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Our short paper on the war in West Asia and the lessons it holds for India - authored by Gp Capt @Ahlawat2012 & me (@saikatd) for @DeepStrat_LLP. A short #thread on what we found 🧵 1/n
deepstrat.in/2026/03/28/ira…
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Saikat Datta
46.3K posts
Saikat Datta
@saikatd
CEO @deepstrat_LLP || Used to write for a living || Author: 'India's Special Forces' Views = personal. RTs≠endorsements
New Delhi, India Katılım Haziran 2009
610 Takip Edilen144.9K Takipçiler
Saikat Datta retweetledi
There are an alarming number of deepfake videos circulating of me, with convincing-sounding AI generated voice-overs over genuine footage of old interviews, having “me” saying things I have never said. Disappointed that so many on social media are believing these lies and issuing baseless comments attacking me for purported views that I have not expressed.
One simple rule of thumb: if a statement (video or otherwise) doesn’t appear on my timeline nor on that of the purported interviewer/media source, it’s fake news.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime.
The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood.
The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old.
The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose.
And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled.
The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around.
Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."
NASA@NASA
We're going around the Moon. Come watch with us. Artemis II's four-astronaut crew is lifting off from @NASAKennedy on an approximately 10-day mission that will bring us closer to living on the Moon and Mars. The launch window opens at 6:24pm ET (2224 UTC). twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
The Strait of Hormuz closure is turning into real energy shortages according to Societe General.
Michael Haigh, Global Head of FIC and Commodities Research says the final vessels carrying jet fuel to the UK will arrive in the next 48 hours and "there is no more after that" bloom.bg/4dh5Eu1
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There are many lessons for India. Can it build its “mosaic doctrine”? Can it move away from its siloed approach to war fighting? Can it learn to innovate cheaply (the #Shahed drone) and build greater resilience?
deepstrat.in/2026/03/28/ira…
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Iran also weaponised geography. The #Straits of #Hormuz not only choked the GCC countries, but also threatened the global economy and its energy security.
deepstrat.in/2026/03/28/ira…
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Our short paper on the war in West Asia and the lessons it holds for India - authored by Gp Capt @Ahlawat2012 & me (@saikatd) for @DeepStrat_LLP. A short #thread on what we found 🧵 1/n
deepstrat.in/2026/03/28/ira…
English
Saikat Datta retweetledi
Global economy could collapse by early May: Analyst issues stark warning over oil crisis msn.com/en-in/money/to…
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If there is one scholar on China you should pay attention to — it is @RushDoshi
Rush Doshi@RushDoshi
On Wednesday, I testified before the House Small Business Committee on China. Bottom Line: We obsess over China's tech giants. But we miss the small firms behind its manufacturing ecosystem. China built a program to make them world-beaters, and ours now face existential risk. Five points: 1️⃣ China's "Little Giants" (小巨人) program is one of its most consequential industrial policy programs — but few know much about it . A decade ago, Beijing made clear small businesses were critical to winning the fourth industrial revolution and important parts of the Made in China 2025 plan. So it built a system for them. It certified the most promising high-tech firms as "Little Giants," then handed them loans, subsidies, state equity investment, university research partnerships, fast-tracked patents, guaranteed contracts from state-owned enterprises, and streamlined stock listings — all in one coordinated package. Today, more than 17,000 Chinese firms hold that designation. 90% are in high-tech manufacturing. Together they raised $125 billion in private capital in just a few years. One of them is Unitree Robotics, now a global titan. 2️⃣ Our efforts to help small manufacturers through the Small Business Administration (SBA) simply do not compare to China's "Little Giants" program. China funds early-stage research through state institutes — we let our equivalent programs, SBIR and STTR, lapse. China packages loans, equity, and R&D into a single coordinated certification — we run countless uncoordinated initiatives with no common thread. China's little giants raised $125+ billion in private capital with implicit state backing — the first cohort of our SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative might raise $4 billion. China provides low-cost loans at scale — we haven't raised the loan caps or appropriations for our own manufacturer credit program. China deploys technical assistance to thousands of firms through universities and state institutes — we just cut the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and effectively shuttered its key offices. At every level, there is a "gap" between our approach and theirs. 3️⃣ Small businesses matter because they are the path to American reindustrialization. Large firms dominate U.S. manufacturing and have for decades. But small businesses enable them. 70% of Boeing's Dreamliner comes from smaller suppliers. 60% of all aerospace and defense employment is in small and mid-sized firms. The story is similar in automotives. We cannot win the industrial future if we do not empower our small businesses. 