India’s AI Power in a Distributed and Uneven Technological Order: Boundary Control, Strategic Autonomy, and Cognitive Security

<jats:p>This research report examines India’s emerging AI power through the interaction of usable national capacity, technological dependence, boundary control, strategic autonomy, and cognitive security. Rather than treating AI power as equivalent to frontier-model performance, compute scale, or investment volume, it analyzes how technical, institutional, organizational, and infrastructural capabilities are converted into nationally usable power under conditions of uneven interdependence. India is used as a mechanism-rich case because substantial software capacity, digital public infrastructure, multilingual public technology, expanding compute access, and globally distributed technical networks coexist with continued dependence on externally controlled upstream technologies. The report distinguishes access from mobilizable capability, territorial presence from control, boundary power from boundary autonomy, and persistent systemic influence from narrower bilateral effects.</jats:p>