-class AI model before next year


  • Cheaper AI: Microsoft Risks Trump’s Ire By Abandoning The Costly OpenAI And Anthropic Models For China-Based DeepSeek’s V4 Model For Enterprise Workloads. Soaring token costs are driving enterprise customers away from OpenAI and Anthropic and right into the lap of China's DeepSeek


  • NEET 2026 is no longer an examination. It’s such a case study in institutional failure. Almost farcical


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