Beyond the Space Race

The Global Competition for Compute Infrastructure  

From the conquest of territory and control over seas to the race for space, global power has historically been shaped by dominance over critical frontiers. Today, computation has emerged as the new axis of global power. With artificial intelligence becoming central to economic growth, governance, and national security, control over data and the infrastructure that processes it, is at the forefront.

According to IndiaAI, India has secured the 3^rd position globally in Artificial Intelligence competitiveness. Estimates suggest the country will generate nearly 20% of the world’s data in the coming years, driven by its growing population, increased investments in digital public infrastructure, scaled digital governance, and the rapid diffusion of large and small language models. However, reports suggest that India currently accounts for only around 3% of global data center capacity. Inevitably, we need to bridge this gap sustainably and securely.  

India’s most critical datasets from our digital identity system like Aadhaar, financial and health records are increasingly processed and stored in cloud infrastructures. These clouds are hosted on servers. Data centers host many servers. Data sovereignty is the principle that digital data is subject to the laws and governance of the country where it is collected or stored. In practice, this means a nation may require certain data (especially personal or sensitive data) to remain on servers within its borders, or that “sovereign” cloud services (run under domestic law) be used. There is the tension of data flow across borders and the need to control the country’s data. This makes data centers part of the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). 

Data centre scaling requires many prerequisites like land, power reliability, and connectivity. Among these, the cooling infrastructure is of prominence. It is facilitated by freshwater-based cooling systems. Alternatives such as specialized immersion liquids remain expensive, while saltwater poses corrosion and mineral deposition challenges.  

This creates a tiff with India’s water needs. Many tech cities like Bengaluru have already confronted “zero water day” warnings. Building large AI-oriented data centers in such regions without consultation, inspection or resource planning risks deepening local scarcity. 

India while investing in capacity generation must also research how privately owned data centres manage public data in practice. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology empaneled multiple domestic and global providers, including firms such as Amazon Web Services, to host public-sector data. These entities increasingly influence not just storage, but data processing, analytics, and AI-enabled decision systems for the state. 

A structured, comparative research programme examining India alongside other countries would allow policymakers to understand how data localisation, privacy, security, AI usage, and material constraints like water are operationalized on the ground.  

India’s data future is defined by how fast it builds and how wisely it prepares.