Siddhant Hira

Siddhant Hira is a Senior Research Associate at NatStrat. He focuses on India-China relations; the Indian Ocean Region and the Indo-Pacific; India’s Special Forces, Intelligence and Foreign Policy; India’s neighbourhood; and the cognitive and information domain.

He co-edited the NatStratSpecial Feature The Indian Ocean and its Littorals, contrasting the relative inaction of the Chinese Navy against the Houthis in the Western Indian Ocean with a far more active Indian Navy deployment, as a case study of their respective responses.

Siddhant has been with NatStrat since January 2023. Previously, he was Outlook Business (India) magazine’s first Defence Correspondent, with additional bylines in Raksha Anirveda (India), StratNews Global (India), ABP Live (India), The Financial Express (India), The Diplomat (USA), the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Institute of Chinese Studies (India), Project O Five (Canada), OFCS.Report (Italy) and The Defence Archive (India).

He has also discussed India-Taiwan Relations on Taiwanese national radio: Radio Taiwan International (RTI), conducted a fireside chat on cyberwarfare, discussed TikTok and Chinese influence operations, and Pakistani-sponsored terrorist attacks on The Nationalist View, Irregular Warfare in the Indo-Pacific for Think Deterrence’s (USA) podcast and on RTI, spoken on India’s information space during and post-Operation Sindoor 1.0 at the CLAWS 2026 Young Leader’s Summit.

Siddhant’s articles have been circulated in newsletters of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies, and has been quoted in the NRC (Netherlands), Sputnik India (Russia), a joint Singapore-Japan special report, the Observer Research Foundation (India), Eurasian Times (India), StratNews Global (India), among other platforms.

He holds a Master’s in National Security Studies from King’s College London, having also participated in Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge as well as the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office National Security Secretariat’s 2022 Policy Hackathon.

He can be reached at siddhant.hira@natstratindia.org