Tag: india

The Decline of American Diplomacy

A few years ago at a panel discussion at Washington DC’s venerable Tabard Inn, I spotted a face I hadn’t expected to see. But Thomas R. Pickering, even at 90 years of age, stood out. A legend in the annals of American diplomacy, Pickering had served as US Ambassador to the UN, Russia, Israel, and India, among a number of other countries. He retired as the third-ranking member of the State Department at the end of the Clinton administration. So formidable a diplomat was Pickering that, according to longtime New York Times diplomatic correspondent Leslie Gelb, Pickering was seen as “arguably the best-ever senior U.S. representative” to the UN. And that list included the likes of Adlai Stevenson, George Ball, and George H.W. Bush. Gelb’s report was occasioned by Pickering’s sudden transfer from Turtle Bay to New Delhi. Why was he being moved? Well, as Gelb told it, “It is widely believed by Washington cognoscenti that Ambassador Pickering is being posted to India for the worst of reasons: Secretary of State James Baker feels that the career diplomat is casting too big a shadow on the Baker parade.”

Nevertheless, Pickering’s appointment to India was in keeping with a tradition that US presidents had of sending among the most capable men available to New Delhi. During the Cold War, it was a particularly sensitive post given India’s role as a leader of the non-aligned bloc-in other words, those countries that refused either Washington or Moscow’s tutelage. In 1961, John F. Kennedy sent his friend, the famed Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith to New Delhi. In addition to running point on the war that broke out between India and China in 1962, Galbraith offered sagacious advice to Kennedy before, during, and after the Bay of Pigs and October Crisis. He was also among the few to see the problems ahead in Vietnam.

Following Galbraith some years later in New Delhi was another habitué of Harvard Yard, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan would also serve as UN Ambassador and then later, for a quarter century, as the senior Democratic Senator from New York. Moynihan, a Democrat who had in the 1950s worked for New York Governor Averell Harriman, was sent by President Richard Nixon to help reset relations with India in the aftermath of Nixon’s “tilt” toward Pakistan. While in India, Moynihan proposed, and then carried out, a creative debt write-off program that helped to improve relations with the world’s most populous democracy.

Recent US administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) have often decided to send career foreign service officers to New Delhi—which is all to the good, after all, Pickering was a career foreign service officer. Such men and women often bring a deft touch in confronting nettlesome problems.

President Joe Biden’s (or the person who was actually making the decisions for Biden) choice for Ambassador to India was, for reasons that remain obscure, the nepo-mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti. The downward trend in quality seems set to continue. Last week, President Trump announced that a former errand boy for Sen. Rand Paul’s office (an office that seems to attract self-important types who think that plagiarizing Wikipedia is a substitute for speechwriting) who somehow parlayed that role into a publishing partnership with the Trump sons (the partnership produced the imaginatively titled Letters to Trump—available for a cool $100 at trumpstore.com) will be his nominee to head the diplomatic mission in New Delhi. Sergio Gor, a 38 year old native of Malta with zero diplomatic or foreign affairs experience (but, as it happens, ample experience as an amateur wedding DJ) will take the reins in New Delhi pending Senate confirmation (or, more likely, a recess appointment). It is said that for the last 7 months Gor has been the Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, but there is little evidence of his time there, as scores of political appointments remain unfilled.

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Dark side of Indian immigration: NE hotel ‘sex trafficking’ story is worse than you thought…

As many of you know, the DOJ and FBI recently busted an Indian immigration sex-trafficking ring. This wasn’t just a small operation; it was an empire built on child trafficking, drug dealing, and visa fraud, among many other crimes. It was all happening in Nebraska, inside several filthy hotels owned by Indian immigrants, some of whom were in the country on nothing more than visitor visas.

But what you don’t know is how bad it really was and how long this had been going on.

Kash Patel:

The FBI has busted an alleged human trafficking ring with 10 children, some under 12, and 17 adults.

The individuals were rescued from filthy Nebraska hotels where they were allegedly trafficked for sex and forced labor.

Your FBI will never stop fighting for victims and delivering justice and we will hunt predators to the ends of the earth.

The hotel was wired for filming, and the Indian immigrants running the operation would sit around watching the private x-rated footage like it was their own twisted daytime soap opera.

Court records reveal the true horror that was happening right under everyone’s noses in the Midwest, carried out by people we welcomed into our country.

Headline USA:

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced a slew of charges against four Indian nationals for running a human trafficking ring out of several Nebraska hotels.

