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India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is in Washington to take part in  the first formal talks under a format on the Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies otherwise known by its shorter name the ‘iCET’.

News agency ANI’s website is reporting that Doval has gone to the US along with top GOI officers to discuss the iCET with his American counterpart Jake Sullivan at the White House on Tuesday the 31st of January 2023.

“The iCET is the next big milestone in India-US Strategic Partnership with a simple objective to take bilateral cooperation to the next level but specifically in areas of interest to India,” an official familiar with the India-US deliberations quoted  ANI.
Ajit Doval is accompanied by five other officials that includes Principal Scientific Adviser, ISRO chairman, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, Secretary of Department of Telecommunications and DG, DRDO.

It may be recalled that concept of iCET was first mentioned in a statement after a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden in Tokyo in 2022 on the side lines of the Quad Leaders Summit.
In the discussions to be held at the White House, there would be sharp focus on aligning Washington and New Delhi’s strategic, commercial and scientific approaches specifically in the field of technology.
“Through iCET, India would send a message out to the broader industry that India can be a ‘trusted partner’ and that the two democracies could discuss how to build a trusted partner ecosystem between US and India where there’s free flow of R&D and other information pertaining to technology specifically,” the official said.
the iCET has no explicit reference to China but the Biden administration sees technology development vis-a-vis China as a zero-sum game that the US cannot lose. ‘Initiative for critical and emerging technologies’ initiative could be one way forward.
“As China makes extremely fast progress when it comes to technology and one sees an aggressive penetration from the Chinese side across the world, if not stemmed and matched by something aggressive, the world will find it as a fait accompli…. So if one has to roll that progress back, then everybody else has to work together,” another official was quoted by the ANI.