President of France on Trump, India, Modi, Tech & Future | Emmanuel Macron | FO473 Raj Shamani

0:00France invented a lot of early technologies in the world.

0:09But today, if you look at the scenario, the largest technology companies in the world are either American or Chinese. Many of them are led by Indian origin CEOs. Where did France lack? I think the missing point is first, scale. Not just for the French, but for all the Europeans. Second, capital. And the third point, we have to find more appetite for risk. France has been an all-weather friend for India. The question is no longer whether India innovates. The question is, who will innovate with India?

0:49And France is the unique clear answer. Jai Ho! Do you think this is going to be an example for the world that now the new world order is about multipolarity? Do you think India and France are setting an example? French President Emmanuel Macron is the chief guest. French President Emmanuel Macron has been invited as the chief guest at the public day parade. We have developed a series of cooperations and partnerships in different sectors with your country. I really believe that when we team up, we deliver. Second, we don't want to be dependent on one of the two big powers. We want to have a good relation with the US and China.

1:35We have different relationship, by the way, with both of them, between India and France. And we are supporters of this approach. India leapfrogged in technology, our Aadhaar, UPI, EG Locker, things like this. We created and got so many people in the system. If you have to bet on one technology for France, which will be your moonshot for 2035. Quantum computer would be where we can take the lead and have a leadership. Quantum computer. Quantum technology. What on earth is a quantum computer? Whichever nation first develops a practical quantum computer will have a tremendous advantage. Quantum supremacy.

2:16Is the work happening in the back end? Yeah, I think so, because we have unique mathematicians, new capacities, and a lot of very performing startups and labs. I saw that you announced about 109 billion euros one year ago for the AI infrastructure, for the technology to lead it forward. But here's a question. Out of that, 50 billion euros is coming from UAE. So money is foreign funded. Infrastructure is going to be largely owned by UAE. The technology and intelligence is coming from America and China. What's going to be sovereign about this when it's actually a collaboration of the world, not just Europe?

2:55If some founder is watching this or a student who's 22 year old is watching this, they want to come to France. Then what does France offer, which today a US and UK doesn't offer for the young startup founders or the people who want to build for the future? A unique ecosystem. First, I want to convey the message to your students, Indian students. If you come to France, you can get access to the best quality universities and high schools. Second, the language is clearly English. And I really believe that France provides the unique mix of large companies, a lot of institutions, and at the same time, the most vibrant startups and innovation ecosystem in Europe.

3:38Donald Trump shared your private messages. Private message meant for diplomacy has exploded into a public political storm. He threatened to put 200 % tariff on you. You've called his administration anti-Europe. Does this convey something about American leadership today? Should the world be scared? I really believe that respect is part of the leadership. You can share ideas or not. You can disagree, but you have to do it in a respectful way. Within democracies as well. This is why I've always been extremely committed to fight against any sort of hated speech of violence in our societies because when you have democracy, you have the right to change your leadership.

4:15You decide who will take the law and pass the law on your behalf. So no need to be violent and disrespectful.

4:27Me and my team, we are trying really hard and trying all our best to make sure that India's voice reaches at the world stage. And for that, I have a favor to ask from you. If you have ever gotten value from this channel, please subscribe to our channel it's free and it takes only one second because the more you subscribe the more our chances get to get the kind of guests which we have today on our show our today's guest is president of french republic emmanuel macron it's his first ever podcast in the world this for the first time it's happening on our show on figuring out we have spoken about India and France relationship.

5:09We've spoken about his relationship with America, his relationship with world leaders. We've spoken about what is Europe trying to do differently? What does it mean for India? How is he making sure that India not only becomes a trade partner, but a strategic partner in the world, which is heading towards multipolarity? How do we challenge the global world order? And do we even challenge or no? All these questions have been answered by the French President in today's podcast. Beyond the honour, we see this as a responsibility. Because when someone like President Macron sits down with us, it's an opportunity to talk about India, what we are getting right, where we are heading, and what the world needs to understand about India, about us right now, so that we can show the world where India stands and what are we doing.

