‘We don’t think it’s a battle’: Indian IT minister about US-China chip war at Davos

Speaking about where New Delhi stands amid the US-China chip wars at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting, the Indian Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Wednesday (Jan 17) said that it is not a battle since there is enough for everyone and how the semiconductor industry will evolve in several ways.

‘Trust is our biggest capital’

In response to a question about how India will navigate through thechip war between the US and China, Vaishnaw said that the world has developed a certain trust in New Delhi because of how the country has conducted itself, in terms of economic and foreign policies, on the international stage.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

“Trust is our biggest capital. That trust gels the entire world into a harmonious way,” said the IT minister during a roundtable discussion at the gathering of global leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

WATCH |Decoding the hypocrisy of global elite at Davos

He also spoke about how India has signed agreements with several countries including the US, Japan and some countries in Europe on semiconductors, adding that New Delhi is also working with the South Korean government and companies.

“It’s like practically every company wants to collaborate with India in one way or another,” said Vaishnaw. He added, “So we don’t think it’s a battle, we think there is enough for everybody.”

ALSO READ |Alibaba cancels cloud computing spinoff amid US-China chip war

The US restricts certain chip exports, to countries such as China, Iran and Russia in a bid to prevent the development of machine learning models that power Artificial Intelligence tools.

Industry will evolve and so will we: Vaishnaw

Speaking about how dynamic and ever-changing the semiconductor industry is, he said it is not easy to predict what changes will happen in the next 10 years. “It’s something which is too complex and too dynamic and too uncertain for anyone to bet that this is how the sector will be.”

He went on to give an example of how five years ago no one thought that 28-nanometre or 40-nanometre chips would not be viable anymore but the way that the electric vehicle industry has evolved, those “legacy nodes” have become important.

ALSO READ |US leads global public distrust in innovation, survey unveils concerns ahead of Davos Summit

The IT minister also said that New Delhi’s “biggest priority” is on design and it is also the country’s strength given that we have around 300,000 design engineers who “practically” design every complex chip manufactured across the world and asserted that Indiais the right place to develop the semiconductor industry.

(With inputs from agencies)