For decades, Vizag has been a city of arrivals. Cargo ships from across the Bay of Bengal dock at its harbors; cranes move steel and coal; port sirens echo across the Eastern Ghats. But now, a new kind of vessel is landing at our shores undersea data cables.

As fiber routes touch down along Andhra’s coastline and hyperscale data centers rise near the shipyards, Vizag is becoming both a sea port and a data port. The city that once moved the world’s goods is now poised to move its intelligence. We are witnessing a transformation from a maritime hub into a digital nervous system — one that connects India’s eastern seaboard to the cloud economies of Singapore, Japan, and the U.S. West Coast.

McKinsey calls this the Agentic Era: a time when AI no longer merely assists human action but acts autonomously, adaptively, and at scale. From my vantage point on the coast, it feels like a historical echo. As ships once carried commodities, data cables now carry cognition. And at the heart of this convergence lies a new currency trust.

A few days ago, a friend sent me a message on WhatsApp asmall post announcing that he is selling lab-grown diamonds. That caught my attention and started thinking how the whole landscape changed from those times I worked in worldwide diamond. Even Ten years ago, this would have sounded likescience fiction. Today, it’s simply the new reality of luxury.

I couldn’t help recalling the words of, Mr. Luc J. Cleas,who during those opening sessions of training programs said, “Diamonds are for everyone.” When he said it almost three decades ago, he meant efficiency better yields, leaner operations, and affordable stones for more people. But standing in today’s world, those words carry a different resonance.Diamonds truly are for everyone now. Not just because they are accessible, but because technology and shifting values have redrawn the very idea of brilliance.

Technology and the Art of Light

Among all transformations, none excites me more than theevolution of the Tolkovsky cut my lifelong fascination.

When Marcel Tolkovsky in 1919, calculated the precisegeometry for maximum brilliance: 58 facets, each tuned for perfect light return. His formula shaped a century of craftsmanship.

We once relied on instinct and loupe; now brilliance itselfis data-driven. Yet, the poetry remains the same brilliance is still about understanding how light behaves inside a human idea of beauty.

The Lab-Grown Renaissance

If technology redefined cutting, it revolutionized creation.Lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) once reserved for industrial drills are now centerpieces of engagement rings and ethical luxury.

By 2024, LGDs made up roughly 25 percent of globaldiamond sales by value

Their prices, once only 20 percent below naturals, now standat nearly 80 percent less. That affordability, coupled with ESG appeal, has opened new markets among young and design-conscious buyers.

Geopolitics of Brilliance

The diamond story is inseparable from global politics. U.S.and G7 sanctions on Russian diamonds notably from Alrosa, which contributes about 30 percent of world output have redrawn supply routes.

Botswana and Angola are reclaiming value through localbeneficiation, while Dubai has emerged as a trading nexus between continents. Even Antwerp has changed, enforcing strict cash-transaction limits and compliance standards. Transparency is no longer a virtue it’s survival.

The Digital Revolution of Trust

The pandemic accelerated a shift that was already underway: the digital diamond trade.

Virtual showrooms, AR fittings, and blockchain verificationhave made it possible to buy brilliance with a click and trust it. The handshake has evolved into a digital ledger, but the sentiment remains timeless: trust, verified.

What the Stone Still Teaches

After two decades of watching this industry evolve, I’vecome to see diamonds as mirrors of civilization enduring yet ever-changing.

From Antwerp’s vaults to Indian cutting hubs, from De Beers’monopoly to blockchain marketplaces, every transformation tells the same story to catch light differently, you must change your angles.

The art of brilliance has never been about hardness. It hasalways been about perspective about the willingness to be refined, again and again, until light finds its way through.

A Final Reflection

Mr. Luc’s words “Diamonds are for everyone” havefinally come true, though in ways none of us imagined.

In today’s world, brilliance is not confined to mines ormachines; it’s defined by values, transparency, and imagination. Thediamond’s greatest transformation is not optical it’s ethical.

In that sense, the industry has found its finest cut yet.

Last year didn’t simply bring “more attacks.” It brought attacks with intent. Web DDoS campaigns rose by ~549% year over year, shifting from raw volume to application-layer (L7) precision—using techniques like HTTP/2 Rapid Reset and Continuation Floods to exhaust logic rather than links

Meanwhile, the quiet assassins—“low and slow” streams—lingered for ~9.7 hours on average, more than doubling from the year before. This wasn’t chaos; it was choreography

At the same time, hacktivism industrialized. Groups that once operated as lone wolves began to ally across borders, timing campaigns to elections, conflicts, and cultural moments. Telegram evolved into a coordination hub and storefront—complete with bot-driven DDoS-as-a-service and crypto payments—even as moderation pressure grew

Beyond Symbolism, Toward Systems

India’s first Swadeshi moment taught us that everyday choices can bend history. Swadeshi 2.0 asks for something harder—and better. Not bonfires, but benchmarks. Not closing doors, but opening workshops that meet the world’s toughest standards. This is a movement of preference, not prohibition: we will buy Indian when Indian earns our trust; we will welcome global partners who meet our standards. Done right, this is how a nation with youthful hands, multilingual minds, and deep technical ambition turns sentiment into strength—calmly, methodically, and with confidence.

