USISPF hosted a Leadership Dialogue on “AI in Defence: Applications, Infrastructure, & Trust” as its eighth pre-summit event in the lead up to the India AI Impact Summit.
The dialogue featured senior leaders including Lt. General Harsh Chhibber, AVSM, VSM, Ph.D, Director General Information Systems, Ministry of Defence;
Vinayak Godse, CEO, Data Security Council of India ; Arun Shetty, Chief Technical Officer and Sr Director, Solutions Engineering, Cisco; Nitin Gokhale, Founder, Bharat Shakti, along with leading domain experts and industry stakeholders.
The discussion examined AI’s transformative role across defence domains, while identifying key challenges related to infrastructure constraints, data gaps, and the need for trusted AI systems supported by robust safety benchmarks.
Speakers highlighted applications spanning maritime domain awareness, autonomous systems, predictive maintenance, and cyber defence. The dialogue also addressed the balance between human oversight and AI autonomy, ethical considerations surrounding lethal autonomous systems, data sovereignty, and supply-chain resilience.
Participants emphasized the importance of civil-military collaboration, rigorous testing and validation frameworks, and responsible AI adoption to strengthen defence preparedness in an evolving strategic environment.
