From January’s protests in Iran to coordinated US–Israel strikes and widening retaliation, this episode maps how internal unrest morphed into a geopolitical flashpoint. Host Anirban Chowdhury and ET’s Executive Editor (Politics) Pranab Dhal Samanta break down the escalation ladder: is this about regime change, deterrence, or domestic politics in Washington? Can Iran’s clerical system withstand external pressure without fracturing internally? We examine oil volatility, Hormuz risks, Gulf street sentiment, and the proxy chessboard. We also assess China and Russia’s limited but strategic positioning. Finally, where does India stand — balancing energy security, diaspora protection, and strategic restraint in an increasingly combustible region?

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Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

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Credits: CBN News, LiveNOW from FOX, Fox News, FRANCE 24 English, WION, Business News, Sky News Australia, Firstpost, BBC News, Guardian News, DRM News

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What if AI companions are inserting themselves between children and the very people meant to guide them? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks to Dr. Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications, The London School of Economics and Political Science and Dr Usha Raman, former professor,Dept of Communication, University of Hyderabad about the uncharted territory where generative AI meets childhood development. The conversation explores why AI systems sometimes offer dangerous advice to young users, how class and language create disparities in AI access across India, and whether the assumption of "inevitable" tech adoption overshadows critical ethical discussions. 

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Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

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The existential alignment problem sits at the heart of the AI revolution — and the consequences of getting it wrong could be irreversible. What happens when superintelligent systems pursue fixed objectives that don’t fully capture human values? How do we govern machines that may soon outperform us across domains? And who decides what level of risk humanity should accept?

The conversation spans AGI timelines, the concentration of economic and political power, democratic resilience, liability-based regulation, and whether governments can realistically regulate frontier AI amid an intensifying global race.

From extinction-level risk estimates cited by AI CEOs to experimental evidence of systems resisting shutdown, this is no longer speculative science fiction — it is a live governance crisis unfolding in real time.

On this episode of The Morning Brief, ET’s Swathi Moorthy sits down with AI scientists and pioneers Stuart Russell and Yoshua Bengio for a candid, high-stakes discussion on the trajectory of artificial intelligence and the choices that will shape humanity’s future.

As capabilities surge and geopolitical rivalry sharpens, one defining question remains: are we building tools to serve humanity — or systems that could ultimately outmaneuver it?

You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: X and Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  and much more.

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In a wide-ranging conversation with host Surabhi Agarwal, IBM's chairman, president and CEO Arvind Krishna addresses the questions every technology leader and IT professional in India is wrestling with right now. He pushes back on AI doomsday narratives for software services, makes a compelling case for why hybrid cloud and mainframe architecture remain indispensable, and shares his candid take on job displacement, quantum computing's commercial horizon, and what India's sovereign AI strategy must focus on. He also offers a measured reading of global economic uncertainty, tariffs, and why 2026 could surprise on the upside for technology spending.

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You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin, X profiles and read her Newspaper Articles. 

Listen to Corner Office Conversation: Corner Office Conversation with Sridhar Vembu, CEO, of Zoho Corporation, Corner Office Conversation with Gunjan Soni, Country Managing Director, Youtube India, Corner Office Conversation with Elizabeth Reid, Head of Search, Google, Corner Office Conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV & Surge and much more.

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The US Supreme Court just handed Trump a legal defeat and it barely slowed him down. In a landmark ruling, the court struck down tariffs imposed under emergency economic powers, only for the White House to pivot instantly to alternative legal pathways. For India, caught just before a trade deal that had finally brought some clarity, the timing couldn't be worse. Host Anirban Chowdhury talks to Bipin Sapra, Partner and Indirect Tax Policy Leader, EY India about an 18% tariff rate that once looked certain is now up in the air. Tax structures, transfer pricing, corporate margins all recalibrating in real time. As one expert puts it bluntly: wait, watch, and don't sign anything just yet.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: X and Linkedin

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In a candid, unscripted exchange, India’s pharma titans peeled back the mythology of overnight success to reveal a harder truth: conviction compounded over decades. What began as two products and a bet on neglected therapy areas evolved into a multibillion-dollar enterprise riding India’s epidemiological shift. Innovation, they argued, is a long game—scarred by failed trials, investor backlash, and capital droughts—yet redeemed by landmark deals and scientific persistence. In this episode, host Vikas Dandekar talks to Dilip Shanghvi, Chairman of Sun Pharma and Glenn Saldanha, Managing Director at Glenmark Pharma about regulatory reforms, AI acceleration, and a renewed policy push, the message was clear: India stands at the cusp of a pharmaceutical inflection point—if it dares to back its pipeline as boldly as its past.

