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Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow in importance in today’s world not just as technological advancement but also becoming the backbone of economic growth, national security, scientific research, and digital governance. However, AI innovations of such a sophisticated kind require significant computing power that is currently only within the reach of a few countries. Against this backdrop, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have taken a significant step by partnering to build one of India's most powerful AI supercomputing infrastructures. What began as a discussion about digital infrastructure under the ambit of the new found India-UAE tech relationship, has come to a stage that is likely to usher in new AI-centric developments in the country, while bolstering the partnership between India and UAE.

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From Vision to Concrete Action

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This collaboration stemmed from the strengthening relationship between India and the UAE. The goal is to focus more on digital cooperation after the 2023 G20 Summit held in India. During this period, Artificial Intelligence, digital public infrastructure, and strong digital ecosystems became key topics of discussion between the two countries. This partnership received formal recognition with the India-UAE Digital Infrastructure Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2024. This agreement identified Artificial Intelligence, high-performance computing (HPC), cloud infrastructure, and digital innovation as priority areas for cooperation.

The initiative has now moved from policy talks to actual implementation. In February 2026, the UAE announced plans to deploy an 8-exaflop AI Super Computing Cluster in partnership between CDAC and in May 2026, when our Hon’ble Prime Minister visited UAE, both governments formalized the commercial framework for establishing the system, marking one of the largest AI infrastructure collaborations between the two countries. It was one the significant agendas discussed between the two countries among others.

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What Does the Agreement Include?

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The agreement between the countries is for the deployment of ‘Condor Galaxy India supercomputer’, which is an AI supercomputing cluster designed specifically for complex and advanced artificial intelligence workloads. Some of the major points of agreement include:

• Deployment of an 8 Exaflop Super Computing Cluster, meaning it can perform up to eight quintillion (8 × 10¹⁸) AI-related calculations per second. This would place it among the world's most powerful AI supercomputing systems.
• This project will be implemented by G42, which is an Abu Dhabi-based AI technology company, in partnership with India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
• The computing infrastructure will utilise 64 Cerebras CS-3 AI systems, built using wafer-scale processor technology designed for large AI models.
• G42 and C-DAC will jointly oversee installation, deployment, operation, and maintenance of the infrastructure.
• The supercomputer will support India's IndiaAI Mission, strengthening domestic AI research and innovation. It is also a step in the direction of India’ AI mission through mindful collaboration.
• Notably, the system will be physically located within India and operate under Indian governance frameworks and laws ensuring that sensitive datasets remain under India’s  jurisdiction.

While beyond the infrastructure, the partnership also aims for research efforts within fields like healthcare & genomics, climate change modeling & optimization of energy, geointelligence, research studies & government usages, as well as growing startups in AI. It is hoped that the computing infrastructure will be made accessible to researchers, academic bodies, government organizations & startups from both nations to foster collaborative research.

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How Are India and the UAE Collaborating?

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The partnership involves more than simply sharing the hardware, the two countries are entering into a multiyear technology partnership where each brings different but complementary expertise. On one hand India offers the knowledge and experience of C-DAC, a large number of AI engineers, startups, academics and researchers, and the IndiaAI Mission, a framework to enable access to the advanced computing infrastructure needed to use these researchers. 

In return, the UAE offers investment in AI infrastructure and expertise in global AI cloud infrastructure, and sovereign AI platform development, from AI cloud infrastructure company G42, a company that has deployed large AI computing clusters as part of the Condor Galaxy network.  Among the biggest names involved in the new initiative is also Cerebras Systems, the artificial intelligence (AI) computing company that will supply the AI chips for the supercomputer.  The leading designer of AI compute technology, Cerebras develops the world's fastest AI hardware. In particular, the flagship Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-3), a revolutionary single chip that is the largest AI processor in the world, offers significant gains in speed and computational efficiency. This partnership will spur a joint R&D effort. That allows both India and the UAE to harness their respective knowledge and resources to accelerate better results for all stakeholders in various domains.

This collaboration will enable joint research and development (R&D), allowing both countries to combine their expertise and resources to produce more effective outcomes that are mutually beneficial across multiple sectors.

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Cyber and Digital Security Benefits

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From a cybersecurity perspective, this partnership is particularly significant.

• Moving towards AI Sovereignty

Possessing the infrastructure within India can ensure that sensitive government, healthcare, research, and enterprise data remains within Indian jurisdiction. This will reduce dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure while improving regulatory control over sensitive and critical datasets.

