U.S. space tycoon Elon Musk recently throttled the military-grade Starshield network provided by his company SpaceX to Ukraine in retaliation for Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Musk’s actions are not without precedent — with a similar move in 2022 (although SpaceX disputed media reports) — but his most recent transgression should put other countries still using or planning to use his services on alert.
That includes India. The Indian government and industry have thus far resisted Starlink’s entry. Musk is unhappy and likely to keep pushing. On the flip side, quite a bit of India’s critical infrastructure is exposed to services provided by other foreign operators. They have acted lawfully so far, but the country still retains strong incentives to substitute them with homegrown alternatives.
The worst possible outcome on the spectrum of possibilities vis-à-vis India is for a foreign operator to directly restrict a continuing service. Two other possibilities include foreign-controlled platforms disrupting access to an otherwise Indian system and a foreign supplier non-abruptly degrading India’s ability to sustain important capabilities.
Satellite communications
The Indian government has currently licensed three companies to provide satellite communications services: Starlink, the Indian subsidiary of Eutelsat OneWeb, and Jio Satellite Communications. As of October 16, none had received the security clearance they need to offer broadband services provided by commercial satellites.
Musk’s SpaceX controls Starlink and retains the ability to manage its network and restrict services (if needed). Eutelsat OneWeb is backed by the governments of European countries and its satellite network is effectively controlled by the continental bloc. The Bharti group has invested in it to the tune of 26%.
The French company Eutelsat operates the Eutelsat OneWeb satellite network, in which the French government holds a 29.65% stake, the British government 10.89%, and Bharti Space 17.88%. Bharti Airtel also separately owns 26% of OneWeb’s Indian subsidiary.
Finally, Jio Platforms and the Luxembourg-based communications satellites provider SES announced a joint venture in 2022 in which Jio would own 51% in exchange for being able to use the provider’s satellites. However, again, even majority Indian ownership of the business doesn’t yield control of the network to Jio.
That said, India doesn’t depend all that much on foreign satellite networks for communications at large: most ordinary telephone and internet traffic travels over terrestrial networks and the two score communications satellites the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched since 1981 support broadcasting and strategic communications. The country also has dedicated military satellite communications capabilities.
Note, however, that the three aforementioned ventures plan to provide satellite broadband services alone.
Satellite navigation
India’s position is particularly weak here because it has fumbled the setting up of its NavIC constellation, a group of satellites to provide position and navigation services over the Indian subcontinent the same way the U.S. GPS system does around the world.
On July 29 this year, Minister of State for the Department of Space Jitendra Singh admitted in Parliament that only three NavIC satellites are at present able to provide positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) signals, i.e., that the constellation currently can’t provide standalone positioning services. At least four satellites are required for this purpose.
The U.S. discontinued its policy to be able to deliberately degrade global civilian GPS accuracy in 2000 and committed to not reinstating that mechanism. However, it retains the ability to deny PNT services for military purposes over specific areas.
A less-than-direct but nonetheless important reason India hasn’t been able to maintain NavIC’s functional integrity is ISRO’s ongoing difficulties with improving its launch rate.
Cloud computing and IT
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud currently provide cloud-computing infrastructure and managed services to thousands of businesses and public institutions in India, with Gartner forecasting that Indians’ expenditure on cloud services would reach $17.5 billion in 2026.
That said, the government operates its own cloud infrastructure, called MeghRaj, through the National Informatics Centre (NIC). In December 2025, the government reported that 2,170 ministries and departments were hosting applications on MeghRaj, but that they also depended on empanelled private cloud providers, including those based abroad.
In February, AWS and an Indian company named Yotta announced they would deploy AWS Outposts technology for MeghRaj 2.0, allowing cloud services managed by AWS to operate from within NIC data centres and thus keeping Indian data physically within India.
However, the AWS documentation says Outposts need a connection to an AWS regional control system for monitoring and software updates, meaning it’s possible the arrangement will continue to leave Indian physical infrastructure exposed to a management service controlled by foreign operators.
In the cloud-computing as in the satellite services domain, while the providers’ actions are constrained by contracts and Indian law, the services they deliver technically depend on their systems.
Finally, experts have also called to increase adoption of open-source software, including operating systems. The Union government’s 2015 policy already made open-source software the preferred option for e-governance projects. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, has developed the Linux-based ‘Bharat Operating System Solutions’.
A good example from recent memory was a defective update from the U.S. cybersecurity company CrowdStrike disrupting Windows computers worldwide, including at Indian airlines, airports, and securities firms. Not all disruptive actions are retaliatory but are disruptive nonetheless.
Digital payments
The National Payments Corporation of India operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and the domestic infrastructure provides India with considerable independence from Visa and Mastercard. That said, the consumer-facing layer is non-trivially concentrated in businesses controlled by foreign players such as Google Pay, owned by Google.
However, Google Pay shutting down would not disrupt UPI itself: users could simply switch to another solution, such as PhonePe. (Although U.S.-based Walmart has a majority stake in PhonePe, it can’t control the underlying infrastructure itself — unlike with the Jio-SES venture.)
That said, banks also operate within payment and correspondent banking networks that involve foreign institutions. This is why, for instance, the European Union decided in 2022 to disconnect select Russian banks from the SWIFT transaction messaging network, significantly upsetting the ability of affected banks to access international payment channels.
India could face comparable disruptions if foreign governments imposed sanctions affecting Indian financial institutions even if the relevant banks have not violated Indian law. As a result, in the larger scheme, domestic payment systems like UPI insulate against but don’t eliminate exposure to the risks accompanying cross-border commerce.
Military equipment
After the Operation Shakti nuclear tests in 1998, the U.S. imposed sanctions on India, including restricting military supplies. As a result, the Comptroller and Auditor General later found that the 30 LHTEC T800 helicopter engines Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. had ordered from a U.S.-based manufacturer in April that year couldn’t be delivered. So HAL nixed the arrangement and ordered replacements from a French manufacturer.
Both parties here acted within the law (such as they were) and neither engaged in unilateral corporate retaliation like Musk has. Yet a foreign political decision still disturbed an Indian procurement programme.
According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) analysis published in March this year, India was the world’s second-largest importer of major arms between 2021 and 2025. Russia accounted for 40% of these imports, with India increasingly also purchasing equipment from France, Israel, and the U.S.
Even the indigenous Tejas fighter programme banks on U.S.-made GE Aerospace engines, and delays in the delivery of these machines have already constrained production and pushed delivery deadlines.
mukunth.v@thehindu.co.in
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