Court records reveal shocking details about the allegations against Ketankumar Chaudhari, Rashmi Ajit Samani, Amit Chaudhari, Amit Chaudhary, and Maheshkuma Chaudhari. Along with pimping out children, they also allegedly sold drugs, trafficked in stolen goods, harbored fugitives, and committed widespread visa fraud over the last five years out of those hotels, which were wired with hidden cameras.
However, law enforcement’s initial investigation of this crime syndicate had nothing to do with violent crime.

Rather, it began as a probe into an Indian call center. According to charging papers, Indian scammers posing as Federal Trade Commission employees would call victims and bilk them for cash under the pretense of a federal investigation. As it turned out, many of those scammers lived in hotels owned by the leader of the conspiracy, Ketankumar, who first entered the country in 2008 as a visitor on a B1/B2 visa.

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Indian Politician Defends Indian U-Turn Trucker

India’s government should oppose a U.S. government crackdown on the 150,000 Indian drivers in the U.S. trucking industry, said an Indian politician whose district includes many of the drivers’ families.

Harsimrat Kaur Badal represents a district in the Punjab region, which is home to many members of the Sikh ethnic group who work illegally or legally in the U.S. trucking industry. They include the Indian truck driver, Harjinder Singh, who is facing homicide charges after killing three Americans in a turnpike U-turn.

Badal was formerly a cabinet minister in India’s federal government, and used Twitter to ask India’s foreign minister to intervene in U.S. politics to protect the Sikh truck drivers:

More than [150,000] Punjabi truck drivers in the US shud not be discriminated against due to Harjinder [Singh]’s mistake & their livelihood shud not be snatched from them by denying them work visas & making it more difficult for them to drive [U.S.] trucks by bringing in new language proficiency rules.

A crackdown would “have a detrimental effect on [the left-behind] families” in India that depend on the wage remittances sent home by Indian migrants, said Badal, who is a Sikh.

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Man who alleged hundreds were raped and buried in Indian temple town arrested

Police in India have arrested a man who recently alleged that he had been coerced into burying hundred of bodies of women who were raped before being murdered.

His startling claims had thrown the tiny religious town of Dharmasthala in the southern state of Karnataka into turmoil.

Home to the centuries-old temple to Manjunatha Swamy – an incarnation of Shiva from the Hindu holy trinity – the town attracts thousands of pilgrims daily and is central to the fabric of local people’s lives.

A political row in the state resulted in the government setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to verify the man’s allegations.

A SIT official who did not want to be named told the BBC on Saturday morning that the man “has been arrested for perjury”.

In early July, the middle-aged man had lodged a police complaint and appeared before a magistrate to record his statement. His identity has been withheld and, so far, he has appeared in public dressed fully in black, including a hood and a face mask.

In the police complaint which the BBC has seen, the man said he worked as a cleaner at the temple from 1995 to 2014 – and alleged that he had been forced to bury the bodies of hundreds of girls and young women who were brutally raped and murdered.

He narrated five alleged incidents where he gave specifics, and said there were many others. Some of the victims, the man alleged, were minors.

He said he had been in hiding since 2014 and had returned and spoken up to silence his nagging conscience.

The cleaner did not name anyone but blamed the “temple administration and its staff” – allegations the temple chief rejected as “false and baseless”.

When he was taken to the magistrate, the man went on to produce a human skull from his bag as evidence. He said it belonged to a body he had buried and that he had retrieved it recently from the spot.

“The skull and skeletal remains he produced are not brought from any spot in which he claimed to have buried the bodies,” the SIT official said.

Saturday’s arrest comes as a major turn in a saga that has set off a firestorm within the state and outside.

The allegations received intense media coverage. After concerns were raised by the state’s women’s commission, the government launched a major criminal investigation and set up the SIT.

For the past several weeks, the team conducted excavations at locations in and around Dharmasthala to verify the man’s claims. He had initially identified 13 spots – some of them in hard-to-reach areas covered by dense foliage and reportedly infested with venomous snakes.

Sources in the SIT confirmed to the BBC that human remains, including a skull and nearly 100 bone fragments, have been found at two of the spots and had been sent for forensic testing. It is not clear who they belong to.

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Another Indian commercial driver was just charged with killing an American…

We’re sad to report that it’s happened again. Another Indian commercial truck driver has been charged in a deadly crash that killed an innocent American. This crisis of foreign truck drivers on US roads looks like it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

This is the American man who was killed. Mr. Wilkerson was a volunteer firefighter and an EMT. Our hearts go out to his family. This was a totally preventable death.

