Silicon Valley is spending $700 billion on AI: Why is India trying to match the math?

In 1982, the global technology elite feared Japan’s “Fifth Generation” computer project. Armed with Tokyo’s billions, the state tried to build an AI supercomputer to break America’s computing monopoly. A decade later, the project closed — eclipsed not by a rival Government, but by the capitalised rise of the Silicon Valley personal computer.

Tech history is an unforgiving graveyard of state — funded vanity projects. Yet, walking through the corridors of power in New Delhi today, the exact same gears are grinding.