Indigenous AI chips for surveillance strengthen technology sovereignty but raise civil-liberty concerns. Discuss.

The Technology Development Board (DST) has committed ₹130 crore from the ₹1 lakh crore RDI Fund [2] to Project VeerAI. VeerAI is BigEndian Semiconductors' camera-focused AI Vision System-on-Chip, built first for CCTV and surveillance [1]. Such chips strengthen India's strategic autonomy, but they also make mass surveillance cheaper and smarter.

How indigenous AI chips strengthen technology sovereignty

• Supply-chain resilience: VeerAI's stated aim is to cut dependence on externally developed semiconductor supply chains [1].
• Trusted hardware in critical infrastructure: cameras guard grids, ports and cities. An Indian-designed chip with on-chip security lowers the risk of hidden backdoors and data leaks [1].
• Market reach: the chip has a roadmap into defence, automotive, industrial and medical uses, plus exports to the Global South [1].
• Ecosystem depth: it builds on MeitY's Design Linked Incentive Scheme, which already funds a video-surveillance chip-design project [3].
• Limit: no Indian foundry has been named, so this is design sovereignty, not full self-reliance [1].

Civil-liberty concerns

• Pervasive watching: edge-AI lets each camera recognise faces, objects and events by itself. Cheaper smart cameras mean more surveillance, and it analyses people rather than just recording them.
• Proportionality: K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) made privacy a fundamental right [4]. Surveillance must therefore be lawful, necessary and proportionate. On-chip "privacy features" [1] cannot guarantee this, because the buyer decides whether to switch them on.
• Legal gaps: the DPDP Act, 2023 [5] lets the government exempt its own agencies. India also has no dedicated law on surveillance or facial recognition.
• Conflict of interest: through Optional Convertible Debt, TDB may become a shareholder [1]. The state that buys and regulates cameras would then profit from selling more of them.
• Export risk: many Global South buyers have weak data-protection laws, so misuse abroad could damage India's claim to be a "trusted vendor."

Indigenous AI chips are a strategic necessity, but control over the hardware must come with accountability for how it is used. The way forward:

• tie later RDI payments to privacy-by-default settings, checked by independent testing;
• pass a surveillance law built on the Puttaswamy test;
• add end-use checks on exports.

Then technology sovereignty will strengthen Article 21 rather than weaken it.