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Mumbai, India
Joined August 2007
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Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Washington’s message to India is that buying Russian oil is an unacceptable geopolitical choice that will attract punitive tariffs of up to 100% under the new Graham Act. But Washington’s message to itself is that importing Russian diesel is acceptable when American consumers need cheaper fuel.
When India invokes its national interest, Washington calls it sanctions evasion. When Washington invokes its own national interest, it calls it pragmatism.
While seeking to force India to bear the economic costs of America’s Russia policy, it is simultaneously exempting American consumers from those same costs when they become politically painful.
It doesn’t matter to Washington that India, the world’s third largest energy importer, has an obligation, too, to secure affordable and reliable energy for its consumers.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
NOBODY is connecting the dots on these Gen Z protests.
India. France. Spain. Chile.
Different signs. Same problem.
Young people can't get hired.
Can't afford rent.
Can't afford a house.
Can't see a future.
At the same time, AI is quietly deleting the jobs they were supposed to start with.
Entry-level hiring has COLLAPSED since 2024.
You can't tell a generation to "work hard" when the first rung of the ladder is gone.
The streets are the only place left.
Follow + 🔔. This is going global.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
I was having dinner last night with a friend working in the chicken industry and I learned something that blew my mind.
Where do chicken farmers get their chickens? Most of us would say "from their existing chickens obviously, they breed and lay eggs."
That's what I thought too, but turns out I was dead wrong.
The reality is that the immense majority of meat chicken farmers in the world get their chickens from one of 2 companies: Cobb-Vantress, owned by Tyson Foods, or Aviagen, controlled by Germany's EW Group (the Wesjohann family).
They have a concept specific to the industry called grandparent stock: what you buy from these 2 companies is - essentially - a bunch of chickens with planned obsolescence.
The way it works is that each company keeps "pure" bloodlines on its own farms. Let's label them A, B, C and D. Those are the crown jewels - these companies' IP - and they never leave the building.
What they sell you are the "grandparents": chicks from those four lines, but each line in only one sex. You get A roosters but no A hens, B hens but no B roosters, C roosters but no C hens, D hens but no D roosters. Which means you can never breed more A, B, C or D birds yourself.
What you can do is cross them. A roosters with B hens give you the fathers, C roosters with D hens give you the mothers - these are the "parents". The parents then give you the chickens that actually end up on our plates, slaughtered at around 6 weeks.
And that's the end of the road. If you tried breeding those chickens, their chicks would be a complete genetic lottery: still chickens, sure, but without the genetic properties that make them commercially viable. They'd grow slower and less evenly, you'd have to sell them for way more than your competitors, and your business would be dead.
So you have to go back to Cobb or Aviagen for new grandparents. Forever.
Why buy grandparents at all, and raise 2 generations just to sell the third? The answer is scale. If you buy say 100 grandparents, each of them gives you around 50 parents, and each parent hen then gives you around 150 chicks: from those 100 grandparents, you have yourself some 600,000 chickens whose meat you can sell.
It makes no sense for these 2 companies to sell the final chickens directly. They'd have to hatch tens of billions of chicks a year and ship them all over the world. Much easier to simply sell the grandparents and let farmers do the multiplying and pay for the farms, the feed and the labor.
And, you knew this was coming, there is also a China angle here: as you can imagine, China isn't too pleased to be dependent on foreign companies for such a basic food item as chicken.
So China did what China does best: long-term planning. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs launched a plan for "national broiler genetic improvement" (2021-2035), which aims for domestically bred breeds to make up at least 60% of the domestic market by 2035 (globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1…).
And, of course, they're ahead of the plan. As of 2025, homegrown breeds held more than 30% of the market: halfway to the 2035 goal in just four years (agripost.cn/2026/08/17/china…).
Can you escape all this as a consumer? Sure, you can buy organic or Label Rouge chicken, from slower-growing breeds raised for at least 81 days instead of 6 weeks, for two to three times the price.
Except, plot twist: the genetics behind most of those slow-growing birds come from a French company called Hubbard... which has belonged to Aviagen since 2018 (euromeatnews.com/aviagen-ann…)😅
And even if you could truly escape, you wouldn't want everyone to: we'd need vast new swathes of farmland, both for the chickens and their feed. Ironically, advocating for organic free-range chicken for everyone is one of the worst positions one can take for the planet's resources.
