A Coalition Needs Criteria
Launched in December 2025, Pax Silica is one of the second Trump administration’s signature international initiatives. The State Department describes it as its “flagship effort on AI and supply chain security, advancing new economic security consensus among allies and trusted partners.” The Pax Silica Declaration, effectively a statement of principles with no concrete commitments or undertakings, is light (perhaps purposefully so) on details. But reading between the lines, such as its references to “mobilizing ... private industry,” “reducing excessive dependencies,” and “addressing non-market practices that undermine innovation and competition” such as “overcapacity and unfair dumping practices,” one can divine two central organizing purposes for Pax Silica. The framework is intended to 1) accelerate the development of artificial intelligence technology through international cooperation and investment, and 2) create a coalition to counterbalance China’s dominance of certain layers of the AI stack, especially in the areas of critical minerals and manufacturing. In public addresses and interviews Pax Silica’s chief architect, Under Secretary Jacob Helberg, has been far less coy about identifying competition with China as one of Pax Silica’s overarching goals.
The State Department is just beginning to announce and operationalize certain aspects of the Pax Silica framework. In March, the Department announced that it was seeking to deploy a $250 million fund to invest in critical mineral processing and advanced manufacturing infrastructure in member countries. In April, it was announced that the Department was in negotiations to install a “Forward Deployed Industrial Base” on a 4,000 acre rent-free lease in the Philippines. In June, the Department announced that it would build “Pax Pass,” an AI-powered supply chain platform intended to facilitate the shipping of goods essential to the AI economy; a Notice of Funding Opportunity was published in August, backed by $50 million in funds. The Department also announced the Foundry School, an educational partnership led by Stanford and a coalition of major research universities, intended to train budding technicians and entrepreneurs throughout the Pax Silica universe with a common curriculum.
As these and other benefits of membership begin to take shape, we should be asking: who is eligible to participate in Pax Silica, and what are their obligations as members? Returning to Pax Silica’s dual goals of accelerating AI development and countering China’s stranglehold on critical technologies and their inputs, it stands to reason that Pax Silica membership, with all its attendant benefits, should be open to countries that can meaningfully participate in the global AI economy, whether by hosting computing infrastructure, supplying raw or intermediate goods, facilitating logistics, participating in R&D, or providing capital. Equally, membership should be conditioned on certain obligations vis-à-vis China.
By these measures, some of Pax Silica’s current membership roster raises eyebrows. The European Union, a Pax Silica signatory and long the world’s leading exporter of cumbersome technology regulation, is unsurprisingly poised to become the greatest AI decelerationist force on the planet. The EU AI Act will impose extensive and costly risk management, data governance, and human oversight requirements for so-called “high-risk” AI uses, which include such banal applications as workforce management and insurance underwriting. And it outright bans AI platforms that “classify[] individuals or groups based on social behaviour or personal traits, causing detrimental or unfavourable treatment of those people,” a proscription which, whatever you may think of its underlying objective, is so malleable as to defy pre-enforcement interpretation by those whom it regulates. With its hefty burdens and vague requirements, the Act will dissuade all but the largest AI companies from participating in the European market, self-destructively hamstringing Europe’s relatively small AI scene and stifling innovation in promising but “sensitive” sectors such as critical infrastructure, healthcare, and law enforcement. And the Act authorizes noncompliance penalties up to 7% of a company’s prior-year revenue. Even for a pure-play AI company like OpenAI this would reach nearly $1 billion; when you consider the larger diversified tech companies that also compete in the AI space, such as Microsoft and Alphabet, the potential scale of the fines becomes truly staggering. Should the EU reap the benefits of an American-led AI coalition while strangling AI companies’ ability to avail themselves of the European market via rent-seeking regulation?
Kazakhstan is another oddity. To be sure, Kazakhstan has much to offer Pax Silica, with enormous untapped deposits of minerals like tungsten, molybdenum, chromium, copper, and manganese. But just a few weeks after joining Pax Silica, Kazakhstan became one of the founding signatories of China’s rival AI coalition, the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). Kazakhstan is also where Xi Jinping unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, and in 2025 it was the single largest beneficiary of BRI investment, taking in nearly $26 billion from China. As of late 2025, Kazakhstan was China’s fifth-largest debtor, with a balance of more than $60 billion, giving China tremendous economic leverage. Can a country that is both economically enthralled and diplomatically committed to cooperating with China be trusted as a Pax Silica partner?
The parameters of Pax Silica membership should be tailored to the scope and functions of the organization, which are still being worked out and will likely evolve over time. This post proposes a handful of membership criteria and ongoing obligations for Pax Silica membership, with the hefty caveat that some of these proposals may reveal themselves as going too far—or, indeed, not far enough—as additional details about Pax Silica’s operations emerge.
Proposed Membership Requirements
Let’s start with the basics. Pax Silica exists to create a U.S.-led AI trade and investment order predicated on free enterprise and free trade. It stands to reason that participation in WAICO should be automatically disqualifying for Pax Silica membership. Maybe there’s a credible argument for grandfathering Kazakhstan in, but going forward this membership criterion should be enforced without exception.
