After the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the editorial argues that open-source and collaborative AI among middle powers can shield the Global South from a technology race framed as U.S.–China rivalry.

• A crossroads: the editorial contends that the U.S. government has disregarded frontier developers’ calls for a global slowdown over hacking and misalignment risks, while treating data-centre investment as key to competing with China.
• Contrasting summit positions: India’s Prime Minister warned against the “weaponisation” of technology and minerals, while China’s President promoted a “BRICS AI open source community” to counter any one country’s dominance.
• India’s middle path: India joined no protest against U.S.-led models but called for insulating AI from national rivalries — reflecting, the editorial says, both a young domestic AI ecosystem and the value of participating in deployment.
• Access as security: the editorial holds that timely and comprehensive access to AI is central to national security, and that trade disputes should not choke its spread.
• The prescription: BRICS should become a forum for making defensive AI capabilities broadly and cheaply available, since AI’s risks should not follow a “haves and have-nots” hierarchy.

The editorial cites a “global pull out” of Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models. On record, Anthropic suspended access on 12 June 2026 to comply with U.S. Department of Commerce export controls. The controls were lifted on 30 June, and access was restored on 1 July 2026.

• Why it matters for the argument: the episode showed how national export-control decisions can interrupt access to AI services for users in other countries, even briefly.
• Earlier precedent: the U.S. AI Diffusion Rule (January 2025) had placed India in a middle “Tier 2” for advanced AI-chip exports; it was rescinded in May 2025.

• Strategic autonomy: India engages in U.S.-led technology partnerships (such as TRUST and Pax Silica) while co-authoring BRICS AI commitments — a form of multi-alignment applied to technology.
• Security: AI can automate the discovery of software vulnerabilities; states with weak cyber defences face the greatest exposure, making defensive AI a public good.
• Economic: for deployment-heavy economies, the gains come less from building frontier models than from applying AI to agriculture, health, language and public services.
• Governance: BRICS is not the only forum — the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and Global Dialogue on AI Governance (created by the UN General Assembly, 2025) and GPAI offer overlapping tracks.
• Resources: the “weaponisation of minerals” reference links AI to the supply of critical minerals — gallium, germanium and rare earths — used in chips and hardware.

In favour of the editorial’s case:

• Open models reduce dependence: locally hosted open-weight models let countries keep sensitive data at home and avoid sudden loss of service.
• Collective bargaining: BRICS members together represent nearly half the world’s population, giving weight in setting norms on access and pricing.
• Shared defence is cheaper: pooling threat intelligence and defensive tools spreads costs that smaller states cannot bear alone.

Against, or requiring caution:

• Intra-BRICS asymmetry: China’s AI capacity far exceeds other members’; an “open-source community” could deepen reliance on Chinese models and standards, a concern given India–China strategic differences.
• Openness cuts both ways: freely available powerful models can also spread offensive cyber capabilities to non-state actors — the very risk the editorial highlights.
• Consensus limits: BRICS lacks a secretariat, and its May 2026 foreign ministers’ meeting ended without a joint statement; converting declarations into programmes has been slow.
• Capability gap: the editorial itself concedes open models trail frontier systems; relying on them alone may leave critical defensive needs unmet.

• Dual-track access: maintain partnerships with frontier providers while building sovereign compute and domestic open models under the IndiaAI Mission.
• Issue-based BRICS cooperation: focus on concrete, low-controversy areas — AI for cyber defence, multilingual datasets, shared evaluation and safety testing.
• Institutional depth: link BRICS AI work to NDB financing for compute and to DPI-style open standards that India has promoted.
• Safety institutions: strengthen India’s AI Safety Institute and CERT-In capacity so that access decisions rest on domestic risk assessment.

Drawing on recruitment and entrance-exam protests across India in 2026, the author — a former security official — argues that unaddressed youth anger, handled with force rather than understanding, risks turning scattered agitations into a broader movement against authority.

• New forms of revolt: the author observes that Gen Z worldwide is turning to disruptive protest, driven chiefly by anger at an order seen as unequal to new problems.
• Neighbourhood lessons: youth-led upheavals in Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025) ended long-established governments; in both, the author notes, protesters were first branded “foreign agents” or “anti-national”.
• Indian signals: a spontaneous, satire-driven youth movement’s Jantar Mantar sit-in over entrance-exam leaks, and student protests in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, are presented as early warnings.
• Force is self-defeating: the author criticises the use against students of force meant for violent mobs, warning of a backlash against all authority.
• Misreading the anger: in Jharkhand, the author says, scrapping the examinations addressed the symptom but not the grievance, and comparisons with Birsa Munda’s uprising could inflame matters.
• Institutional trust: the author argues the youth perceive institutional safeguards weakening and power centralising, and urges all political actors to restore faith in the system.

• Governance: repeated paper leaks and delayed recruitment damage the credibility of examination bodies, which for many young people are the main route to social mobility.
• Economic: high educated-youth unemployment concentrates aspirations on a limited number of government jobs, so each exam failure affects lakhs of candidates.
• Technological: social media lowers the cost of mobilisation; satire and memes give movements reach without formal organisation or leadership.
• Security: the author links unaddressed grievance to the historical growth of Left-Wing Extremism, which once drew in students and intellectuals, not only tribal and rural communities.
• Federal: recruitment bodies such as State Public Service and Staff Selection Commissions fall under State control, so responses vary widely across States.
• Ethical: labelling dissenters as “anti-national” or extremist can undermine democratic legitimacy and discourage peaceful expression.

In favour of the author’s concerns:

• Evidence of recurrence: examination controversies have recurred across national and State bodies, suggesting a systemic rather than isolated problem.
• Regional precedent: the pace at which youth protests in Bangladesh and Nepal escalated shows how quickly grievances can become regime-level crises.
• Legal backing: the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that peaceful protest is a constitutionally protected right, and that police force must be proportionate.

Against, or requiring caution:

• Contextual differences: India’s federal structure, regular elections and independent courts provide outlets that were weaker in some neighbouring cases — the author himself notes the middle ground of Indian politics remains intact.
• Analogy risk: comparing exam protests with the Naxalite movement may overstate the threat and could itself be used to justify securitised responses.
• Scrapping exams: cancelling a compromised test can be a legitimate step to restore integrity, even if it imposes costs on honest candidates.
• Public order duties: authorities must also protect non-participants’ rights and prevent protests from turning violent; the balance is case-specific.

• Exam integrity: implement the Public Examinations Act, 2024 and the NTA reform recommendations — secure digital question-paper delivery, vetted test centres, and fewer outsourced intermediaries.
• Predictable recruitment: publish and adhere to annual recruitment calendars, with time-bound results and grievance redress.
• Policing standards: train police in crowd management that distinguishes peaceful students from violent groups; ensure accountability for excessive force.
• Structured dialogue: create youth consultation forums within ministries and State commissions so grievances are heard before they reach the street.
• Employment: widen opportunities beyond government jobs through skilling, apprenticeships and private-sector job creation to ease pressure on a few exams.