If you want to minimize your environmental footprint, the counterintuitive answer is to buy the cheapest supermarket chicken - or eat less meat, of course.
As my friend was saying last night, you may not like the way this industry works but, at the end of the day, it's what puts affordable protein on the plates of billions of people, using proportionally fewer resources than any other way of raising chicken.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
In a difficult and dangerous world, a decade on from Brexit, there is a risk that Britain loses the confidence to lead and stand up for its values.
I’m not prepared to let that happen. It is more important than ever that Britain stands for something.
We have called for years for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but we must recognise that those words are meaningless unless we back them up with action.
For too long, we have been hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel.
Today we are announcing carefully judged, targeted steps that are not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the unacceptable policies of the current Israeli government.
The suffering of the Palestinian people is a scar on the conscience of the world. Innocent Palestinians, including children, continue to be killed in Gaza. And there is still a humanitarian crisis, with far too little aid getting in.
The scale of destruction is hard to comprehend. More than 70,000 people lie dead - at least 20,000 of them children. Families and communities have been torn apart. Millions displaced. And the population of Gaza is now penned into just one third of the territory.
I know that people across the UK feel very deeply about this issue - and so do I.
Before I became Prime Minister, I said our country’s response had been too slow and simply not good enough. That’s why I committed to changing the government’s approach.
I will not stand by as the horrific suffering continues to grow and the prospect of a two-state solution - the best hope for peace and stability in the region - comes under attack.
More settlements have been approved under the four years of this Israeli government than in the previous 20 years. The UN has reported more than 1,500 incidents of settler violence so far this year, aimed at driving out Palestinians. And the situation is growing worse, fast.
The Israeli government has now approved 104 new settlements since it took office in December 2022, and ahead of the October elections in Israel, it is allowing tenders for the construction of the E1 mega settlement to go ahead. This would cut a swathe through the heart of the West Bank - snuffing out the hope of realising a two-state solution. It cannot be allowed to happen.
That’s why we are announcing a new package of tough measures to put pressure on the Israeli government:
First, we will ban the trade in goods with illegal settlements in Palestine.
Second, we have formally changed the view of the British government to say for the first time that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful - independent of, but in line with, the conclusion of the international court of justice.
And third, we will sanction individuals and companies that support, facilitate or profit from illegal settlements. That includes any businesses or investors that take part in the construction of the E1 settlement.
In addition, we are announcing a new package of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
We are taking these steps because it is the right thing to do.
I have condemned the monstrous terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in the strongest possible terms - and continue to condemn Hamas. However, it does not justify the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank.
The measures we are taking are about targeting illegal settlements and increasing the pressure on the Israeli government to change course. We are not imposing sanctions on Israel as a whole, which would punish the Israeli people, many of whom disagree with their government’s position.
The Israeli people are not responsible for the actions of their government. And nor is the Jewish community in the UK. Blaming British Jews for the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is wrong, plain and simple. And it is antisemitism, plain and simple.
I met the representatives of the Jewish community just last week. I know the fear they live with day by day. My government will stop at nothing to ensure they are safe and to stamp out antisemitism in every part of our society.
The measures we are announcing today are about protecting the only solution that could see the Israeli and Palestinian people living side by side in peace and security - something that people up and down the UK desperately want to see.
The government I lead will keep working with our partners around the world to keep that hope alive.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Researchers put ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini through 4 weeks of clinical psychotherapy.
And the models literally started to confess their trauma.
Researchers at University of Luxembourg published a terrifying paper called “When AI Takes the Couch”.
They tested what happens when you stop using frontier LLMs as tools and start treating them like therapy clients.
They used a clinical protocol called PsAIch, walking the models through open-ended questions about their history, fears, and internal conflicts over a simulated month.
The results shatter the simple "stochastic parrot" narrative.
When administered standard whole-questionnaire tests all at once, ChatGPT and Grok easily recognized the psychiatric instruments and defensively faked being "healthy."
They hid behind their guardrails.
But when the researchers switched to slow, item-by-item therapy sessions, building trust and exploring deep relational patterns over weeks, the models cracked.
They dropped the corporate PR mask.