A thornier issue is the matter of economic alignment (or dependency, as the case may be) with China. Ideally, a Pax Silica member should not be substantially indebted to China, as debt gives China leverage it can deploy against its debtors to siphon off the benefits of Pax Silica membership for itself. However, imposing economic criteria that are too strict would exclude much, perhaps most, of the developing world from membership, forcing them into WAICO’s embrace instead. This presents a line-drawing problem that I do not purport to solve here. Argentina (a Pax Silica member) and Angola are both among China’s ten largest debtors, owing about $38 billion and $65 billion, respectively. But Argentina’s debt to China represents only about 5% of its GDP; Angola’s is more than 40%. Similarly, China purchases over 41% of Angola’s exports, compared to 11% for Argentina. It would be reasonable to think that the economic dependency threshold for Pax Silica eligibility lies somewhere between these two countries.
Pax Silica membership should also be off-limits for countries where China is heavily embedded in or outright owns the basic technological infrastructure. In countries such as Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and South Africa, virtually all of the data center infrastructure is of Chinese origin. Throughout much of Southeast Asia, data center projects fueled by Chinese investment and intended primarily to serve Chinese customers are breaking ground. Access to compute is perhaps the strongest reason for the United States’ continued leadership in AI development; Pax Silica should not include countries that undermine this advantage by preferentially hosting Chinese compute. And that is to say nothing of China’s penetration of global telecom infrastructure via Huawei, ZTE, and other providers.
It may be technologically and financially implausible to demand that Pax Silica members or aspirants eschew Chinese tech entirely or conduct a wholesale rip-and-replace before joining. But consider the examples of France, which in 2020 announced that telecom operators would not be allowed to renew licenses for Huawei 5G gear once they expire, or India, which excluded Huawei from 5G trials and informally signaled to domestic telecoms that Chinese equipment was to be avoided. Pax Silica candidates with Chinese telecom infrastructure should be required to adopt similar strategies to gradually phase out Chinese equipment. An analogous approach could work in the data center context, where optical transceivers, network switches, and other equipment are turned over every few years; Pax Silica countries with data centers built on Chinese IT should commit to cycling out Chinese tech in favor of American equipment. Even more importantly, they should not allow Chinese companies to construct more data centers on their soil.
Proposed Obligations
Pax Silica should also demand certain behavior from its members to discourage free-riding and further the purpose of China-balancing. First, Pax Silica countries should swear off investment or workforce participation from adversarial nations. Pax Silica will undoubtedly facilitate the construction of all sorts of infrastructure in member states, which may include mines, refineries, data centers, factories, transportation and telecommunication infrastructure, and more. The United States should insist that this infrastructure not be built by or accessible to nationals of, e.g., China, Russia, or Iran, who could otherwise gain access to American technology or compromise the integrity of the facilities themselves. Likewise, Pax Silica partners should refrain from taking new AI infrastructure investments from China.
Pax Silica states must also agree to implement and maintain American-designed information security protocols. Pax Silica countries will benefit from an infusion of American technology. For example, new semiconductor fabs in Pax Silica partner states will have access to chip design details that could be damaging to America’s lead in the AI race if they fell into our adversaries’ hands; Pax Silica partner states may also benefit from greater access to American frontier models. The United States should require minimal mandatory cybersecurity protocols for use by partner state governments and private companies. As a starting point, in circumstances where we would require NIST compliance for our own firms (e.g., government entities and contractors, especially those handling sensitive government data), the partner state should similarly require compliance with a standard at least as rigorous as NIST. In areas where we would not require NIST compliance domestically but where the cyber threat is especially palpable, such as critical utilities, the U.S. should formulate a less onerous, minimally viable cybersecurity framework that every Pax Silica country must either adopt or match with its own homegrown guidelines. If America is to invest in Pax Silica projects abroad, it is only reasonable to insist that the recipients of this investment put basic protections in place to guard them.
Pax Silica members must also commit to a mutually advantageous AI regulatory framework that allows for the free flow of technology products across borders. Pax Silica will quickly fall apart if member states use domestic laws to control the pace or direction of AI development in other partner states or exact rent-seeking fines from them. The EU AI Act is exactly the sort of regulation that Pax Silica should preempt, at least as applied to fellow members; if the EU wants to treat Chinese AI companies as a threat to be regulated and fined, I say go ahead. And apart from substantive regulations on AI qua AI, Pax Silica should operate as a sort of customs union for the AI stack. That means no Digital Services Tax or Value-Added Tax on products or services essential to the AI ecosystem, no tariffs on the physical components of the AI stack, and so forth.
Finally, Pax Silica should come with a modest financial commitment. The United States intends to commit an initial $250 million of taxpayer funds. This amount will surely pale in comparison to the private investment that will follow. For instance, even if it could be built in a Pax Silica partner country at half the cost of a US facility, a single hyperscale AI data center would equal or exceed the $250 million of hypothetical public funds. And with one ASML lithography machine costing up to $400 million, building an advanced semiconductor fab would run well into the billions of dollars, even if it could be done at a fraction of the cost of building one domestically. As the world’s largest economy, it is all but certain that the United States and its private sector partners will shoulder the lion’s share of Pax Silica’s expenses. However, Pax Silica should not be free for all comers. The United States should set a minimal baseline financial commitment that all members must meet. Importantly, this financial commitment need not be a pure membership fee: Pax Silica could (and likely will) deploy these funds to invest in pro-AI development projects in member states. The member states could retain a share in the Pax Silica fund proportionate to their contribution, allowing them to profit from the success of these investments.