National Security: Challenges, Threats and Opportunities for India in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has appeared as a transformative force restructuring the manner of national security and strategic rivalry in the twenty-first century. For India, a growing regional power located in a explosive geopolitical atmosphere, AI presents both extraordinary strategic chances and multidimensional security encounters. This paper scrutinizes the consequences of AI for India’s national security through the investigative lenses of Realism, Techno-Nationalism, and Securitization Theory. It argues that AI is gradually becoming a strategic factor of power, military efficiency, and sovereign autonomy in the international system. While AI gives India chances for military modernization, cyber defence improvement, intelligence amalgamation, and strategic balancing against rivals, it instantaneously presents new intimidations including autonomous warfare, AI-enabled cyberattacks, algorithmic deception, and technological necessity on foreign digital substructures. By manufacturing strategic studies literature with developing discussions on military innovation and digital sovereignty, the paper tries to explore that India’s national security plan must move yonder technological acceptance toward the development of a comprehensive AI governance and tactical integration agenda. The study accomplishes that India’s forthcoming security posture will be contingent meaningfully on its capacity to join AI while handling the strategic uncertainty, ethical problems, and reliance risks made by AI-enabled security alteration.