In tune with WWI cocktails, I found a recipe for a cocktail named after the famed Mata Hari (World War I suspected spy/exotic dancer). It calls for Chai infused Sweet Vermouth. I know The Polynesian in NYC also used chai infused spirits and I tried to research how to make them but it seems more tedious than usual. It calls for cloves, cinnamon and of course chai tea OR black tea. Perhaps my palate is not evolved enough but I can certainly taste cinnamon/cloves in anything, but maybe not chai tea, let alone if it were substituted for black tea. Does anyone know a quick shortcut to a chai infusion and/or even a syrup or tincture that I can buy to just add to whatever it is that is “chai infused” like rum, vermouth etc?
Angostura bitters will add a lot of the same notes as chai, and the extra bitterness will vaguely approximate the tannins.
Chai tea already has the spices in it, but that apparently wasn’t enough for EO, since they added more spices. You could doctor some red vermouth with Ango, Regan’s Orange Bitters (for cardamom) and a touch of ginger liqueur or syrup to boost the ginger.
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All the major syrup producers—Monin, Torino—have a chai spice syrup which should be readily available. At this point, you can also find several brands of chai spice cocktail bitters which should do nicely without the added sugar. If you are interested in assembling your own recipe for masala chai flavoring, countless permutations of the various spices cited will pass muster, and any unflavored black tea other than Chinese will serve as a base if sparingly used. You could just use cardamom and it might do the trick. Personally, I think the tiniest touch of rose water is crucial. I strongly suspect that “masala chai” is a post WWII development: there may have been some indigenous tea present in the Indian subcontinent, but it was predominantly introduced and cultivated by the British Empire for export as a way to undercut Chinese protectionism. Domestic Indian tea demand remained low until concerted marketing campaigns were deployed. I wouldn’t be surprised if masala chai was a deliberate attempt to “Indianize” and popularize a domestic product post 1947 independence.
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“Chai tea” should be indistinguishable from “Chai”; I’m pretty sure “chai” means “tea”. 
Chai tea almost universally includes/is based on black tea. I don’t know if the use of the word in India predates the British expansion of tea growing and consumption in India, if so maybe there was some other “chai” (tea) that Indians were consuming. I know they used the tea plant (camellia sinensis), but I think it was mostly medicinal before that.
I think it’s more fully called “Masala Chai”, “spice tea”. So if these recipes were using the terms “chai” and “masala” separately, that might indicate some distinction to my mind (sounds like “masala” wasn’t mentioned, which isn’t surprising). In Masala Chai the typical spices often include cinnamon, cardamom, sometimes clove, sometimes ginger, etc. So making that spice mix (masala) gives you the “spice” part of Masala Chai, it could be infused just like that, but would lack the tannins and additional flavors the black tea brings (would also lack the caffeine of course).
But all of that is probably overcomplicating it. Most likely 1: when they refer to “chai” (with or without “tea”) they mean “masala chai”, i.e. black tea of some sort with some spices in it. 2: the spices specified are just the manual way of making the spice mix that goes into chai. So it doesn’t have to be tedious, if you want a similar flavor with less effort use a commercial Chai/Masala Chai tea blend.
OK, I’m partly right, hah: The History of Chai Tea
After reading that I still think that there is little reason not to just use a good commercial masala chai tea blend to likely achieve similar results to those infusion recipes.
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In the quotidian West, “chai” is treated as short for masala chai. Technically incorrect, but probably permanent.
I think masala chai (with tea in it) can probably be traced back to the early 20th Century, although @EvanD seems right that it boomed post WWII, and nearly anything to do with actual tea in India involves the British one way or other. However, I think that masala chai is just one sector of sea of spiced beverages in India.
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