US draft letter tells allies to pick Pax Silica or China's AI bloc
A State Department draft reviewed by Reuters warns partner governments that joining Xi Jinping's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, launched in July, means exclusion from Pax Silica supply-chain agreements covering semiconductors, AI models, and critical minerals — "to be part of everything is to be part of nothing." Roughly two dozen countries plus the EU have signed the US coalition, and Kazakhstan, sitting on large critical-mineral reserves, is the only known member of both. Access to chips and minerals is now explicitly conditional on political alignment, which turns AI supply chains into a formal bloc structure rather than an open market.
Source: the-decoder.com ↗
To be part of everything is to be part of nothing.
US State Department draft letter
Why this matters
- → AI chip access now explicitly conditional on political alignment
- → Forces countries into binary choice between US and China blocs
- → Kazakhstan trapped between both camps as mineral-rich swing state
AI supply chains as Cold War