• Modernising Cyber Defence

Having a high-performance computing system will improve our cyber defence through AI-based threat detection, malware flagging, vulnerability assessment and cyber testing of safeguarding critical infrastructure. These are necessary in current times considering the growing capabilities and mode of cyber attacks. 

• Secure AI Development

Countries worldwide are moving toward "Sovereign AI" which is a goal of developing AI systems within nationally governed infrastructure to protect sensitive information. The India-UAE partnership directly supports this objective by combining national governance and world-class computing capability development.

• Economic Benefits for India

The project offers several long-term economic advantages. First, easing the entry barrier for startups and researchers in India as they are often reliant on expensive overseas cloud computing services. Second, enabling availability of more computing power that can accelerate innovation across sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, fintech, education, and logistics. Third, stronger AI computing infrastructure could foster the inflow of global capital into India’s tech ecosystem by provisioning requisite resources to run frontier AI computations. Finally, the initiative supports India's ambition of becoming a global AI innovation hub under the IndiaAI Mission by enabling domestic development of advanced AI models rather than relying solely on imported technologies that will in long-term make India a sought out destination as an AI-hub.

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Why the UAE Benefits?

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In the case of the UAE, the partnership further helps Abu Dhabi's vision to become a global leader in artificial intelligence by extending the reach of G42's AI capabilities internationally, while strengthening ties with one of the world’s leading digital economies as a trusted strategic technology partner. In harnessing India's extensive talent base, research communities, and growing AI capabilities, the UAE unlocks opportunities for scale and innovation, while also cementing its status as a dependable technological enabler across emerging economies. The project is a part of the UAE’s long-standing agenda to move away from hydrocarbons and towards growth in areas such as AI, digital infrastructure, and technologies of the future.

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Conclusion

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The India-UAE supercomputer collaboration is a step in the direction of being self-dependent in terms of having a strong computing infrastructure base in India. This also changes the outlook of  international technology partnerships  from traditional trade relationships to collaborations focused on AI, digital infrastructure, research, and strategic innovation. AI is becoming a defining factor in economic competitiveness and national resilience on a global scale and the access to sovereign computing infrastructure will increasingly shape our influence in world markets. By uniting UAE’s investment capacity and AI infrastructure expertise and India’s advantages. If successfully implemented, the collaboration could serve as a model of what cooperation toward sovereign and trusted AI can entail.

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REFERENCES

•  https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2006207&reg=48&lang=2 
•  https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?PRID=2261385&reg=48&lang=1 
•  https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?PRID=2261393&reg=48&lang=1

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Introduction

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast transforming our future in the digital world, transforming healthcare, finance, education, and cybersecurity. But alongside this technology, bad actors are also weaponising it. More and more, state-sponsored cyber actors are misusing AI tools such as ChatGPT and other generative models to automate disinformation, enable cyberattacks, and speed up social engineering operations. This write-up explores why and how AI, in the form of large language models (LLMs), is being exploited in cyber operations associated with adversarial states, and the necessity for international vigilance, regulation, and AI safety guidelines.

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The Shift: AI as a Cyber Weapon

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State-sponsored threat actors are misusing tools such as ChatGPT to turbocharge their cyber arsenal.

• Phishing Campaigns using AI- Generative AI allows for highly convincing and grammatically correct phishing emails. Unlike the shoddily written scams of yesteryears, these AI-based messages are tailored according to the victim's location, language, and professional background, increasing the attack success rate considerably. Example: It has recently been reported by OpenAI and Microsoft that Russian and North Korean APTs have employed LLMs to create customised phishing baits and malware obfuscation notes.
  
  
• Malware Obfuscation and Script Generation- Big Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT may be used by cyber attackers to help write, debug, and camouflage malicious scripts. While the majority of AI instruments contain safety mechanisms to guard against abuse, threat actors often exploit "jailbreaking" to evade these protections. Once such constraints are lifted, the model can be utilised to develop polymorphic malware that alters its code composition to avoid detection. It can also be used to obfuscate PowerShell or Python scripts to render them difficult for conventional antivirus software to identify. Also, LLMs have been employed to propose techniques for backdoor installation, additional facilitating stealthy access to hijacked systems.
  
