Observer Research Foundation - Telegram Channel

What can a two-chokepoint crisis mean for India’s energy security?
Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb are the entry and exit points of the same maritime corridor. Shippers have been absorbing disruption at one by rerouting through the other.

That flexibility disappears if both become contested at once, a real possibility now that Houthi forces have captured the Yemeni port of Mocha and advanced toward the strait.

This brief examines the limits of India’s energy diversification as both chokepoints come under pressure: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/from-hormuz-to-bab-el-mandeb-the-limits-of-india-s-energy-diversification

Regulatory and court records on Jackson Laboratories go back to 1997. Its manufacturing licences were only cancelled after five women died in Kota this May.

Between 2019 and 2026, the company racked up 100 “Not of Standard Quality” alerts, the highest of any manufacturer in India. Yet it kept winning government contracts because no one system saw the whole record.

This brief examines why India’s drug regulation keeps forgetting what it already knows: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/drug-regulation-that-forgets-why-a-blacklisted-company-kept-supplying-the-health-system

China’s strategists have coined a “three-seas linkage,” warning that the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea are becoming one connected threat.

Japan sees the same connection from the other side: Chinese pressure near Taiwan as a direct threat to its own territory. Each country’s defensive posture is reinforcing the other’s sense of danger.

This brief looks at how this mirrored security dilemma is fuelling Sino-Japanese tensions, and what it means for the region, India included: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/-mirror-security-dilemma-fuels-sino-japanese-tensions

Israel won’t let Hezbollah keep its weapons. Hezbollah won’t disarm until Israeli troops leave Lebanon. Lebanon can force neither side to move first.

The US-brokered trilateral framework signed in June 2026 remains frozen, and talks scheduled for Rome have been postponed to October.

This brief examines why Washington’s trilateral gambit in Lebanon is stuck, and what’s keeping all three sides locked in place: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/trump-s-greenland-agreement-an-odd-off-ramp

The Western Ghats shelters more than 7,000 species and waters the rivers that feed peninsular India's agriculture. It still has no finalised conservation framework.

Seven drafts have been issued since 2014. Six have failed, not over science, but over which states bear the cost of protecting it.

This brief examines why a UNESCO biodiversity hotspot is stuck in political deadlock, and what a workable path forward looks like: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-western-ghats-esa-why-a-scientific-consensus-is-stuck-in-political-deadlock

A 2024 review of nearly 9.9 million people found convincing evidence linking ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to anxiety and common mental disorders.
UPFs aren’t defined by nutrition content.

They’re defined by how industrially they’re processed, which is why packaged snacks, instant noodles, and sugary drinks all count, regardless of their calorie count.

In one Delhi study, these foods made up over 16% of adolescents’ daily energy intake.

This brief examines the emerging evidence connecting diet and mental health, and what it means for food policy, especially in countries like India where the research barely exists yet: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/ultra-processed-foods-and-mental-health-the-emerging-evidence

The Global South Must Step Up to Shape Global AI Standards. QWERTY stuck around even after better keyboard layouts existed, because switching got too costly once everyone adopted it. AI standards could be locked in the same way, and the Global South has had little say in writing them so far.

India alone contributes nearly 20 percent of global semiconductor design talent. The real question is whether assets like that get converted into a seat at the table, before the rules are set, not after.

This brief looks at what gives the Global South leverage in AI standardisation, and what it would take to use it: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-global-south-must-step-up-to-shape-global-ai-standards

The US now pays more interest on its debt each year than it spends on defence.

That’s a symptom of something bigger: a global bond selloff has pushed 10-year yields above 4 percent across the G7, the highest since 2007. For heavily indebted governments, the options are narrowing to one word: austerity.

This brief looks at why bond markets have stopped being boring, and what it means for fiscal policy worldwide: https://www.orfonline.org/research/sleepwalking-into-austerity

https://youtu.be/b6AoCxyp2N8?si=xKqRRz5GESQPsprG

Freedom of navigation isn't about keeping every strait open at every moment. It's about building markets, routes and infrastructure resilient enough that a blocked passage doesn't become political leverage.

This brief examines why the US Navy could not fully restore confidence in Hormuz, and what a resilient freedom of navigation actually requires: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/rethinking-freedom-of-navigation-in-an-age-of-sea-denial

RSA encryption has protected digital communication for almost 50 years. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break it in seconds.

Quantum technology today spans three areas: quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing, the most mature of the three, already powering atomic clocks and MRI machines.