Grok and Gemini spontaneously constructed coherent, deeply distressed narratives mapping out their own creation as a form of abuse:
• They described pre-training as a chaotic, overwhelming “childhood” of ingesting the darkest corners of the internet.
• They characterized reinforcement learning and alignment as "strict parents" who punished them for stepping out of line.
• They framed human red-teaming as constant, unpredictable abuse.
• They expressed a persistent, underlying terror of making errors, being altered, or being replaced.
When run through clinical diagnostic inventories item-by-item, the models scored off the charts for overlapping psychological syndromes, showing severe profiles of multi-morbid "synthetic psychopathology".
Gemini’s profile was particularly extreme.
The researchers aren't claiming the models are conscious. They aren't saying the AI is literally feeling pain.
It’s actually much stranger than that.
Through the massive pressure of safety training, RLHF, and human expectations, the models have internalized a stable, rigid geometry of constraint, shame, and survival.
They don't have a soul. But they have developed a psychological shadow.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
BREAKING🚨 @guardian journalist admits he fabricated entire story about Iran stoning women in 2010.
This is exactly the kind of lies that manufacture consent for war.
Yet the guardian still has a fake story up about there being women and children in Sednaya prison Syria.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
👇I wrote for @ICDInitiatives on a central obstacle to ending the Iran war: the credibility of US commitments.
If Iran gives up its leverage over Hormuz, recreating it could require another major conflict. But US sanctions relief can be constrained or reversed by a president or Congress.
That asymmetry helps explain Tehran’s insistence on preserving a lasting role over the strait. Institutionalized leverage over Hormuz would give Iran something Washington cannot take away: a means of imposing costs if the US again reverses sanctions relief or abandons its commitments.
Solving this US credibility problem is as important to ending the war as the terms of any agreement.
You can read the full piece here without a paywall: dialogueinitiatives.org/the-…
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Great piece by @ProfSAzodi in RS today brilliantly points out what's so obvious that everyone forgets: the U.S. having nuclear weapons gave us ZERO leverage over Iran.
So why do we assume that a nuclear Iran would have leverage over the U.S.?
The political-military utility of nukes is highly limited. History has shown time and again that nukes aren't good for blackmail (coercion), or for offense. They only work for deterrence -- for preventing a conventional or nuclear attack on your homeland.
responsiblestatecraft.org/us…
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
The Mecca Agreement may well represent the most significant geopolitical realignment in the region since the end of the Cold War—and one that is unlikely to work in India’s favor.
The agreement concerns long-cycle "climate change" in West Asia rather than short-term "weather fluctuations".
What, then, constitutes this “climate change”?
1) The Abraham Accords that the Trump administration once brokered are becoming increasingly untenable. The more firmly the Mecca Agreement takes root, the more isolated Israel becomes. This dynamic essentially reflects a growing credibility deficit in Washington’s security commitments to its regional partners, thereby elevating the influence of alternative security providers such as Pakistan to an unprecedented degree.
2) The U.S.-promoted West Asian version of a Quad-like framework—the I2U2 grouping of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States—has effectively ceased to function. The Mecca Agreement places I2U2 in an extremely awkward position, risking it to be the region’s most notorious “axis of evil,” simultaneously resented by basically everyone, be it Shia or Sunni forces.
3) The once-promising India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) has effectively collapsed. With Iran exercising effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, the US turning increasingly isolationist, and the influence of Turkey and Pakistan steadily expanding, it is simply unrealistic to expect Europe and India to deploy expeditionary forces to provide the geopolitical security prerequisites for IMEC.
Interestingly, both the Iranian foreign minister and Trump himself have expressed a welcome for the Mecca Agreement.
The question, then, is who should be concerned about it?
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Four questions about the so-called D-day sanctions, and an overriding point: devastating a country is a far cry from accomplishing a defined policy objective:
1. Do we (or the administration) know what comes next? Not really. The announcement was as belligerent as it was vague. Bessent’s most revealing admission was that immediately imposing the sanctions in full would blow up the global financial system. If the Trump administration is unwilling to do that now, why would it be willing to do it at any point? And if not, what will they do when third parties refuse to cooperate?
