India produces some of the world’s most talented and capable engineers. Its universities file patents at a pace that would make most countries envious. IIT Madras alone generated more than one patent a day in the year ending March 2025. India is home to over 100 unicorns and ranks as the world's largest startup ecosystem. Some of the most successful technology companies in the world are run by Indian origin engineers. And yet somewhere along the way India lags behind. Illust

The 20th century was the era of the aggressive extraction of rare-earth metals from the bowels of the earth. The strategic autonomy of the 21st century may well be defined by what grows under our feet. The global race for technological supremacy has become a brutal war over hardware as the geopolitical gulf between Washington and Beijing grows. The statecraft now is in semiconductors, data servers, and sophisticated communication arrays. But this high-tech, digital empire is

When the Philippines had its landmark BrahMos deal signed in 2022, it was not simply procuring a missile battery; it was signalling a strategic alignment with India, by supporting a rules-based maritime order against an assertive China in the South China Sea. That signal has since grown louder, with Vietnam in advanced discussions with India, and Indonesia has also expressed its interest in procuring BrahMos. Illustration by The Geostrata The export orders surge is as a resul

The first time it happens, it feels understandable. A military attack, an unusual satellite image, a diplomatic statement that is just “so worded” that it invites speculation. Social media begins assembling meaning in minutes, before facts can come out. Maps circulate. Threads multiply. Financial markets react. Observers predict escalation before governments have adequately responded. By the end of the day, millions of people around the world are emotionally invested in a ve

On a map, they are almost insultingly small. A chain of islands so minute that the eye skips past them, drawn instead to the vast blue nothing surrounding them. But the ocean is not just an empty space. It is a highway. And an island is the only place you can build a tollbooth. And yet these fragments of territory, which are remote, often uninhabited, and ecologically fragile, are among the most contested pieces of land on earth. Empires were built to control them. Treaties h

In January 2025, a US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza lasted barely 58 days before Israel launched a devastating wave of airstrikes, killing over 400 people overnight. Simultaneously, the US and Iran agreed to yet another ceasefire in April 2026, only for the US strikes to resume within weeks, leaving the truce on what Trump called “life support.” The pattern was similar; it's a reminder of what diplomacy alone cannot do. Signed agreements create pauses and not peace. In conflicts

FROM THE MCMOHAN LINE TO MODERN CLAIMS: THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE DISPUTE India's neighbourhood is marked by complex geopolitical realities, with both Pakistan and China posing distinct challenges to its security, diplomacy, and regional interests. The India-Pakistan relations are clearly adversarial in nature. In addition to cross-border terrorism, Pakistan uses a number of other asymmetric methods, such as narcoterrorism, disinformation campaigns, diplomatic hindrances, a

The most momentous trade route in Asia is not marked on any state cartography. It does not feature in economic surveys, permeate in infrastructure summits or govern headlines like nautical bottlenecks and energy corridors. Despite this, it traverses some of the continent's geopolitically charged, vulnerable terrain from the hinterlands of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iran to the untamed highlands of Myanmar and the turbulent borderlands of Northeast India. Its freight is ne

Contemporary India’s strategic environment is like the Chakravyuh from the Mahabharat. The Chakravyuh was a military formation, and it had multiple layers to not only attack but also isolate the opponent from all sides. Abhimanyu knew how to enter it but not how to exit. The present situation of India is similar to that of Abhimanyu’s. Illustration by The Geostrata The layers of the Chakravyuh are a strong analogy to the present layers of encirclement faced by India. The fir

The emergence of critical minerals is increasingly seen as a major driver of both national security and economic growth. This centrality of “future minerals” is driving a fundamental transformation in U.S. foreign policy. Washington's engagement with partner nations is being determined by a vision to diversify and secure supply chains despite global disruption. Within this evolving policy framework, Pakistan has emerged as an unexpected beneficiary due to the country's report

Nobody voted for Palantir to run immigration enforcement. Nobody elected the NSO Group to decide which migrants get surveilled. And nobody asked Clearview AI to scrape over 60 billion publicly available images into a facial recognition database and then license it to immigration investigators operating in contexts where algorithmic error has no formal accountability mechanism. Illustration by The Geostrata Yet here we are. Across the United States, the European Union, and a g

India is the most populous country in the world, the second-largest economy in Asia after China, and the nation that guided a spacecraft to the lunar South Pole on a budget smaller than a Hollywood blockbuster. It built a payment infrastructure so seamless that a fruit vendor in Varanasi and a startup founder in Bengaluru share the same digital wallet. It is, by almost every measure, a country that has learned to live at the speed of data. Illustration by The Geostrata And it

Recently leaked Pakistani military reports revealed some shocking facts. As per the reports, Pakistan is seeking to fulfil its dream of building nuclear missiles beneath the sea as well as building nuclear submarines and requested China’s assistance in 2024, which China outright rejected. To entice China, Pakistan offered it extensive access to its Gwadar port, but China still refused. Illustration by The Geostrata This move by China clearly shows that, regardless of being al

Over the past three decades, the strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and Pakistan has evolved from a transactional, opportunistic relationship into a deeply integrated and strategic, economic and geopolitical alignment. For Beijing, Islamabad serves as a crucial regional proxy, providing a geographic conduit to the Arabian Sea via the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and acting as a counterbalance to India’s regional hegemo

Nationalism is aptly described as a political ideology born out of centuries of conflict and one that prioritises the interests, culture and sovereignty of a nation-state. This single idea fractured into competing schools of thought over the course of the 19th century. Each redefined what a nation was, who belonged to it, and even who had the right to say its name. Illustration by The Geostrata FORMATION OF THE IDEA German Romantic thinker Johann Gottfried von Herder, in reac

Fentanyl is frequently called the border crisis between the United States and Mexico, but the forces keeping it alive come from much earlier in the production chain. Synthetic opioids are made through chemical reactions that require precursors, which are then sold across the border areas in legitimate commercial networks. The scale of the crisis reflects the durability of those upstream supply structures rather than episodic trafficking events. Illustration by The Geostrata I

What if I told you, from today onwards, your name would be different, something similar, but not the same. It won’t be the one that you recognise and identify with, it won’t be the one you learned the meaning of, it won’t be the one you keep telling people when they ask you who you are. Why? Just because I have the right to. This right doesn’t stem from any legal or written source but purely from entitlement. Illustration by The Geostrata Now, read this, as slowly as you can,

“The conqueror shall always endeavour to add to his own power and to weaken that of the enemy." - Kautilya, Arthashastra, Book VI In April 2026, the world witnessed another display of unapologetic power when the Dragon decided to cloak the mouth of the Scarborough Shoal with fleeting barriers and ships. What comes as a shock is how this act contradicts the UNCLOS and the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling that the shoal is well within the Philippines' Exclusive Econo

The Bay of Bengal has never been simply water. It is an opera of commerce, travel, and geopolitics. In it, 54 rivers transport not only their rich silt, but centuries-old grievances, and 4,156 kilometres of borders make neighbours into threats to national survival. However, among all the actors shaping this region at present, the most important may be one that did not occur in a military command centre, nor in a diplomatic negotiating room, but at a ballot box in West Bengal.

As great power rivalries intensify from the Arctic to West Asia, India and the Nordic countries are deepening cooperation across trade, technology, and geopolitics. PM Modi is visiting Oslo, Norway, for the third India-Nordic Summit in May 2026. Initiated in 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden, this engagement has, over the years, focused on innovation, technology, climate change, renewable energy, the blue economy, and maritime cooperation. Illustration by The Geostrata This year, the