6:01and get the president and global leaders perspective on it as well. So thank you so much for being part of this journey and for the audio experience of this podcast, please follow us on Spotify.

6:20Thank you so much for doing this and agreeing to do your first podcast with us. It's a pleasure. This is mine. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm happy to be in Mumbai with you. Tell me, before we start, actually, for 0.01 % people who don't know who you are, and they're watching you for the first time, they have no clue. What would you tell them about yourself in the next 30 seconds, who you are and what do you do? I'm a French guy here in Mumbai because I am invited by your Prime Minister and happy to be here, by the way.

7:01and involved in a very peculiar job for the past few years and full of appetite and enthusiasm, especially for other cultures. Lovely. And you're also an enthusiast. I saw that yesterday, that you are the guy who loves breaking protocol and running around the street to jog, right? Exactly. We jogged yesterday morning. Yeah. How was that experience? Oh, wonderful. It was a little bit hectic because of, I mean, all the traffic in the city, but it was great. And I mean, it was fun first to exercise and second to have the interactions without too much security. You always have a little bit security, but when it's, I would say, unexpected and not organized, you can indeed break the protocol.

7:51So early in the morning, I went to jog and later in the evening, I went to the station to as well see your beautiful architecture and not just architecture, but the city. Yeah. Okay, let's dive into the technology part because I love what you're doing these days. I went through so many of your speeches and the reason that you're here. you know i was reading a lot of history and i i found out that france invented a lot of early technologies in the world right but today if you look the scenario the largest technology companies in the world are either american or chinese many of them are led by indian indian origin ceos what do you think where did france lack like what happened is it the culture is it the taxes or is it something about the way Europe thinks about failure and risk?

8:49A mix of that, probably. But you're right to say that we've had a lot of great researchers, scientists. We invented a lot of big innovation. Even if science is a global approach and cooperation between academics and researchers all over the world is what makes sense and not just one country. But we do have this culture of research, invention, entrepreneurship as well. As always, remind people that entrepreneur is a French world. And it was taken by the English language, but entrepreneur is a French word. And we are still extremely active. If you take in Europe, probably the two main ecosystem in terms of innovation, startups, AI, quantum, are France and UK, largely ahead of the others.

9:45And if you take math and a lot of disciplines, we are still in a very good position. but it's true that when you when you look at the um the tech sector it's largely uh driven by the u.s the law i mean this big seven companies and and and the chinese companies why first you have a question of scale i i really believe that uh europe is the right approach and still in the digital sector but in a lot of sectors we are too much fragmented So I think the missing point is first scale, not just for the French, but for all the Europeans. So we have to finalize, to strengthen our single market to be sure that your domestic market is a 450 million in abitance market, meaning Europe and not just France.

10:42Second, capital. In the US, you have a lot of capital, a lot of deep pockets. So they invest a lot of money. and the paradox is that in Europe you have a lot of savings much more than in the US but this saving is not properly invested because of too much I mean too many regulations in the bank and insurance sector and the structure of our financing system which is unadapted to the tech industry because we are these savings are largely channeled towards the bond market or they go outside Europe to search profitability. And the third point, you mentioned it, and I fully agree with you, is probably we have to find more appetite for risk.

11:37More appetite for risk. It should be much more risk-taker. So scale, money, and risk-taking mindset. So you sort of are addressing these things in multiple of your speeches and conversations. I saw that you announced about 109 billion euros. One year ago. One year ago for the AI infrastructure, for the technology to lead it forward. But here's a question that you talk about scale, you talk about risk, and you talk about investments. Out of that almost 100 billion euros, 50 billion euros coming from UAE. right then so money is foreign funded infrastructure is going to be largely owned by UAE the technology and intelligence is coming from America and China and you're talking about Europe and building sovereign Europe AI what's going to be sovereign about this when it's just it's actually collaboration of the world not just Europe this is a very good question in fact One year ago, we announced this 109 billion euro investment, which is a big bunch of money.