The driver, Mr. Sarbjeet Parmar, has been charged with negligent homicide along with five other counts. He’s not only accused of killing one man but also of injuring an entire car full of people.

KTVQ:

The driver of a commercial vehicle involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 90 that claimed the life of a volunteer firefighter and EMT has been charged with negligent homicide.

According to documents filed in Yellowstone County District Court, Sarbjeet Parmar, 39 of Buckley, Wash., has also been charged with five counts of felony criminal endangerment.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges Monday afternoon. Judge David Carter ordered a $10,000 bond. Parmar must wear GPS monitoring and surrender his passport as conditions of bail.

Court records state Parmar was driving a commercial vehicle pulling a trailer on Dec. 22, 2024 when the vehicle went into the median at mile marker 431 at about 4 p.m., rolled onto its side and entered the oncoming lane of traffic.

The commercial vehicle then struck a Volkswagen passenger car and a Chevrolet Suburban. The driver of the Suburban, 56-year-old Kevin Wilkerson of Laurel, was killed. Three other occupants of the Suburban and two occupants of the Volkswagen were injured.

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Woke judge stops illegal migrant’s deportation because his wife has ADHD

A Federal Court judge halted a man’s deportation to India due to his Canadian wife’s ADHD-related health issues and the financial strain his departure would place on his sister.

Jagjit Singh, an Indian national, arrived in Canada on a temporary visa in 2021 seeking refugee status. He withdrew his claim after marrying L.B. on January 13, 2025, for sponsorship. 

While immigration processed his spousal sponsorship, Singh, who had overstayed his visa and was no longer seeking refugee protection, faced deportation. 

His wife met sponsorship eligibility in May, and Singh received an August removal date in July. CBSA denied his request to delay deportation until his wife’s application was decided. 

Singh appealed to Canada’s Federal Court and was heard Tuesday by Justice Avvy Yao-Yao Go, who rendered her decision the same day, according to the National Post.

Go stated the Officer improperly assessed evidence and misinterpreted discretion, particularly regarding irreparable harm. She clarified that irreparable harm is non-monetary, affecting not just the deported individual but anyone directly affected and remaining in Canada.

The judge cited harm to both Singh’s wife and sister in her ruling.

“In the end,” Go wrote, “taking into consideration the irreparable harm to [Singh’s] spouse on the … I find that granting the stay until the underlying [application] is determined would be just and equitable in all the circumstances of the case.”

“The evidence before the Court further indicates that the Applicant’s sister has put her house on sale in light of the Decision denying the Applicant’s request to defer his removal.”

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AI Startup Backed by Microsoft Revealed to Be 700 Indian Employees Pretending to Be Chatbots

A once-hyped AI startup backed by Microsoft has filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that its so-called artificial intelligence was actually hundreds of human workers in India pretending to be chatbots.

Builder.ai, a London-based company previously valued at $1.5 billion, marketed its platform as an AI-powered solution that made building apps as simple as ordering pizza. Its virtual assistant, “Natasha,” was supposed to generate software using artificial intelligence.

In reality, nearly 700 engineers in India were manually coding customer requests behind the scenes, the Times of India reported.

The ruse began to collapse in May when lender Viola Credit seized $37 million from the company’s accounts, uncovering that Builder.ai had inflated its 2024 revenue projections by 300%. An audit revealed the company generated just $50 million in revenue, far below the $220 million it claimed to investors.

A Wall Street Journal report from 2019 had already questioned Builder.ai’s AI claims, and a former executive sued the company that same year for allegedly misleading investors and overstating its technical capabilities.

Despite that, the company raised over $445 million from big names including Microsoft and the Qatar Investment Authority. Builder.ai’s collapse has triggered a federal investigation in the U.S., with prosecutors in New York requesting financial documents and customer records.

Founder Sachin Dev Duggal stepped down earlier this year and was replaced by Manpreet Ratia, who reportedly uncovered the company’s internal misrepresentations.

The company now owes millions to Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing costs and has laid off around 1,000 employees. On LinkedIn, the company announced its entry into insolvency proceedings, citing “historic challenges and past decisions” that strained its finances.

The fallout is seen as one of the biggest failures of the post-ChatGPT AI investment boom and has renewed scrutiny of “AI washing”—the trend of rebranding manual services as artificial intelligence to secure funding.

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From helpdesk to havoc: Why Clorox is suing Indian company for $380 million

In a San Francisco courtroom, the Clorox Company recently dropped a legal bombshell – a $380 million lawsuit against Indian-American information technology company Cognizant, alleging gross negligence in a 2023 cyberattack.

