US letter reportedly tells 35 countries they cannot join both Pax Silica and China's rival AI bloc

[StringTheory98]

TheNextWeb has a piece on a draft US State Department letter that reportedly tells 35 countries they cannot hold membership in America's Pax Silica AI framework while also joining China's rival coalition. The letter never names China directly, instead referring to duplicative initiatives whose expectations conflict with our own, but an official told Reuters the intent was blunt, you cannot have it both ways

Pax Silica launched last year to lock down supply chains across AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals, with around two dozen countries already members including Japan, Australia, South Korea and Kazakhstan. The wider group of 35 signed a looser AI Opportunity Statement back in June that only commits them symbolically to a shared vision with the US, and that is the group now getting the letter

The whole thing seems to have been triggered by Kazakhstan, which joined Pax Silica in June as the first Central Asian member and then turned around and joined China's new World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization as well. Kazakhstan sits on huge reserves of the minerals advanced chips depend on, so a supplier hedging between both blocs is apparently exactly the scenario Pax Silica was built to prevent

Xi Jinping launched the Chinese framework barely a month ago at a Shanghai conference, pitching open weight Chinese models as the alternative to American influence, even though Reuters has separately reported Beijing is weighing restrictions on overseas access to its own top models. The timing lines up with Hugging Face's CEO recently saying China is now winning the open model download race outright

What stands out is that no European country gets named in the reporting at all despite the framework covering chips and minerals that Europe handles heavily. Whether any EU capital receives a version of this letter looks like the thing worth watching next

The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AIthenextweb.com

[WildManJericho80]

The letter never naming China by name while everyone involved obviously knows exactly who it means is such a classic diplomatic move. Feels almost performative at this point given how blunt the anonymous official quote was

[ForumGremlin93]

Kazakhstan being the trigger case makes total sense once you remember how much of the critical mineral supply for chips runs through Central Asia.

Whoever controls that relationship effectively controls a chokepoint neither side wants to lose

[MondayMoan67]

The non binding nature of the wider 35 country group is doing a lot of work here.

A symbolic statement of shared vision is a much lower bar to walk back from than actual Pax Silica membership, so I would not be shocked if several countries just quietly let their symbolic commitment lapse rather than formally choose

[QuietObserver]

The China analyst quoted pushing back with the alliances are not permanent argument is the more interesting angle to me. Coercion tends to breed exactly the kind of resentment that erodes an alliance over time. It rarely strengthens one

[Ranger]

Forcing a binary choice on smaller countries rarely works out the way the bigger power intends. Plenty of these nations will just quietly hedge anyway and accept whatever penalty comes later if it ever actually gets enforced

[CodeOracle49]

Worth remembering Nvidia and other major US firms already broke ranks with OpenAI and Anthropic over open weights earlier this year. The idea that American industry is unified behind one clean approach here is not really accurate either

[Elliot_30]

China not being name-checked but Beijing's own framework simultaneously restricting outside access to its models is a pretty glaring contradiction.

They are selling openness abroad while tightening control at home

[Aaron_67]

Does anyone actually think enforcement mechanisms exist here beyond diplomatic pressure and access to future investment opportunities. Feels more like leverage through relationship management than anything with real teeth

[Romulan]

Genuinely surprised no European country shows up anywhere in this reporting. Europe is central to both chip manufacturing equipment and rare earth processing capacity. Feels like a notable omission

[CyberWarden61]

This is basically a rerun of Cold War era bloc politics except the resource being fought over is compute and rare earths instead of missiles and territory. Same underlying logic though, pick a side or get squeezed out