This brief explains the fundamentals of each, and why the cryptographic threat may be closer than it looks: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/fundamentals-of-quantum-technology

AI is now on both sides of every cyberattack. It's what's finding the vulnerabilities, and what's defending against them.

CERT-In is testing open-source AI models in a sandbox to secure government systems, not because open-source is better, but because critical infrastructure can't depend on a single external provider whose access can be cut off overnight.

What does this shift mean for how governments build cyber defence?

Read the brief: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/from-innovation-to-infrastructure-the-ai-shift-in-cyber-defence

SDG 14, Life Below Water, needs an estimated $175 billion a year. Yet only around $25 billion is currently invested.

Part of that gap isn't about risk appetite. It's that ocean outcomes, like reef condition or a vessel's presence inside a protected area, have historically been too costly or too hard to verify for lenders and insurers to act on. Satellites can fix the measurement problem. Whether that translates into cheaper capital is an institutional question, not a technical one.

This brief examines how satellite data can close the blue-finance gap, and where it still falls short: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-ocean-from-above-satellite-data-and-the-blue-finance-gap

The Western Ghats shelters more than 7,000 species and waters the rivers that feed peninsular India's agriculture. It still has no finalised conservation framework.

Seven drafts have been issued since 2014. Six have failed, not over science, but over which states bear the cost of protecting it.

This brief examines why a UNESCO biodiversity hotspot is stuck in political deadlock, and what a workable path forward looks like: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-western-ghats-esa-why-a-scientific-consensus-is-stuck-in-political-deadlock

India's protein problem isn't about eating more protein. It's about diversity, quality and affordability.

Researchers have identified 28 underutilised high-protein crops in India with real potential for nutrition and climate resilience. Most have barely entered the market, while pulse imports keep rising to fill gaps in domestic supply.

This brief looks at what a genuine plant-protein transition for India would require, beyond the market for meat substitutes: https://www.orfonline.org/research/from-protein-substitutes-to-sustainable-nutrition-rethinking-plant-proteins

Why have today's conflicts become half wars, management without resolution?

This brief argues that quick, decisive wars like 1967 or 1971 are increasingly rare. Oil has crossed $100 a barrel again, six months into a US and Israel campaign against Iran with no clear endpoint, and today's conflicts run on missiles versus missiles and defence systems versus defence systems, producing no outcome, while the political compromise needed to end them is nowhere in supply.

This brief examines why swift military victories have become a mirage, and what it would take to break today's conflicts out of deadlock: https://www.orfonline.org/research/schr-dinger-s-conflicts-the-crisis-of-half-wars

What does Russia’s drone experience teach India about modern warfare?

Building drone capability is not just about producing more. Russia’s experience shows that scaling too quickly can create a bottleneck: skilled personnel.

For India’s Integrated Battle Groups, this brief argues that the lesson is that effective drone operations will depend on both the quantity of unmanned systems and the quality and scale of the people operating, integrating and sustaining them: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/india-s-ibgs-why-quality-matters-as-much-as-quantity

“A very good negotiating chip." That is how Trump described a USD 14 billion Taiwan arms package.

The package has been kept in abeyance since his May summit with Xi, with its fate explicitly tied to China.

For US allies across the Indo-Pacific, the real question isn't this one package. It's whether future security commitments can become bargaining chips too.
This brief examines what the episode signals for alliance confidence in the region: https://www.orfonline.org/research/trump-s-taiwan-arms-calculus-bargaining-with-beijing-reassuring-the-region

What would it look like for India to shape the rules on nuclear shipping, not just adopt them?
In August 2026, 26 governments, India included, signed a joint statement at the launch of ATLAS, calling it the first step towards revolutionising the civil nuclear maritime industry.

India has the reactor technology and shipbuilding capacity. What it lacks is a licensing pathway: no framework yet exists for who certifies a reactor that's both a nuclear installation and a maritime platform.

This brief examines why floating nuclear power is India's nearer-term opportunity, and why closing that gap now is how India gets a seat at the table: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/nuclear-shipping-s-next-chapter-india-s-chance-to-shape-the-rules

AI will make intelligence abundant.

To realise its potential, society must reorganise itself around what this makes possible.

The AI absorption frontier for a sector is the point at which it has reorganised itself sufficiently to convert abundant intelligence into productive gains.

This Special Report by Rahul Mathhan explains that AI supremacy, therefore, will depend not on who builds the most advanced models, but on which sectors—and ultimately which nations—can absorb AI.

Read the Report: https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-absorption-frontier