In the complaint dated July 22, 2025, Clorox contends a hacker simply called Cognizant’s helpdesk, lied about being an employee and was handed network credentials – no identity verification, no oversight, just a password transfer. The resulting cyberattack ended up paralyzing Clorox’s operations, costing upwards of $49 million in remediation and much more in lost business.

Offshoring ecosystem under the microscope

Cognizant, though officially headquartered in New Jersey, was founded in Chennai, India in 1994, and now employs over 250,000 people across India, providing everything from software development to helpdesk services for global corporations. Industry analysts have warned that shifting U.S. companies’ sensitive customer data offshore exposes Americans to significant privacy risks. India lacks comprehensive data privacy laws or an enforcement body like the Federal Trade Commission.

While offshoring offers cheap labor and scalability, it also creates layers of separation between U.S.-based clients and the employees handling their data. Those layers can conceal critical weaknesses.

Clorox case: A failed firewall

In Clorox’s telling, the hacker didn’t crack advanced encryption or “spear-phish” executives. He just called Cognizant on the phone and lied about who and what he was. That was enough. Cognizant agents reset the account, handed over passwords and reopened Clorox’s VPN access without a single identity check. Agents reportedly said phrases like: “Here’s the password … Welcome …”

Cognizant disputes the claim, saying its contract with Clorox, dating back to 2013, covered only helpdesk tasks, not broader cybersecurity responsibilities. Cognizant characterized Clorox’s own defenses as “inept,” calling the attack partly Clorox’s fault.

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Mutant Rice and Lab Rats: Bill Gates Sparks Outrage After Referring to India as ‘Testing Ground’ for Experiments

In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as “a kind of laboratory to try things.” The controversy resurfaced with the May 5 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties that critics warn may come with serious unintended consequences and risks.

In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as “a kind of laboratory to try things” during a podcast with Reid Hoffman. Gates emphasized the nation’s stability as a “testing ground” for global initiatives.

His remarks were widely condemned. Social media erupted, with many Indians accusing Gates of reducing their nation to a mere experimental ground for Western interests.

Social media users labelled Indians as “guinea pigs” in Gates’ laboratory and questioned the ethics and motives behind such experimentation.

A widely reported response on X captured the sentiment:

“India is a laboratory, and we Indians are Guinea Pigs for Bill Gates. This person has managed everyone from the Government to opposition parties to the media. His office operates here without FCRA, and our education system has made him a hero! I don’t know when we will wake up!”

(FCRA refers to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, which regulates foreign contributions to ensure they are not detrimental to the national interest.)

The controversy resurfaced with the May 5 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties: Kamala (DRR Dhan 100 Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1.

These are not classified as genetically modified (GM) crops. Unlike traditional GM crops, which deliberately introduce foreign DNA, these gene-edited varieties use CRISPR-Cas SDN-1 and SDN-2 technologies, which are often claimed not to introduce foreign DNA but only to alter existing genes.

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X Complies with Over 8,000 Indian Government Censorship Orders, Blocks News and User Accounts

The X Global Government Affairs team has revealed that the social company has received over 8,000 censorship orders from the Indian government, affecting access in that country to entire accounts.

We obtained a copy of the memo for you here.

Among them are executive orders to block accounts of international news organizations and prominent X users, the post said, adding that the company will comply by “withholding” those accounts only in India.

Other platforms have also received the same orders but have yet to comment on the issue.

According to the post, the decision was not an easy one to make but X views it as necessary in order for the platform to continue its presence in India.

Noncompliance with the orders could have resulted in “significant fines” and even imprisonment of local employees, X announced.

It is further explained that the Indian government’s orders do not state which individual posts were found in violation of the country’s law, opting rather to demand that entire accounts must be blocked.

“For a significant number of accounts, we did not receive any evidence or justification to block (them),” Global Affairs writes.

Even though the decision has been made to comply with the orders at this time, X made it clear the company “disagrees” and views the blocking of accounts rather than individual allegedly offending posts as not only “unnecessary” but also a form of censorship that affects both existing and future content, in that way violating users’ right to free speech.

Having complied in order to stay in the market, X is now “exploring all possible legal avenues available to the company.”

The Global Affairs post is urging affected users who are located in India, to turn to the courts in a bid to have the orders overturned – since they, unlike X, have this option. Those users are also reminded they can contact the government directly.

X lists a number of legal aid organizations that those with blocked accounts can consider contacting, and explains the decision to go public with some details about the censorship orders as “essential for transparency” – while “lack of disclosure discourages accountability and can contribute to arbitrary decision making.”

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