AI Sovereignty: The Lesson India Should Take from the Fable Restrictions
The recent U.S. restrictions around Anthropic's latest Fable and Mythos models should serve as a wake-up call for every major economy. The immediate debate is about one company and one set of models.
The larger debate is about sovereignty.
Today, millions of developers, startups, enterprises, researchers, and governments around the world are building on AI infrastructure they do not control. The moment access to a frontier AI model can be restricted by a foreign government, AI stops being just a technology discussion and becomes a sovereignty discussion.
Imagine spending years building products, workflows, research programs, customer support systems, educational platforms, or even national digital infrastructure on top of AI models that can become unavailable due to policy decisions made thousands of miles away.
That is not merely a technology risk. It is a strategic risk.
Many discussions focus on which model is better—Claude, GPT, Gemini, or others. But that may be the wrong question.
The real question is: Can a nation build critical industries on infrastructure it does not ultimately control?
India successfully built sovereignty in digital identity, payments, and large-scale digital public infrastructure.
AI may be the next strategic layer. And sovereign AI is about much more than having an Indian chatbot. It requires capabilities across: ✅ Compute infrastructure (GPUs and data centers) ✅ Foundation models ✅ AI research ✅ AI infrastructure platforms ✅ Enterprise AI ecosystems ✅ Skilled AI talent
The future divide may not be: Countries with AI Countries without AI
It may instead become: Countries that own AI infrastructure Countries that rent AI infrastructure
India cannot afford to remain permanently in the second category. The Fable episode is not really about Anthropic.
It is about a future in which a handful of companies and countries control the infrastructure that powers knowledge work, research, education, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and national competitiveness. Frontier models can be imported. Dependence cannot. The biggest lesson from this episode is simple: AI is no longer just software. It is becoming national infrastructure.