India-Pakistan & Internal Warring in Washington (Part One)

I have been in India twice this year, once at The Raisina Dialogue, which is a forum that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs runs to discuss India’s future. India is now central to global geopolitics, especially as President Trump is so clearly committed to making India the a core of the US manufacturing supply chain. For a long time, nobody really believed India could transition from software to hardware. Apple’s vote of confidence is having an exponential impact on the market. Investors are excited about this, but the relationship between India, Pakistan, China and the US is uncomfortable and complex. The US element is especially tricky to explain. It requires a deep dive into US domestic politics. There are reasons why the US sends cash, a lot of cash, to the very terrorist groups it’s officially trying to shut down in this part of the world, especially in Pakistan. As the recent former Defence Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Pakistan, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, just said on Sky News, “We have been doing this dirty work for the US for about three decades and for Britain as well. That was a mistake and we suffered for that”. This is an incredible admission. It caused the interviewer’s jaw to drop. But, everybody is starting to catch on because there’s an increasingly visible fight going on in the US. We now know, thanks to the DOGE process, exactly who in the US sent the cash to the terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. The US intel community is split and undergoing a radical overhaul, which will have massive implications for this region and beyond. The geopolitics of this region is inextricably tied up with internal politics in the US. The complexities of the geopolitical landscape across these nations will matter as much as investment ideas.

The good news for India is that even though India may not be ready to make Apple’s laptops, they are going to assemble iPhones. Apple is moving all its iPhone assembly to India by next year. India is, however, already excelling at making physical goods with care. Witness Jaguar Land Rover’s huge global success (other than the advertising rebranding of Jaguar). India also has a lock on one of the most critical components of global manufacturing and construction: steel. The Statesman writes, “India’s youngest steel giant, NSL, breaks multiple records in a single day (April 16^th, 2025)” when the firm surpassed “its own operational milestones”. Most importantly, India is shifting away from the traditional focus on specific manufacturing sectors and instead seeking to combine various areas together: software plus semiconductors, steel, autos, mobile phones, nuclear power plants, aerospace, defence equipment, medicine, healthcare, AI, and 3D printing of both materials and tissues. India is set to be the king of shardware – the merging of software and hardware. Why? The people in India think holistically about the value of the interactions and interdependencies between capabilities and sectors, not just about building sectors. While India shifts into exporting goods as well as software, we’ll have to keep an eye on India’s efforts to mimic the US intelligence services and export its domestic policies regarding terrorism abroad. In short, India will be in more geopolitical conflict at home and abroad going forward. This will have important implications for the future.

It’s the tricky India-Pakistan relationship that now draws our attention. The two nuclear nations are threatening military action over the recent terrorist attack in India’s Kashmir in the town of Pahalgam in the Himalayas. It was India’s deadliest terror attack since the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which were India’s 9/11. Prime Minister Modi says that the Indian Armed Forces now have a “free hand” to pursue the response to the attack. Already, India revoked 14 kinds of visas for Pakistani nationals in India and suspended visa services for Pakistan, thus dividing families. India also placed the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance. That’s the treaty that has provided for water sharing between the two countries since 1960. The Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, said, “If the water doesn’t flow, then blood will”. Pakistan keeps saying it has “credible intelligence that India is planning an imminent military strike” on them.

Just glance at the changing of the guard ceremony on the India-Pakistan border if you want to get an idea of the baseline stress level between these two nations. As an aside, almost all Pakistanis argue that any terror events against India are false flag operations that have been conducted by the Indian side in order to blame Pakistan. The temperature between these two nations is always hot, but it can still flare up hotter real fast.

In the past, confrontations between these regional powers happened at the border between India, Pakistan, and China. Today, that confrontation has global manifestations and consequences that have already expanded into unexpected and far-flung locations like Canada and across the Indian Ocean.

Remember that India and Canada got into a serious diplomatic brouhaha in 2023 when India’s intelligence service was said to have assassinated Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada in June of that year, just before Prime Minister Modi’s June visit to Canada. Nijjar was a leader of the Sikh Separatist movement in India and its Khalistan Tiger Force. He had already been placed on Canada’s “No Fly” list because of his involvement in terror training camps. After he was killed, it turned out that it was orchestrated by two senior officials from India’s much-feared RAW (The Research and Analysis Wing). This is India’s equivalent of MI6 or the CIA. Two RAW officials were arrested, Vikas Yadav (from the Indian Cabinet Office) and Nikhil Gupta. Both were accused of orchestrating the assassination. The Indians accused Canada of funding and harboring Sikh “extremists and terrorists” who “continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” India expelled Canadian diplomats from India. Since then, it’s become clear that, as The Washington Post puts it, “India now reserves the right to send its much-feared RAW into any nation anywhere to assassinate terrorists or leadership that threaten India”. India has pursued this approach in other locations. Consider the allegation that RAW got involved in bribing politicians and seeking to overthrow the leadership in the Maldives in 2025. The Washington Post characterized the “Maldivian plot and its backstory” as part of a larger confrontation between India and China, which offered “a rare view into the much broader, often shadowy struggle between India and China for influence over a strategic swath of Asia and its surrounding waters. This competition has unfolded, particularly in the smaller nations around the Indian Ocean, where the continent’s two largest powers have offered generous loans, infrastructure projects, and political support — both public and covert — to bolster their preferred politicians.”

Of course, the American intelligence services have a reputation for exactly these kinds of assassinations and meddling abroad approach that India is now taking, although the Americans target foreign nationals as well as their own. Recent discoveries by the DOGE process raise the specter of something even more nefarious. It turns out that USAID had its contractors directly funding many of the worst terrorist organizations in Pakistan, including ISIS, Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the Pakistan-based Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), which is a front for Hafiz Saeed-led Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Both of these organizations directed the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in which Pakistani terrorists killed 6 Americans and 166 people. It seems, “The USAID aid to FIF was routed through Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), a Michigan-based Muslim charity that has ties with jihadist outfits operating in South Asia.” Apparently, the money moved through a Michigan-based NGO/charity called the Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), which was also involved in the 2008 Mumbai attack.

Before continuing with India and regional stresses, we have to ask a simple question: How much of the problem between India and Pakistan, and maybe even with China, has been fueled by American activities? We have to ask, how is it possible that the American Government funded the very terrorist opponents it was supposedly trying to shut down?