12:50And we are deploying it, by the way, because more than 60 % is already deployed and we plugged a lot of sites. It's in order to build data centers. You're right. We speak about UAE, US projects. Why? Because the technology is largely in the US. But the data center, which will be deployed in France, will be used as well by our own players. If you don't have the computing capacities, you cannot deploy. And there are more cash today in the Gulf and the technology for data centers in the US. But what we want to do is not to buy the solution. When you want to be more sovereign, more independent, you want to transfer technologies and attract foreign direct investments.

13:35This is exactly what we are doing. I created eight years ago an event called Choose France, where a lot of Indian players come every year. And this event, plus all the reforms we implemented, made France number one in terms of attractiveness during the past six years. And this is good. What you mentioned, I mean, these AI data centers and all these investments are good for the European sovereignty. Why? They are located in my country. Second, they could be used by my players. So it will improve my AI ecosystem. Third, it will transfer a lot of these technologies. And fourth, I have the guarantee that these solutions are compliant with the European regulation.

14:21What's the alternative to that? As I don't have the technology and now the cash. It's not to make this investment and to buy elsewhere. If you buy just solutions, you buy solutions and you provide your data without any protection for your data and without any tech transfer. So I think it's a much better solution. The winner takes hold in this market. And the big winners were these U.S. hyperscalers. So you have to work with them, but to encourage and force sometimes them to comply with your markets. And in parallel, you have to accelerate the deployment of your own solutions. If you take LLMs, we have Mistral AI, which is definitely the best European player and a clear alternative of the US LLMs.

15:10So this is what we are doing. Interesting. So one more thing you would need in this is attracting talent, attracting founders from all around the world, right? And attracting students at the same time. Right now, there are about 9 ,300 students from India and France. you want them to go to 30 ,000 right so every founder who's watching this you have announced f station in france made it a big startup world for everyone so if some founder is watching this or a student who's 22 year old is watching this they want to come to france then what does france offer which today a us and uk doesn't offer for the young startup founders or the people who want to build for the future?

15:55A unique ecosystem. First, I want to convey the message to your students, Indian students. If you come to France, you can get access to the best quality universities and high schools, from Polytechnique to Paris-Sorbonne, from École Normale Supérieure to a lot of engineering schools. Second, the language is clearly English, So because I know that a lot of sometimes ideas reçues are the fact that you would be taught in French. It's totally wrong. So you have the opportunity to have obviously all these years in the English language. But you get access as well to the diversity of the language, which is very important.

16:44And when you are Indian, you know that given the number of official language and this diversity is a source of not just energy, but creativity. But you will have the best in class, higher schools, English spoken professors and research access to good ecosystems. And I really believe that France provides the unique mix of a mature economy with a lot of large companies, a lot of institutions. And at the same time, it's a more vibrant, the most vibrant startups, innovation ecosystem in Europe. And third, it's clearly a vibrant place in terms of creativity, culture. and I think it's very important because when you speak about innovation, never forget the place of culture, art, cinema and so on.

17:40And France is, and this is one of the link we have with India. We are extremely strong in creative and cultural industries. And I think this is a very important point and not to forget to mention fashion. And this is a unique nexus where you have gastronomy, fashion, creativity, cinema, tech, entrepreneurship, and the old institutions, I would say, in the same place. And this is a unique occasion. And France is a natural entry point in the rest of Europe and continental Europe. But this mix of, I would say, assets is quite unique. you know french french people and france in general definitely has something which we call your is taste that taste is very very like the moment you talk to a french person the way they think about arts and culture and their ability to to judge fine things in life is amazing that's that's something to be appreciated or i'm sure the world appreciates it already but thank you for mentioning it.

18:51But the French taste indeed is this capacity of mixing a lot of not just competences but art innovation and life in general. And this is the approach to say that life is something very special. Being together is something very special. Sharing moments and experience is something very special. And in this world given the current environment never forget that the most important thing is to share unique moments and experience true true tell me apart from culture arts taste okay we're talking about technology india leapfrogged in technology when it comes to dpi our other upi eg locker things like this we created and escaped the 10 years of financial exclusion and actually now built, got so many people in the system, right?