Sitting in Vizag, I look at “prefer local” through four lenses that actually move the needle: workforce readiness, technological trust, language compatibility, and national rhythm. This post is a blueprint—cautious in method, confident in outcome.

What Swadeshi 2.0 Is (and Isn’t)

Is: A standards-first, trust-first, skill-first bias for Indian capability. It invites capital and know-how, but insists on repairability, update policies, data safeguards, and domestic value-add.
Isn’t: A siege economy or nostalgic protectionism. Blanket bans and tariff walls everywhere don’t build competence; credible competition does.
Thesis: If we wire trust into products, skill into people, and openness into markets, Swadeshi 2.0 becomes a flywheel: preference → scale → quality → exports.

Global Playbooks—Leaps We Can Learn From

Japan: Quality as national strategy. Post-war Japan didn’t win by closing markets; it won by institutionalizing quality—from MITI’s coordination to Deming’s methods, keiretsu supplier development, and obsessive after-sales service. The flywheel was simple: export discipline → customer feedback → kaizen loops → world-class reliability. Two takeaways for Swadeshi 2.0: make auditability and serviceability non-negotiable (SBOMs, patch SLAs, repairability); treat defects as inputs to improvement, not reputational theater.

Singapore: Institutions over slogans. Competitiveness came from predictable policy, ruthless ease of doing business, and compounding human capital (EDB deal-making, skills vouchers, trusted standards, ports-to-payments logistics). For India: anchor stable, multi-year rules; fund testing and certification so MSMEs pass big-buyer gates; make skills portable via micro-credentials. Add Korea/Taiwan’s pattern: export discipline plus supplier upgrading shows that scale happens when small firms plug into demanding buyers. The common thread: not protection, but precision—of standards, skills, and state capacity—so local products earn preference at home and abroad.

Workforce 2030: Turning Demographics into Design

A youthful population is not a dividend by default; it’s a design challenge. The next decade belongs to economies that can marry skills → standards → scale:

• Skills: CPR-simple digital basics (password hygiene, MFA, safe device use) + gold-standard trades—welding, machining, mechatronics, logistics control, maritime safety. Add AI-in-the-loop so the same worker delivers more, not just works more.
• Standards: Train to internationally accepted certifications (quality, safety, cybersecurity) so “Indian-made” signals auditability, not just sentiment.
• Scale: Equip MSME clusters with shared testing labs, tool rooms, and logistics. Scale happens when small firms meet big-buyer specs without guesswork.

Policy north star: Pay for outcomes (placement, wage lift, export readiness), not seat time. When skill produces trusted output, preference follows.

For the last half-century, the global order has been shaped not just by nuclear arsenals or energy reserves, but by technological hegemony. From microchips to artificial intelligence, each wave of technological disruption has shifted the center of gravity of global power. We are now on the brink of another such seismic shift—and it’s called Quantum Computing.

Just as oil defined the 20th-century battlefield, quantum supremacy may well define the 21st-century strategic landscape.

This article by Govind Varma discusses the intensifying global competition for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements, which are essential for modern technologies. The piece highlights a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky alongside Vice President Vance as a microcosm of this struggle, revealing the geopolitical leverage of resource-rich nations like Ukraine. It further explores how Africa is redefining its relationships with former colonial powers and how India and the EU are seeking to diversify their supply chains to reduce dependence on China, who currently has a near-monopoly on rare earth elements. Ultimately, the author suggests this mineral race is reshaping international alliances and driving a new era of high-stakes resource diplomacy, where access to these minerals is becoming a key currency of power.

This episode focuses on India's maritime resurgence and its strategic importance in the Indian Ocean. It highlights India's response to China's growing influence, particularly the "String of Pearls" strategy. INS Varsha, a state-of-the-art submarine base, is presented as a key asset in India's naval modernization. The article emphasizes India's multifaceted approach, including naval upgrades, strategic partnerships, and technological advancements to safeguard its maritime interests. Ultimately, the analysis underscores India's crucial role in maintaining regional stability and ensuring freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific.

Asia Pacifik Risk Outlook for the year 2025