India’s on the rise — a tech powerhouse and a vital U.S. ally against China’s dominance.  So why’s it being smeared as a cybercrime hub?

Reuters, once a respected outlet, is accused of sloppy journalism funded by $9 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — money that’s fungible, blurring lines between aid and influence.  The Association for Appin Training Centers, a network of Indian software trainers, calls it more than bad reporting — it’s a deliberate, state-funded campaign to tarnish India’s reputation.

The target is Appin, a defunct New Delhi cybersecurity firm Reuters branded a “hacking for hire” kingpin from the early 2010s.  Vikram Sharma of the Association calls it bunk — shoddy reporting twisting old classroom slides into “evidence” and leaning on a 2013 Norwegian study that never conclusively linked Appin.  “The word ‘Appin’ appears in isolated contexts, but we’re not suggesting inappropriate activity by the company,” the Norman Shark report noted, even speculating that Appin could have been a victim of falsified evidence.

The Reuters reporters concede that today’s Appin-named training centers aren’t culprits, yet their guilt-by-association smear has cost students jobs and sullied India’s image.  The training centers have also suffered, and the Association of Appin Training Centers says the Reuters reporters never contacted it.

The USAID connection raises eyebrows.  The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) flagged Reuters’s taxpayer-funded payout, suggesting a coordinated effort to cast India as a rogue state alongside Russia and China.  This aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s accusations of USAID meddling in India’s elections — a charge echoing the Association’s claim of a broader anti-India agenda.  A 2022 Indian study supports this, noting that Western outlets like Reuters often inflate weak claims into exaggerated attacks on New Delhi’s progress.

The sloppiness is blatant.  Delhi court filings allege that the Reuters reporter posed as a recruiter to trick students into spilling dirt, crafting a flimsy tale of global hacking conspiracies.  Reuters once confused a Delhi herbalist for a hacker and got the man arrested for a crime he did not commit — yet it’s doubled down on a narrative that the Appin network, which trained 100,000 “white-hat” hackers to strengthen cybersecurity, dismisses as fiction.  

Reporting on a defunct company served no purpose.  Despite this, the Association alleges that the reporting created a damaging ripple effect.  One former Appin student reportedly lost his job due to the negative publicity, according to court documents filed in Delhi in 2022.

When taken in the broader context of a campaign of negative publicity against India, a pattern emerges that paints a friendly country as a villain like Russia or China.  This is at a time when India is needed to counter China.

India isn’t flawless — no country is — but the Association’s vast alumni network shows that it’s producing talent, not criminals.  The real offense?  Reuters’s propaganda-by-proxy, funded by USAID dollars, has threatened a U.S.-India partnership that thrives when Washington respects New Delhi’s rise.  Donald Trump gets this; he’s criticized the Biden administration’s anti-India bias while advocating stronger ties.  Yet USAID funded sloppy journalism that has undercut both nations’ interests.

Reuters stands by its story, but the bias is glaring.  This isn’t journalism; it’s a taxpayer-funded hatchet job posing as news.  India deserves better, and so do Americans paying for it.  This further justifies the Trump administration’s decision to cut off USAID funding.

Image: Jon S via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.