19:50If you have to bet on one technology for France, which will be your moonshot for 2035, which technology would you bet on that the France will lead and dominate the world in? First, let me say how right you are when you mention India. I mean, your country is super impressive in terms of indeed leapfrogging, but educating people and training people. I mean, today in India, you train every year more engineers than in the U.S. and Europe together. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's such a resource. It's unique. True. And it means a lot of tenants, a lot of people. And on top of that, you leapfrog in terms of education and competences.

20:39and you have the same appetite of a big emerging countries. And you're right to mention payment system and UPI. And I'm obsessed by that because, by the way, a lot of people are super dependent on US solutions on payment. I mean, it happens that in France, we do have our own solution as well with the Carte Bleu system. But UPI reached such a scale in such a few years. It's very impressive. It's very hard to say what the moonshot will be because you never know. And especially as a president, it's very hard to say it will be this one as a moonshot because it's not the way innovation functions. You will probably lose several times.

21:21And the one you didn't see will be the one to succeed. I think the most important thing is to be sure that you provide the capacities and all the opportunities for a series of very disruptive innovation to succeed. and to make sure that one of them will succeed and to accept that a lot of others will fail. And if I accepted to take the risk of your question, I would say probably in quantum. I would say a quantum computer would be where we can take the lead and have a leadership. Really? Is the work happening in the back end? Yeah, I think so, because we have unique mathematicians, new capacities, and a lot of very performing startups and labs.

22:13So I really believe that in this field, we can deliver and have a moonshot. But more than that, I just want to convey a very simple message. When we speak about innovation and moonshot, it's all about taking risk. And it's all about accepting to lose. True. And it seems to be super counterintuitive. But if you want to think and deliver big, you have to take a lot of risks. Except by chance, you never succeed the first time. So if you don't accept to fail and to start again, you will never succeed. and for me the question for innovators but it's true for countries and so on is not to have people being super successful the first time it's doesn't exist but it's to make sure that we have people ready to to lose eight time but try nine times yeah you know moving away from technology because you said it right it's it's a mix of risk and accepting that you'll fail and yet even if you know there are five things which are popping right now you can't choose which one is going to dominate right but one thing you seem to be very certain about which is very reflective in your relationship with our country which is france has been an all-weather friend for india it's not only a good weather friend right and you can see that like when the world is again France always stood up your relationship with Prime Minister Modi has actually deepened as well and after 2018 the Indo-Pacific announcement in the world our relationship has gotten even more stronger right this kind of geopolitic certainty and friendship is rare to see in the world do you think is it this is going to be an example for the world that now the new world order is about multi-polarity where things are going to be balanced in friendships and not going to be one-sided do you think india and france are setting an example i i really believe that when we team up we deliver we launched together with promise somebody's solar alliance initiative we delivered we launched together during the g20 easy IMEC.

24:47We are delivering and we will deliver. We decided together to deal with artificial intelligence in the global regulation or conversation. We are doing it. Last year in France doing our action summit. Now in India. So I think we clearly delivered concrete results because it's based with all our differences because we are different as countries, as civilizations are people, but I have indeed this great relation with your prime minister and our countries have this great relation. Why? Because we have, beyond this difference, the similarities, a taste for precisely culture, innovation and diversity, I would say.

25:32When you speak to a French person, I mean, the relationship with language, with multilinguism and respect of francophonie is super important. When I see your prime minister, he speaks in Hindu and I know the diversity of your languages create something very special because we don't like uniformity second we don't want to be dependent on one of the two big powers we want to have good relations with the US and China we have different relationship by the way with both of them between India and France but it was the whole rational of the Indo-Pacific approach meaning a third way yeah something which is i will not be confrontational with you but i don't want to be dependent on you true let me let me build my own future in full respect and and based on that this is the fact that we really believe both india and france that democracy rule of law multilateralism delivering concrete results make sense and we are supporter of this approach.

