Given the geopolitical climate, no one is surprised to hear about the arrest of Chinese students, scientists, and other academics in the United States on charges of spying or smuggling out scientific information and biological materials. Such stories are all too common.
But the news that Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born foreign policy strategist and a leading expert on U.S. and South Asian affairs, has been arrested sent shockwaves in policymaking in Washington, New Delhi and beyond. Well-known as a key figure in promoting an India-U.S. “alliance” to counter a rising China, scholars and analysts in China found it extraordinary that Tellis is now seemingly being accused of, among other things, spying for China.
Tellis has been charged with the unlawful retention of national defense information, the U.S. Justice Department said on October 14. He was arrested over the weekend after more than a thousand pages of documents with “top secret” or “secret” classifications were allegedly found at his home.
According to an affidavit from an FBI agent, Tellis had allegedly “met with government officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on multiple occasions over the past several years,” dating at least back to 2022. Tellis has not yet officially been charged for spying for China, perhaps due to lack of sufficient evidence, but the inclusion of his meetings with PRC officials in the affidavit has raised eyebrows.
Tellis has denied the charges. In a statement, his lawyers said they would be “vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary.”
Who Is Ashley J. Tellis?
Ashley Tellis, 64, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who grew up in Mumbai city before moving to the United States in the mid-1980s. He has worked closely with the U.S. government for years and at the time of his arrest was serving as a senior adviser in the State Department, albeit in an unpaid capacity. He was also a contractor at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), an internal think tank within the Department of Defense. These roles, and his security clearance, gave Tellis access to sensitive government information.
Previously, he was commissioned into the U.S. Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Delhi. He also served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to then-President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. He was closely involved in shaping the landmark India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement during the Bush administration, which transformed bilateral ties in the mid-2000s.
Beside his government work, Tellis is a well-known academic who has written and commented extensively on India-U.S. relations, as well as general defense and Asia policy. At the time of his arrest, Tellis was a senior fellow and Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP); the CEIP website now lists him as being “on administrative leave.”
In summary, Tellis has worked with and advised the U.S. government on relations with India for more than two decades. He has long been a passionate advocate of strong India-U.S. relations and a champion of India’s potential as a main partner for Washington. Indeed, his main criticism of India has been that New Delhi is not aligned enough with the United States.
In his latest publication for the Carnegie Endowment,p ublished only a week ago, Tellis made many of these arguments. He noted that “China’s ascendency as a rival of the United States made investing in India an attractive counterpoise.” Yet, he cautioned, “For all of its achievements, India is not growing fast enough to balance China effectively.” At the same time, Tellis predicted that India will remain “zealously independent and focused on advancing a multipolar global order despite its limitations and the dangers for both New Delhi and Washington.”
Reactions to Tellis’ Arrest in China
As new of Tellis’ arrest broke, strategic affairs analysts in China expressed shock and disbelief. Among the first op-ed writers on the topic, Mao Keji, a young researcher at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, called it tragic that the “mainstay of U.S.-India relations” was being accused of colluding with China. In his article, first published in a digital news and current affairs daily, Mao wrote: “For many years, as an Indian-American strategic scholar, he has been not only a top think tank in formulating major U.S. geostrategic policies, but also the driving force behind the transformation of U.S.-India relations from ‘cold to hot.’”
Like several other international relations experts in China who expressed their views on the arrest on social media, Mao too was surprised to read about the arrest of Tellis – such a prominent and instrumental figure in the development of India-U.S. relations – by the FBI with such fanfare. Some Chinese scholars called Tellis a “shrewd and sophisticated” voice with a very profound understanding of the realities of politics in India and in the United States, and pointed out that he played a vital role in shaping what eventually became to be known as the U.S. Indo Pacific Strategy – which places countering China at its center.
Scholars in China have drawn some immediate conclusions from the unceremonious arrest of a high-profile foreign policy strategist who has been instrumental in shaping the U.S. national strategy in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific strategy. They argue that the arrest is significant not only because of who Tellis is but also because of what it suggests about India-U.S. relations. There is a prevailing atmosphere of a cooling of India-U.S. relations during Trump’s second term – the exact opposite of what Tellis has long worked for. It was in this context that the FBI arrested an expert with the highest security clearance, who is considered a key contributor to India-U.S. cooperation and a key adviser on India policy.
As Mao observed, the imprisonment of Tellis officially marks the end of the United States’ “strategic altruism” toward India. If Washington had not previously asked, “What has India done for the United States?” Trump has now not only asked this crucial question but has also used “a loudspeaker” to repeatedly ask it “at the highest volume, in the harshest tone, and with the crudest language,” Mao argued.
Many in India might simply dismiss this as China’s wishful thinking, but the Chinese strategic affairs community, at least on the face of it, seems to see Tellis’ arrest as a sign of terminal decline in India-U.S. relations. Chinese analysts have long sought to convince New Delhi that Washington would eventually come to see a rising India as a threat. As the United States’ relative political and economic strength continue to decline globally, and Trump and the MAGA movement obsess over maintaining their status, this moment has finally come, in the Chinese reading. At the same time, they believe that India, which has massive development potential and an industrial structure similar to that of the United States, will then be more inclined toward seeking a genuine rapprochement with China.
At the same time, experts in China argue that, irrespective of whether the accusations against Tellis are eventually proved in court or not, this incident has severely damaged India-U.S. relations beyond repair. Far from lamenting the arrest of Tellis, whom the FBI tried to paint as colluding with China, Chinese analysts see the incident as ultimately benefitting Beijing.