4️⃣ China is far ahead in manufacturing, and expanding the lead. By some estimates, China spends roughly $400 billion on industrial policy per year. The entire US CHIPS Act provided $50 billion over multiple years. Since China's WTO accession, our share of global manufacturing has fallen by half — from 30% to 15% — while China's quintupled from 6% to 30%. It now exceeds the next nine countries combined. It's not exactly slowing down. 5⃣ Here's what we should do. Immediately reauthorize SBIR and STTR. Launch an American one-stop-shop certification that bundles loans, equity, R&D support, and regulatory relief into one coordinated package. Scale up the SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative. Raise the quantity and caps for the SBA's Manufacturer's Access to Revolving Credit program. Restore the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. And give the SBA the mandate to deploy all of these together — the way China does. This is just a start, and a comprehensive answer to China's programs will require even more. The SBA has plenty of tools. What it lacks is the architecture to coordinate the use them. China built that architecture. It is working. Thanks to @HouseSmallBiz for the opportunity and grateful to join Andrew Pahutski, Sean Murphy, and Tom Lyons for the hearing.
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
We would like to assure all citizens that there is no shortage of petrol or diesel.
IndianOil outlets nationwide are well-stocked and functioning normally.
Unverified rumours can lead to unnecessary panic and supply disruptions.
Please avoid panic buying and trust only official sources.
Let us act responsibly and support seamless fuel availability for all.
#StayCalmIndia #TheEnergyOfIndia #IndianOil
@HardeepSPuri @PetroleumMin @neerajmittalias @Secretary_MoPNG @IndianOilcl @sahneyas
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
In 2015 an unnamed senior Iranian official met Henry Kissinger in New York and explained Iranian foreign policy vis a vis the United States with reference to Immanuel Kant's idea of perpetual peace at the endpoint of exhaustion from conflict:
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Such fine writing — a tribute and a devastating political comment.
Gandalv@Microinteracti1
Robert Mueller died last night. He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving. He had integrity. And tonight the President of the United States said good! I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good. I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word. Good. This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather. That is what is happening. That is what has happened. The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming. America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner. And the church said nothing. Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary. Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him. Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart. JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn. These men are something more painful than monsters. They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again. Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing. Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less. That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him. And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it. When Trump is gone, they will still be here. Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous. That morning is coming. Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say. He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true. He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad. The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it. That is all it needed to be. A man died. His family is broken open with grief. That is all it needed to be. Instead the President said good. And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸 Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
A large elephant herd of about 100 was seen swimming across the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India, navigating the waters at Nimati Ghat, a major river port
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
BREAKING: Indian gas tankers prepare to sail through Strait of Hormuz: Report
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/gt5gwr?update=…
GIF
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
Very, very bad news.
As I wrote in Material World, Ras Laffan is one of the most important industrial sites not just in the Gulf but in the world. LNG, helium, other products. Massive.
Whatever happens next, serious damage to this site could reverberate for months, maybe years.
QatarEnergy@qatarenergy
QatarEnergy Statement on Missile Attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City QatarEnergy confirms that Ras Laffan Industrial City this evening has been the subject of missile attacks. Emergency response teams were deployed immediately to contain the resulting fires, as extensive damage has been caused. All personnel have been accounted for and no casualties have been reported at this time. QatarEnergy will continue to communicate the latest available information. #Qatar
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What kind of a country bombs a hospital (and in a country that doesn’t have any air defence)?
Answer: Pakistan
Reuters Asia@ReutersAsia
WATCH: At least 400 people were killed and 250 injured in an air strike by Pakistan on a drug users rehabilitation hospital in the Afghanistan capital Kabul, a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban government said reut.rs/4bKf7IW
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Saikat Datta retweetledi
DEEPFAKE ALERT!
A digitally manipulated video of the former Chief of Army Staff, Gen Manoj Pande (Retd.) Is being shared on social media.
Stay alert against fake and manipulated videos on social media!
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