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The EU, Netherlands, Germany and Greece have become the latest US allies to join Pax Silica, an American-led effort to bolster AI-related tech supply chains as the west and its allies face rising competition from China.
The additions came at the opening of a Pax Silica summit in Washington on Tuesday. In an interview, Jacob Helberg, under-secretary of state for economic affairs and architect of the security initiative, said Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Kazakhstan and Panama would also join this week, bringing the total to 24 countries.
The US created Pax Silica last year to secure AI supply chains in everything from chips and critical minerals to energy. Helberg said it grew out of a recognition that groups such as the G7 and G20 were not suited to creating networks to promote AI innovation.
“There’s no grouping that’s purpose-built to manage the AI economy at a time when AI is revolutionising the shape of the global economy,” he said.
Helberg said Pax Silica would promote innovation at a time of “global debate” about what policies should drive AI development.
He said it would “shape” a US alternative to initiatives such as the UN’s Global Digital Compact, which emphasises “digital sovereignty” — a concept he argued would result in countries investing in duplicative ways.
“You’re going to end up in a kind of synchronised mediocrity,” said Helberg, who added that the focus should be on “innovation sovereignty”.
Helberg said more than 20 countries would this week sign a joint statement outlining the need for trusted partners to create an AI ecosystem.
Asked how he would convince countries that believed the US was using Pax Silica to promote its interests, he pointed to Israel, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, which he said successfully used American technology to create successful indigenous tech companies.
“These countries punch far above their weight, so that should be a really strong counterexample to folks,” he said.
The US is focusing on Pax Silica at a time when Washington is trying to rapidly reduce its reliance on China for rare earths.
Helberg declined to say if Beijing was pressing US partners not to join Pax Silica, but said it was in stark contrast to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which was driven by state-run entities that lacked transparency, were inefficient in capital allocation and promoted predatory debt traps.
“As Steve Jobs used to say, enchant and delight users by the billions around the world, that is our secret sauce and our superpower as a country,” Helberg said. “That’s why almost everything we do really entails working in lockstep with our private companies.”
To support AI innovation, Helberg said the state department would also sign a memorandum of understanding with Stanford University to create a new curriculum focused on manufacturing to fill what he called a “major gap” in the US educational system.
Helberg said the US and Kazakhstan would also announce the creation of an economic security zone in the Central Asian country to expand opportunities for mineral security. “Our hope is really to help really build a new partnership with Central Asia, because historically the US has just been completely absent from Central Asia.”
It will be similar to an economic zone the US is creating in the Philippines. The zones are designed to provide more regulatory and legal stability to investors.
Helberg said the biggest challenge to the project in the Philippines was disinformation — a reference to criticism from some groups in the country that Manila was subjugating its sovereignty to Washington.
“A core requirement for the zone to be successful is we need to provide legal certainty and predictability for investors. If we can’t do that, it’s not going to be a success.”
