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11034
Power of UncertAInity
Sat Oct 31, 7:30 PM
Srinivas Kodali
Power of UncertAInty: The Battle for Privacy, Identity and Sovereignty
In conversation with Anand V.
India's digital public infrastructures Aadhaar, UPI and a booming software industry have changed how a billion people live, pay and prove who they are. But does using technology at scale make a nation technologically sovereign? Who really controls the hardware, the cloud, the data and the identities that our digital lives run on?
In Power of UncertAInty (Rupa Publications, 2026), Anand V. and Srinath Sridharan argue that digital sovereignty cannot be declared through slogans. The book looks at:
- how India's digital success still rests on foreign hardware, cloud networks and global supply chains
- how imported regulations, such as heavy KYC mandates, can end up burdening ordinary citizens instead of protecting them
- why treating AI as a human-like entity, rather than the statistical tool it is, leads to bad policy
- why responsibility for protecting our data and identity lies with the institutions and people who build, deploy and regulate these systems
In place of slogans, the authors propose a "Digital Panchsheel": a framework built on open-source development, export-led innovation and grassroots economic freedom.
Join Anand V. for an evening on privacy, identity and who holds power in the age of AI, followed by an open Q&A with the audience.
About the speaker:
Anand V. (Anand Venkatanarayanan) is a cybersecurity and privacy researcher, and co-founder and CTO of DeepStrat. He has spent two decades in the technology industry, including at AT&T, Intel and NetApp. He has appeared as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of India in the Aadhaar case and before the Supreme Court–appointed technical committee on Pegasus spyware, and he writes regularly on technology, security and public policy.
In conversation with Anand V.
India's digital public infrastructures Aadhaar, UPI and a booming software industry have changed how a billion people live, pay and prove who they are. But does using technology at scale make a nation technologically sovereign? Who really controls the hardware, the cloud, the data and the identities that our digital lives run on?
In Power of UncertAInty (Rupa Publications, 2026), Anand V. and Srinath Sridharan argue that digital sovereignty cannot be declared through slogans. The book looks at:
- how India's digital success still rests on foreign hardware, cloud networks and global supply chains
- how imported regulations, such as heavy KYC mandates, can end up burdening ordinary citizens instead of protecting them
- why treating AI as a human-like entity, rather than the statistical tool it is, leads to bad policy
- why responsibility for protecting our data and identity lies with the institutions and people who build, deploy and regulate these systems
In place of slogans, the authors propose a "Digital Panchsheel": a framework built on open-source development, export-led innovation and grassroots economic freedom.
Join Anand V. for an evening on privacy, identity and who holds power in the age of AI, followed by an open Q&A with the audience.
About the speaker:
Anand V. (Anand Venkatanarayanan) is a cybersecurity and privacy researcher, and co-founder and CTO of DeepStrat. He has spent two decades in the technology industry, including at AT&T, Intel and NetApp. He has appeared as an expert witness before the Supreme Court of India in the Aadhaar case and before the Supreme Court–appointed technical committee on Pegasus spyware, and he writes regularly on technology, security and public policy.