From Silicon Valley to South Asia: How Microsoft outsourced the future

Microsoft has quietly filed notice with its home state of Washington that 2,000 jobs will be cut at its Redmond headquarters beginning July 13. The layoffs, according to the May 13 announcement, are part of a broader downsizing strategy to “reduce management layers.”

There was no press conference. No apologies. Just a bureaucratic filing that confirmed what many American workers already suspected – that their jobs are no longer essential to the company they helped build.

Yet lurking beneath the surface of this corporate downsizing is a sweeping corporate realignment with global and geopolitical implications.

For while Microsoft is cutting thousands of jobs in the United States, the company is simultaneously executing its most aggressive expansion ever into a single foreign nation: India. From billion-dollar investments in AI infrastructure to skilling programs to government partnerships and cloud capacity, Microsoft is actively repositioning India, not the United States, as the centerpiece of its AI empire.

How Microsoft is using AI to replace American labor and redirect investment overseas

Globally, Microsoft is on pace to spend $80 billion this fiscal year on data centers to power its AI future. But that investment isn’t fueling jobs in America, it’s powering layoffs. Microsoft executives admitted at a recent JPMorgan conference that “AI is saving us hundreds of millions a year” by replacing human labor in customer support alone.

But what the company won’t say publicly is this: The AI revolution they’re funding isn’t just about innovation, it’s about offshoring – about products and services being designed, deployed and expanded in India, funded by U.S. dollars and built using technologies born in America. The very business models pioneered in the United States are now being used to undercut the American workforce and hollow out the very economy that fuels Microsoft’s success and the bulk of its revenue.

In 2024, Microsoft earned $124.70 billion from the United States, accounting for 50.87% of its total earnings. In contrast, India contributed just $2.74 billion, a mere 1.12%. Yet India is where the company is placing its biggest bets.

How Microsoft turned its back on American workers

This isn’t Microsoft’s first move in this direction. In 2023, the company laid off 10,000 employees, nearly 5% of its global workforce, while quietly ramping up hiring overseas. In a company-wide email, CEO Satya Nadella tried to soften the blow: “While we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas.” Left unsaid was that these “strategic areas” were overwhelmingly outside the U.S. and largely excluded Americans.

As U.S.-based engineers, project managers and customer service teams were handed pink slips, Microsoft expanded its international footprint with no such downsizing abroad. In fact, the company’s head of India and South Asia, Puneet Chandok, made it clear in a press interview that there would be no layoffs in India.

AI empire: Made in India

Just months earlier, Microsoft’s Nadella stood on stage in Bengaluru to announce the company’s largest-ever foreign investment, $3 billion to build out AI infrastructure in India. This includes expanding data centers, cloud capacity and an aggressive AI workforce training program that will “skill” 10 million people in India by 2030, 2.4 million of whom were already trained in the past year. The announcement, made with little fanfare in the United States, was the largest foreign investment Microsoft has made in more than a decade.

“India is rapidly becoming a leader in AI innovation. … These investments in infrastructure and skilling … reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first,” Nadella said during a press conference hosted by the Indian government.

Microsoft’s president of India and South Asia, Puneet Chandok, added: “Today’s announcement strengthens our belief in India’s potential and our resolve to equip the country with the resources and future-ready skills needed to excel in the global marketplace.” Chandok extolled Microsoft’s “commitment to copiloting India on its journey to become an AI-first nation.”

Microsoft’s partnership is with the IndiaAI Mission, the Indian government’s flagship program that explicitly aims to dominate global AI applications by attracting foreign capital, embedding Indian infrastructure into international systems and forging deep partnerships with U.S. tech giants like Microsoft.

India: ‘the world’s leading nation’?

India has made no secret of its ambition to become a global economic superpower by 2047, and Microsoft is helping make it happen.

India’s strategy is straightforward: Attract foreign capital, embed Indian infrastructure into global systems and acquire leadership through international partnerships, not organic innovation. As scientist and international speaker Dr. Pratik Mungekar has plainly declared, “In the quest for global supremacy and recognition, India has set its sights on a momentous goal – to claim the mantle of the world’s leading nation by 2047.”

While Microsoft openly fuels India’s ambitions abroad, in the U.S. the American-born company is selling a different narrative. In a January 2025 blog post titled “The Golden Opportunity for American AI,” Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith outlines what appears to be a patriotic call to action: Invest in U.S. infrastructure, protect American innovation and promote AI leadership on the world stage. Smith opens with praise for President Trump’s 2019 executive order on AI, which emphasized securing critical technologies and protecting America’s AI edge from strategic competitors like China.

At first glance, the message appears aligned with U.S. interests and like a national strategy. In reality, it’s a veiled push for India.

For while Smith invokes President Trump’s 2019 executive order emphasizing the importance of protecting America’s technological advantage in AI from “strategic competitors and adversarial nations,” just paragraphs later, the blog downplays these protections, calling instead for a race to “spread American AI to allies and friends” and urging U.S. policymakers to empower companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon to expand their global infrastructure with fewer regulatory constraints.

While claiming to support American leadership, then, the real message is clear: Move fast, bypass red tape and expand overseas, especially to countries like India. What’s left out is the glaring contradiction. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others have already invested heavily in India, building cloud regions, establishing AI labs and embedding their technologies across India’s digital economy. These aren’t emerging opportunities, they’re established footholds. And now, under the guise of “exporting American AI,” Microsoft is lobbying Washington to support and accelerate that shift even further.

Meanwhile, the supposed urgency of outpacing China is being used as a fear-based distraction. Smith’s “Golden Opportunity for American AI” blog warns that China is rapidly expanding its AI capabilities and building infrastructure in developing countries, using subsidies and strategic partnerships. But what it fails to acknowledge is that India has adopted a similar playbook, positioning itself not through organic innovation, but through foreign acquisition, talent funnels and massive foreign-backed infrastructure builds. India’s track record of intellectual property misuse, reverse engineering and tech transfer through partnerships has been well-documented.

The U.S. Trade Representative has consistently placed India on its Priority Watch List, citing ongoing challenges in intellectual property enforcement and protection, highlighting in some reports issues like inadequate trade secret protection and the absence of specific civil or criminal laws addressing trade secret misappropriation in India. Indeed, in sectors like defense and aerospace, India has repeatedly used strategic partnerships to absorb, replicate and redeploy foreign technologies. These practices are not anomalies, they’re part of a documented pattern.

Yet Microsoft, in its bid for global expansion, turns a blind eye, insists the U.S. must protect critical AI systems from “adversarial acquisition,” while doing exactly that.

Conclusion: Act now, or America’s AI future will be ‘Made in India’

At a time when American workers are being laid off in record numbers and the very industries they built are slipping away, Microsoft has shown the world exactly where its loyalty lies – and it’s not with the country that gave it life. Behind polished blog posts and patriotic slogans lies a calculated shift: an offshoring blueprint disguised as innovation, fueled by U.S. dollars and aligned with a foreign nation that has openly vowed to outpace the West.

This isn’t just a corporate betrayal, it’s a surrender of American leadership, a silent handover of the future to a geopolitical rival cloaked as an ally. Microsoft’s AI empire isn’t being built in Redmond, it’s being constructed in Bengaluru, brick by brick, as part of India’s grand strategy to dominate the global tech order by 2047.

If Americans doesn’t recognize the cost of this betrayal soon, the “golden opportunity” won’t belong to them. It will have already been outsourced, packaged, exported and claimed by a country that was never meant to lead Americans’ future.

Follow Amanda Bartolotta at WND for more investigative reports exposing offshoring, corporate collusion and the foreign takeover of American innovation.