Episode Details

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Pankaj Saran spent four decades inside India's foreign and national security establishment. He served in the Prime Minister's Office under successive governments, was India's Ambassador to Russia and High Commissioner to Bangladesh, and from 2018 to 2021 was Deputy National Security Adviser under Narendra Modi. He has sat in closed-door summits with Vladimir Putin, was inside the PMO through the 26/11 attacks under Manmohan Singh, and saw up close how differently Modi and Manmohan ran the same office. Today he runs NatStrat, one of India's few serious strategic affairs think tanks. Blunt, precise, and completely uninterested in the myth-making around how power actually works.

Follow Pankaj Saran on:

X: https://x.com/PankajSaran11

NatStrat: https://natstrat.org

Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Coming Up

00:01:37 – Meeting Putin Face To Face

00:03:29 – Putin's Note-Card Method

00:04:03 – What Putin Is Really Like

00:05:34 – Manmohan Singh Up Close

00:11:01 – 26/11 Hits The PMO

00:13:20 – Modi Versus Manmohan Singh

00:18:35 – Modi The Delhi Outsider

00:19:49 – Modi The Bold Risk-Taker

00:20:57 – Do Global Summits Actually Work

00:24:24 – Trump's On-Camera Deal Style

00:25:40 – Will India Bow To China

00:27:26 – Who Controls The World's Data

00:29:56 – Big Tech Bigger Than Nations

00:31:27 – Decouple Or De-Risk China

00:35:34 – Why India Has No Google

00:36:06 – India's New Civil Defence Force

00:38:53 – War Without Firing A Shot

00:40:58 – The World In Five Years

00:42:30 – The End Of Pax Americana

00:43:41 – Why India Won't Drop Russia

00:46:21 – Diplomacy Is A Chessboard

00:48:57 – Who Wants India To Rise

00:52:02 – What The PMO Actually Does

00:57:54 – Why India Created The NSA

01:01:53 – Telecom's 90% China Risk

01:05:08 – Will UPSC Be Scrapped

01:08:01 – Books That Shaped Him

#bricssummit #bricssummit2026 #brics #modi #pmoindia #nsa

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Vinamre Kasanaa is a writer at heart, podcaster and entrepreneur by craft.

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