US tells 35 partners: pick Pax Silica or China's AI bloc
Washington is drawing a hard line under the global AI cold war: partner with the US-led Pax Silica initiative, or with China's rival framework — not both.
The US plans to tell 35 partner countries they will be excluded from the US-led Pax Silica initiative if they join China's rival AI framework, according to a Reuters exclusive based on a letter and a source familiar with the matter. The message, reported by Reuters' Michael Martina, effectively asks every country in the bloc to pick a side in the AI race — and makes membership conditional on staying out of Beijing's orbit. Pax Silica, the US-led consortium spanning silicon supply chains, critical minerals, chips and AI infrastructure, has been expanding through the year: India was among 35 nations that signed the group's "AI Opportunity" statement at the second Pax Silica Summit, Italy and the US signed off on the initiative in late July after a public spat with President Trump, and the Philippines, the UAE and others are jockeying for roles in its planned hubs. The exclusivity demand is the sharpest escalation yet in Washington's effort to turn the bloc from a supply-chain arrangement into a geopolitical fence.
It matters because most of the 35 are small or middle powers — Vietnam, Gulf states, Southeast Asian nations — that have been carefully courting both superpowers for AI investment, data center deals and chip access. Forced choice is exactly the outcome those governments tried to avoid, and the ones with the deepest commercial ties to Chinese AI (data center financing, model partnerships, Huawei-era 5G precedent) now face real economic exposure either way. The hedge states that sign on will likely still keep quiet channels to Beijing open; the letter just makes the official position unambiguous. The interesting test case is the Philippines, which has publicly defended Pax Silica as a "good deal" while its finance chief pushes back on "fake news" about the initiative — a government visibly anxious about what the bloc's fine print actually commits it to. Watch for the first country to balk, and for how China frames its counter-offer: a "both is possible" pitch is the obvious diplomatic answer to an ultimatum.
If you were a small country with AI ambitions, which bloc would you bet on — and can anyone really stay neutral? Tell us in the comments.
