India and Japan Sign an Economic-Security Pact on Chips, Critical Minerals and Quantum — and a First Joint Defence Project

When Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Sanae Takaichi met in New Delhi on 2 July 2026 for the 16th India-Japan Annual Summit, the headline was not a single deal but a framework — a Joint Declaration on Economic Security Cooperation that reads like a shopping list of the technologies both countries have decided they cannot afford to source from anyone else.

The economic-security core

The declaration commits India and Japan to deeper cooperation across five strategic sectors: semiconductors, critical minerals, information and communication technology, clean energy and pharmaceuticals. The logic is supply-chain resilience. Both economies are exposed to a chip industry concentrated in a handful of geographies and a critical-minerals market dominated by China; pairing India's scale and mineral endowment with Japan's materials, equipment and process know-how is a hedge against both.

Critical minerals were singled out for their own emphasis, with the two sides pledging closer work to reduce dependence on China for the rare earths and battery metals that underpin electronics, EVs and defence hardware. On semiconductors, the pact dovetails with India's own Semiconductor Mission and Japan's established strength in materials and fabrication equipment.

The deep-tech layer

Beyond the five headline sectors, the leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation in a cluster of frontier technologies: artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, space science, supercomputing, advanced materials and data centres, alongside two-way talent mobility and deeper academic collaboration. Taken together, it is a bet that the next decade of industrial competitiveness will be decided in exactly the areas India has been trying to build sovereign capability in — and that Japan is a natural partner rather than a rival in most of them.

Indian and Japanese reporting counted more than 100 agreements and memoranda exchanged across the visit, spanning economic security, clean energy, research and development, and mobility. The two governments also reaffirmed Japan's ¥10-trillion investment target for India, the ceiling set in earlier summits and now attached to a much more specific technology roadmap.

A first for defence co-development

The summit also produced a milestone for two countries that have historically kept defence-industrial ties cautious: agreement, in principle, on the remaining technical details of their first joint defence co-development project — the Unified Complex Radio Antenna (UNICORN) system, a stealth-mast technology that consolidates multiple naval antennas into a single low-observable structure. It is a modest programme in rupee terms but a symbolic one: India moving from buyer to co-developer with a technologically advanced partner, and Japan relaxing decades of restraint on defence-technology exports.

Why it matters for India

For India's deep-tech ecosystem, the value of a summit like this is less in any one line item than in the direction it sets. Sovereign-capability programmes in chips, quantum, critical minerals and advanced materials all depend on access to equipment, feedstock and process expertise that India does not yet produce at home. A structured economic-security partnership with Japan — one of the few countries strong across all of those layers — gives Indian firms and research institutions a durable channel for technology, capital and talent. The test, as always, will be execution: whether the roadmap turns into fabs, refineries, joint labs and shipped hardware, or stays a declaration. But the map itself is now unusually explicit about where India intends to go.

Sources

• 16th India-Japan Annual Summit Joint Statement — Prime Minister of India
• India, Japan deepen economic security ties in semiconductors, critical minerals and clean energy — The Tribune
• India, Japan deepen economic security ties — ANI News
• Did PM Modi, Takaichi set a new bar for India-Japan trade and energy ties? — The Week
• India-Japan Deals Explained: Why 100+ Agreements On AI, Chips And Supply Chains Matter — IBTimes