  
• Disinformation and Narrative Manipulation
  State-sponsored cyber actors are increasingly employing AI to scale up and automate disinformation operations, especially on election, protest, and geopolitical dispute days. With LLMs' assistance, these actors can create massive amounts of ersatz news stories, deepfake interview transcripts, imitation social media posts, and bogus public remarks on online forums and petitions. The localisation of content makes this strategy especially perilous, as messages are written with cultural and linguistic specificity, making them credible and more difficult to detect. The ultimate aim is to seed societal unrest, manipulate public sentiments, and erode faith in democratic institutions.

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Disrupting Malicious Uses of AI – OpenAI Report (June 2025) 

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OpenAI released a comprehensive threat intelligence report called "Disrupting Malicious Uses of AI" and the “Staying ahead of threat actors in the age of AI”, which outlined how state-affiliated actors had been testing and misusing its language models for malicious intent. The report named few advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, each attributed to particular nation-states. OpenAI highlighted that the threat actors used the models mostly for enhancing linguistic quality, generating social engineering content, and expanding operations. Significantly, the report mentioned that the tools were not utilized to produce malware, but rather to support preparatory and communicative phases of larger cyber operations.

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AI Jailbreaking: Dodging Safety Measures

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One of the largest worries is how malicious users can "jailbreak" AI models, misleading them into generating banned content using adversarial input. Some methods employed are:

• Roleplay: Simulating the AI being a professional criminal advisor
• Obfuscation: Concealing requests with code or jargon
• Language Switching: Proposing sensitive inquiries in less frequently moderated languages
• Prompt Injection: Lacing dangerous requests within innocent-appearing questions

These methods have enabled attackers to bypass moderation tools, transforming otherwise moral tools into cybercrime instruments.

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Conclusion

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As AI generations evolve and become more accessible, its application by state-sponsored cyber actors is unprecedentedly threatening global cybersecurity. The distinction between nation-state intelligence collection and cybercrime is eroding, with AI serving as a multiplier of adversarial campaigns. AI tools such as ChatGPT, which were created for benevolent purposes, can be targeted to multiply phishing, propaganda, and social engineering attacks. The cross-border governance, ethical development practices, and cyber hygiene practices need to be encouraged.  AI needs to be shaped not only by innovation but by responsibility.

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References

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/02/14/staying-ahead-of-threat-actors-in-the-age-of-ai/
• https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/openais-chatgpt-hit-nation-state-hackers-a-28640
• https://oecd.ai/en/incidents/2025-06-13-b5e9
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/meet-the-experts/emerging-AI-tactics-in-use-by-threat-actors
• https://www.wired.com/story/youre-not-ready-for-ai-hacker-agents/
• https://www.cert-in.org.in/PDF/Digital_Threat_Report_2024.pdf
• https://cdn.openai.com/threat-intelligence-reports/5f73af09-a3a3-4a55-992e-069237681620/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-ai-june-2025.pdf

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Executive Summary
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A claim is going viral on social media stating that India’s passport ranking has declined from the 76th position in 2014 to the 125th position this year. CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found the claim to be misleading. The two rankings mentioned in the viral claim were issued by different agencies. The 76th rank in 2014 was given by the Henley Passport Index, while the 125th rank this year was assigned by the Global Passport Index.

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Claim

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The viral claim states that India’s passport ranking, which was 76th in 2014, has fallen to the 125th position this year. The claim was shared on X (formerly Twitter) with a Hindi caption.

https://x.com/JyotiDevSpeaks/status/2073706900437508468

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FactCheck

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To verify the claim, we first searched relevant news reports and found that India’s passport has been ranked 125th in the latest Global Passport Index.

https://www.dw.com/en/india-news-indian-passport-slips-one-spot-in-global-ranking/live-77836287

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We then checked the official website of Global Citizen Solutions, the organization that publishes the Global Passport Index. The data available on the website confirms that India’s passport has been placed at the 125th position in the latest ranking.

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https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/passport-index/india/

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Further, we investigated which organization had ranked the Indian passport 76th in 2014. The search revealed that the ranking was issued by the Henley Passport Index, published by Henley & Partners. According to the information available on the Henley Global website, India’s passport was ranked 76th in 2014, while it stands at the 80th position in the 2026 Henley Passport Index. The rankings assigned to the Indian passport from 2006 to 2026 can be seen in the image below.

https://www.henleyglobal.com/passport-index 

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Conclusion

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Our research found that the claim stating India’s passport ranking declined from 76th position to 125th position is misleading. The two rankings cited in the viral claim were issued by different organizations and cannot be compared directly. The 2014 ranking came from the Henley Passport Index, while the 125th position refers to the Global Passport Index.

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