New Delhi: The Trump administration’s decision to restrict access to some of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence models has reignited calls for India to accelerate its AI ambitions, with industry leaders urging the government to significantly expand investments in sovereign AI capabilities, computing infrastructure and deep-tech research.
The debate gathered momentum after US-based Anthropic said it was suspending access to its flagship Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for foreign nationals following a directive from the US government citing national security concerns. The move has intensified concerns about India’s dependence on foreign AI technologies and renewed demands for the country to develop its own large-scale AI ecosystem.
T.V. Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital and Manipal Global Education Services and former CFO of Infosys, called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch a stronger national AI programme with greater private-sector participation. In a post on X, Pai shared comments by Zoho chief scientist Sridhar Vembu and said, “PM Narendra Modi, we need an India AI Mission under you with Nandan Nilekani as vice chair and others from the private sector and government to help India tackle the AI revolution.”
Arguing that India is “way behind” in the global AI race, Pai said existing government programmes are inadequate in scale and pace. He proposed an annual ₹50,000-crore fund for deep-tech and AI development, along with a ₹2-lakh-crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme-style fund to support investments in hyperscale cloud infrastructure, hardware and semiconductor manufacturing.
The government of India had launched the IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of ₹10,372 crore to develop the country’s AI ecosystem.
Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan echoed the call for self-reliance. “We need to create our own models for AI like UPI. Data as public good, open source models, investing in next-gen AI hardware like neuromorphic chips, regulations for sovereign data and AI etc.,” he said on X.
Vembu described the Anthropic restrictions as a reminder that technology has become central to national sovereignty. Stressing that “globalisation is dead,” he urged Indian organisations to adopt smaller AI models, including Indian and Chinese open-source alternatives. “Anyway, why pay money to people who don’t even want to sell to you?” he wrote.
Anthropic clarifies
Anthropic said that the US government’s letter did not provide specific details of its national security concerns. “Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking” Fable 5. We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass,” Anthropic said.
“We are complying with the government’s legal directive and are removing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users. However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people. If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” the AI firm said.
