India, March 2 -- Artificial intelligence is becoming less a contest of algorithms than of electricity, chips and State capacity. The race for artificial intelligence is often portrayed as a contest over code. Increasingly, it is a contest over power supply, semiconductor access and institutional competence.

The material weight of "weightless" intelligence

From Arizona to Shenzhen to Navi Mumbai, data centres now anchor the AI economy. Some large facilities consume as much electricity as a town of 100,000 people. Training advanced models requires tens of thousands of specialised chips operating

continuously. What is marketed as a cloud rests on land, cooling systems and high-voltage cables. Competitive advantage in AI will depend not o...