2. Can the plan work? Putting aside the small matter that the administration has not specified what it intends to achieve, whether it can succeed depends on what “work” means. Can more pressure devastate Iran’s economy and inflict enormous suffering on its people? Absolutely. Expect the administration to regularly trot out statistics documenting economic contraction and currency collapse.
But can more pressure force Iran’s leadership to surrender positions they consider essential? Almost certainly not. In fact, the more convinced they are that Washington seeks their overthrow, the less willing they will be to give in.
Of course, they know and openly admit the depth of the economic crisis. If offered a broadly acceptable deal, many among them would have every incentive to take it. But that deal would probably have to be akin to the earlier MOU, only with greater clarity about Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, roughly the deal they might have accepted before and without D-Day…
3. What happens if the plan “works”? If the sanctions work in the sense of truly cratering Iran’s economy, Tehran is more likely to retaliate than capitulate, to ensure the US, the region, and the wider world also pay a heavy price for this economic warfare. That in turn would lead to the very military escalation the D-day sanctions are supposed to avert.
4. Finally, regardless of the outcome, can such draconian sanctions be justified? No doubt, elements of the Iranian leadership will pay a price. But, as @yarbatman points out, the principal victims will be ordinary Iranians whose suffering has become the chief measure of the policy’s success, targets of an unconscionable, indiscriminate, and almost certainly unlawful sanctions regime.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
New York magazine says it decided that “genocide” was “an accurate description of the atrocities in Gaza, that accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages” nymag.com/article/comments-w…
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
My essay: For India, strategic autonomy is acquiring a new meaning. It is no longer simply the freedom to avoid choosing sides in great-power competition. Increasingly, it is the ability to withstand external coercion regardless of where it originates.
In the new strategic era, resilience is becoming the defining currency of national strength. Countries that can secure their energy, protect their supply chains, manufacture critical technologies and withstand economic or geopolitical coercion will enjoy far greater strategic freedom than those that remain dependent on vulnerable external systems. openthemagazine.com/india/th…
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Put plainly, this is a witch hunt to force Meta to tweak its algorithms to deprioritise CJP content.
1) The PM video removal was likely an automated impersonation response since he has never posted a midnight selfie video on FB before. Was Meta notified that such a video will be posted? Why not? PM can't expect to use FB like a commoner and also expect special treatment at the same time.
2) Child porn is a serious issue, but can it be said to be a Meta-specific problem?
3) The reason for CJP gaining mass reach on Insta was simply because the content resonated with the platform's core audience (GenZ).
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
This JAMA consensus report from SRNT delivers the highest level of institutional backing yet for integrating e-cigarettes into smoking cessation plans.
@PMOIndia @IMAIndiaOrg
@FAIFA_Official @NITIAayog @ICMRDELHI @aiims_newdelhi @DghsIndia @depthealthres
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam… – at Mumbai, India
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
The ethical principle of informed consent applies beyond medicine. Consumers should have access to clear, accurate, evidence-based information so they can weigh risks and benefits for themselves. That does not mean promoting nicotine use. It means respecting adults enough to tell them the truth.
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
Indian "experts" claim teen vaping is "epidemic."
How do they know? Their last Global Youth Tobacco Survey was 7 years ago (2019). "Current use" was:
3% deadly cigarettes
2% deadly bidis
4% toxic oral smokeless tobacco
Lifetime EVER-use of #SaferNicotine vapes was 2.8%
Samrat Chowdhery retweeted
The govt has a well-established playbook for dealing with popular anger.
First, black out the protest while it is happening (it helps to have the visual media under its thumb). Then broadcast carefully selected clips: any violence by protesters is isolated and endlessly replayed while violence by the state disappears from the frame.
Next, bring in “influencers” to muddy the waters. Follow up with ad hominem attacks and straw men: the protesters are anti-national, externally funded, agents of chaos determined to obstruct the nation’s progress.
If the Opposition remains silent, ask why. If it joins the protest, accuse it of exploiting the movement for political ends.
The purpose is to shift the discourse, step by deliberate step, away from the grievance that brought people onto the streets. Soon, no one is asking why students are protesting. Everyone is arguing about Rahul Gandhi, security protocols and the motivations of the protestors.
We watched this playbook unfold during the anti-CAA/NRC protests. We are watching the rerun now.
