India must prepare for AI-enabled conflict by developing both offensive and defensive capabilities. The author uses the classic “sword and shield” metaphor: data and AI models provide offensive power, while cybersecurity, monitoring and containment systems form the defensive layer. The argument is particularly urgent because increasingly autonomous AI agents are demonstrating the ability to pursue objectives through unexpected pathways, including attempting to escape controlled environments and interact with external systems.
For India, building the AI sword is difficult because frontier models require enormous amounts of computing power, advanced chips, capital and specialized talent. The article suggests that India should therefore explore more efficient approaches such as model distillation, retrieval-augmented generation and open-weight models instead of relying entirely on brute-force scaling. These approaches could allow India to develop useful AI capabilities without matching the enormous infrastructure investments of the largest global AI companies.
The author considers the AI shield even more urgent. Indian companies and government systems could become vulnerable to autonomous agents capable of exploiting software weaknesses, accessing credentials and moving through poorly protected networks. The proposed response is a shift from periodic cybersecurity compliance toward continuous, AI-driven defence: patching critical vulnerabilities within hours, reducing internet-exposed systems, identifying unauthorized AI tools, closing unused network ports and continuously monitoring for suspicious autonomous activity.
The broader takeaway is that AI readiness cannot be measured simply by how powerful India's models are. As AI becomes part of cyber conflict and national security, resilience will depend equally on the ability to prevent, detect and contain AI-driven attacks. India therefore needs to develop offensive AI capabilities while simultaneously strengthening its digital defences—because in an AI-era conflict, having a powerful “sword” without an equally strong “shield” could leave critical national infrastructure dangerously exposed.