26:42And in this world where the rule of law is very often replaced by, I would say, the order of the strongest, I really believe it makes sense and it's super attractive. True. Because you can gather a lot of people, a lot of countries, a lot of goodwill. So this is where I really believe that this approach and our partnership is not just meaningful, but has much more potential than what we see today. True. You know, even Europe is realizing now that strategic autonomy is the way forward, not choosing one side. And PM Modi's brand is about choosing a strategic autonomy. We honor the Russian friendship, yet deepen relationship with the US.

27:29We build a relationship with France and deal with the rest of the world. So he has stood by it. Do you think your way of thinking and like Europe's way of thinking is now also being inspired by India and PM Modi now that strategic autonomy is the way forward, not choosing sides anymore? Look, I really believe that the fact that we build this partnership and this trade agreement, this free trade agreement between Europe and India, is obviously due to this period of time where there is increasing skepticism or frustration vis-a-vis the US, given the recent attitude. And a lot of Europeans now see that India is the biggest place where we can build this new partnership.

28:13But I really believe as well that I advocated nine years ago a more sovereign Europe. I pushed this approach of a strategic autonomy of the Europeans. Some colleagues did follow me and wanted to cooperate. Some others were super skeptical, saying, OK, this is a French idea. It would never work. And some others were still in the certainty that the relationship with the U.S. is something which would never change. and that this is a geopolitical umbrella and a strong alliance, which will always deliver. I mean, all this approach collapsed. Yeah. And not to say that we want to be confrontational with the U.S.

28:57I mean, the more intense our relation could be, the more happy I will be. But having an ally, having a friend, doesn't mean that you're dependent on your friend. Sure. And I really believe that when a lot of Europeans see that this approach is adopted by a country like India, it gives them more trust and they accept to be probably a little bit bolder. So I really believe on the potential of this relation as well because it will increase what we want to do together, meaning being more independent. And once again, what do we want to be more independent? First, because we are obsessed by this sovereign approach.

29:39What does it mean, sovereign? our fellow citizens decide for themselves. If you are dependent technologically or regarding defense issues, you cannot guarantee your fellow citizens that they will decide. So in a certain way, it's a bias in the democracy because I ask you to vote, but you will never decide if you go this way or this way because you have no choice. So the strategic autonomy is super important when you are a strong democracy. And second, because we are both of us, I mean India and France very much attached to diversity as I mentioned and the strength of this diversity and we don't want to be part of a big uniformity but we believe in this approach but recently like Donald Trump shared your private messages like WhatsApp right he threatened to put 200 % tariff on you, you've called his administration anti-Europe and there's a lot of like tassel what do you think what does it tell the world that one of the most powerful people in the world is sharing messages publicly like do you think that does this convey something about American leadership today should the world be scared I mean I let you judge and your question means by itself something I really believe that respect is part of the leadership and we have to provide respect to each other.

31:12You can share ideas or not. You can disagree, but you have to do it in a respectful way between leaders, but within democracies as well. This is why I've always been extremely committed to fight against any sort of hated speech or violence in our society because when you have democracy, you have the right to change your leadership. You decide who will take the law and pass the law on your behalf. So no need to be violent and disrespectful. But respect was built and everything which goes with the civilization process was built years after years, decades after decades in order to improve ourselves.

31:56And it's a little bit surprising, I really believe, for people to see leaders going backward. Yeah. And it's not the right message. True. You know, do you think that the dollar dominance is ending? Because India is now dealing in rupees. China is pushing you on. You talk about the energy trades in euros. Do you think the dollar dominance in the world is now going to end? I would be super careful. Today, the dollar is clearly dominating the world. I really believe that I strongly believe in a multipolar order and I will do whatever I can to strengthen the international role of euro what does it mean?

32:44We have to be more innovative we have to be more competitive we have to invest much more we have to, on top of the trade agreements we sign, to sign swap lines to have euro as the exchange currency and we have to make sure that the euro is seen by the key central bankers of this world as an alternative to the dollar, meaning we have to provide more euro as a safe and liquid asset. We have everything to succeed in this strategy and it will be one of the elements of a more sovereign Europe and a more independent Europe. I really believe it's possible. We have a window of opportunity, but it would be wrong to say that it's the case today.