Why has the US arrested Indian-American analyst Ashley Tellis?

Ashley Tellis, a United States government adviser and expert on India-US relations, has been arrested and charged with unlawfully retaining national defence information and allegedly meeting with Chinese officials, US prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Tellis made his initial court appearance on Tuesday. A detention hearing is scheduled for October 21, US media reported.

“We are fully focused on protecting the American people from all threats, foreign and domestic. The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens,” said US District Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan, who was appointed by US President Donald Trump.

So who is Tellis, what is he accused of, and what punishment could he face?

Who is Ashley Tellis?

Tellis, 64, is a naturalised US citizen who was born in India. He is a well-known academic who has written and commented extensively on India-US relations. He specialises in international security, defence and Asian strategic issues. He has worked with and advised the US government on relations with India for more than two decades.

The US-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace lists Tellis as its Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow. According to its website, Tellis has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Mumbai in India, as well as a PhD and master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago in the US.

According to an affidavit filed in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, Tellis is currently working as an unpaid senior adviser for the US Department of State. He is also a contractor at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) within the Department of Defense (DoD). The ONA is an internal think tank within the Pentagon.

Because of his appointment to these roles, Tellis has had the security clearances required to access sensitive government information.

He served on the National Security Council of former Republican President George W Bush, who was in office between 2001 and 2009. Previously, Tellis worked as a commissioned officer in the US Foreign Service and was the senior adviser to the US ambassador at the embassy in New Delhi, India, according to the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Tellis played a key role in negotiating a landmark civil nuclear deal between the US and India in 2008.

What is Tellis accused of?

According to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Tellis was arrested over the weekend.

Prosecutors claim he has violated 18 US Code § 793, which pertains to gathering, transmitting or losing defence information.

The affidavit states that he was observed via a surveillance video camera inside a DoD facility on September 12, using a computer and asking a co-worker to print documents for him. On October 10, he was again seen at the same building, taking some classified documents away with him.

Around 3pm (19:00 GMT) on September 25, Tellis entered a US Department of State building in Washington, DC and logged onto the department’s classified intranet system, ClassNet, which he used for around an hour. ClassNet holds unclassified information, classified information up to and including “secret”, and information that has distribution restrictions.

The affidavit claims that at 8:11pm (00:11 GMT), Tellis returned to the building and accessed a US Air Force document that was more than 1,000 pages long. He renamed the document and then printed sections of it. He placed sensitive documents in his personal briefcase and took them with him to his residence.

On October 11, federal authorities searched Tellis’s house in Vienna, Virginia and his vehicle. Classified government documents were found in his house.

Did Tellis meet Chinese officials?

The affidavit alleges that Tellis has met with Chinese officials multiple times in recent years.

It states that Tellis met Chinese officials for dinner at a restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia in September 2022. He is alleged to have entered the restaurant holding a manila envelope, which he did not seem to have with him when he left two hours later.

Tellis is alleged to have again met Chinese officials for dinner at a restaurant in Fairfax in April 2023. He and the officials could be “occasionally overheard talking about Iranian-Chinese relations and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence”, the affidavit states.

Tellis is said to have met Chinese officials again in March 2024, when they were heard talking about US-Pakistan relations.

The affidavit adds that Tellis also met Chinese officials for dinner in Fairfax in September this year, when the officials gave him a red gift bag.

Could Tellis go to prison?

If he is convicted, Tellis could face a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000, according to the statement from the US District Attorney for Eastern Virginia. It added that actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum punishment.

What has Tellis written about US-India-China relations?

Tellis has long been a passionate advocate of strong India-US relations and a champion of India’s potential as a major partner for Washington. However, in his latest publication for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published last week, he was more circumspect about India’s capabilities.

While the US has long viewed New Delhi as a strategic counterweight to Beijing’s rise, India has, in reality, failed to grow as fast economically as China has.

“While India has indeed grown in strength over the last two decades and has partnered with the United States in pushing back on Chinese assertiveness, the larger story is more complex,” Tellis wrote in a paper titled Multipolar Dreams, Bipolar Realities: India’s Great Power Future: “For all of its achievements, India is not growing fast enough to balance China effectively.”

Despite these shortcomings, Tellis argued, India has been “obsessed” with preserving its strategic autonomy, hedging its bets in terms of geopolitical friendships instead of firmly committing to the US orbit.

This is a mistake on the part of India, Tellis said. Instead, he argued, India – because of its relative weakness compared to China – will need an external partner to help it counter Beijing in the long run.

“The most obvious choice is the United States,” he wrote.

How are relations between the US and India shifting?

Despite a warm personal rapport between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Trump’s first term in office, US-India relations have faced challenges since Trump’s inauguration into his second term in January this year.

Early in the year, Trump hit India with a 25 percent trade tariff as part of his ongoing trade war with many countries around the world. In August, Trump doubled this to a 50 percent tariff, stating that this was partly in protest at India’s ongoing purchases of oil from Russia, which the US and other countries have sanctioned for its three-and-a-half-year war on neighbouring Ukraine.

However, if Trump was trying to coerce India into following US diktats, New Delhi appears to have so far resisted those pressures. India is continuing to buy oil from Russia. Its relations with China – especially frigid between 2020 and 2024 – have thawed. And New Delhi has tightened ties with the Taliban, despite the Afghan group’s pariah status in the eyes of Washington.

All of this is a marked change from five years ago. In 2020, India warmly hosted Trump. Later that year, India-China tensions reached a peak when a deadly clash broke out between their soldiers in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, the first deadly clash in four decades. The two countries share a long, disputed border called the Line of Actual Control (LAC), over which both sides clashed. That year, India banned 200 Chinese apps, including TikTok.

In December 2020, India’s foreign minister said that the relationship between India and China had reached its “most difficult phase” in decades.

However, since late last year, India and China have tried to reset relations. Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Kazan, Russia, last year, as their troops pulled back from their eyeball-to-eyeball border standoff. Amid Trump’s tariff wars against both China and India, they have drawn closer this year.

Earlier this year, Trump imposed a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports, prompting China to respond with a 125 percent tariff on US goods. Both countries then agreed to two separate 90-day tariff reductions – in May and again in August – to allow for trade negotiations. But last week, Trump threatened the reimposition of an additional 100 percent tariff for Chinese products.

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, visited India and met Modi and other Indian officials in August. In a statement after their meeting, Modi hailed a “respect for each other’s interests and sensitiveness” and “steady progress” in bilateral relations.

In late August, Modi visited China and held a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was Modi’s first visit to China in more than seven years.

Last week, amid ongoing border clashes with Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also visited India – the first such visit by a senior Taliban leader to India since the group took over Afghanistan in 2021. India had long viewed the Taliban as a proxy for Pakistan’s intelligence services, but has in recent years slowly ramped up engagement with the group, culminating in Muttaqi’s visit. The Taliban leader’s visit came soon after the group rejected Trump’s demand for it to hand over the Bagram airbase to the US.