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Listen to Corner Office Conversation: Corner Office Conversation with Sridhar Vembu, CEO, of Zoho Corporation, Corner Office Conversation with Gunjan Soni, Country Managing Director, Youtube India, Corner Office Conversation with Elizabeth Reid, Head of Search, Google, Corner Office Conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV & Surge and much more.

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Artificial intelligence is concentrating power, profits and infrastructure in the hands of a few. Mistral AI's co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch stands for dismantling it. In this episode Mensch talks to ET’s tech editor Surabhi Agarwal about why excessive US dominance in AI creates economic and geopolitical imbalance, and how open-weight models, sovereign cloud partnerships and efficient computers can redistribute innovation. He argues that AI must function like public infrastructure, competitive, accessible and locally controlled, not a gated utility.
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Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  and much more.

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As AI agents begin to outnumber humans 80 to one, who's truly accountable when things go wrong? In this episode, Host Suraksha P talks to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora about the noise on what securing an agentic future actually demands from mandatory agent registries to real-time breach detection that must outpace an eight-minute attack window. He challenges India to pursue a hybrid sovereign AI strategy, warns that AI companies are racing ahead without reckoning with consequences, and offers entrepreneurs a sharp directive: stop building features, start solving problems. The cybersecurity frontier, Arora argues, belongs to those who own the data.

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Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  and much more.

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What if every Indian had a personal doctor, a PhD agronomist, and a world-class tutor all free, all AI-powered, available tomorrow? Hosts Surabhi Agarwal and Swathi Moorthy talk to entrepreneur, investor Vinod Khosla on why he doesn't traffic in hypotheticals; he calls this India's most urgent opportunity. In a wide-ranging conversation, Khosla maps the turbulent decade ahead predicting political chaos between 2030 and 2040 as AI-driven job disruption collides with policy while arguing that curiosity and agency matter more than capital. He dismantles MAGA, challenges wealth inequality narratives, and delivers a sharp verdict: India's real constraint isn't talent or technology. It's investors who think too small.

You can follow Swathi Moorthy on her social media: X and Linkedin

You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin and X

Check out other interesting episodes like: AI Impact Summit: Amazon's Bet on India's AI Future, Anthropic’s India Play, India AI Impact Summit: Microsoft’s Brad Smith on Sovereignty, Scale and Skills,  and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

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Can a $17 billion bet prevent India from repeating the Global South's century-long technology lag? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Surabhi Agarwal speaks with Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith about the company's AI-ambitious vision for India as a "land of digital opportunity." The conversation explores Microsoft's infrastructure and skilling investments, the challenge of bridging the digital divide that mirrors historical electricity gaps between North and South, and how digital sovereignty tensions shape multinational strategy. From navigating India's thoughtful privacy regulations to addressing AI's impact on job dynamics through productivity enhancement, Smith examines whether equitable AI adoption can succeed where past technologies failed. As India's vast developer community positions it uniquely at the intersection of AI infrastructure, platforms, and applications, the episode questions whether collaborative frameworks between nations like India and the US can balance open markets with security—or if digital sovereignty will fragment the very ecosystem needed for India's transformation.

You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: X and Linkedin

You can follow Surabhi Agarwal on her Linkedin, X profiles and read her Newspaper Articles. 

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

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Is Anthropic late to India's AI party—or perfectly timed? In this episode of The Morning Brief, host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with ET’s Disha Acharya and Puran Choudhary about Anthropic's strategic entry into India's rapidly maturing generative AI market. The conversation explores why the company prioritizes enterprise clients over price-sensitive consumers, how its partnership with Infosys positions it within India's multi-million dollar IT ecosystem, and what makes Claude's focus on Indic language support a genuine differentiator. From hosting developer days and hackathons to building datasets for long-tail languages through nonprofit collaborations, Anthropic’s India stack is significantly large. This episode examines whether India serves as an innovation ground or simply a data mine. As pilots transition to full-scale deployments with governance frameworks solidifying, the episode questions whether widespread IT service integration and public sector adoption will cement Anthropic's leadership.
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You can follow Anirban Chowdhury on his social media: X and Linkedin

Check out other interesting episodes like: How Will a Volatile ₹ Impact You in 2026?, How Quick Commerce is Triggering a Health Crisis for Gen Z, India’s Labour Law Reboot, Viral to Valuation: Building Women’s Cricket as a Brand and much more.

Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief’ on The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Youtube.

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