Washington's Ultimatum: 35 Countries Told to Pick Pax Silica or Beijing's AI Bloc

The geopolitical fencing-off of artificial intelligence has moved from doctrine to paperwork. According to a US official and an internal draft reviewed by Reuters, the US State Department has prepared a letter that will tell dozens of countries they must pick sides in the AI race with China — and warn them, in unusually blunt terms, that they will be excluded from the US-led AI coalition if they also sign up for Beijing’s competing framework.

The draft’s key phrasing, as reported by Reuters: “you can’t have it both ways.”

What the letter actually says

The letter is addressed to the 35 signatories of the US “AI Opportunity Statement,” a document signed in June 2026 that groups together members of the non-binding Pax Silica framework and other countries that have expressed a desire to align their AI cooperation with Washington. The signatory list is broad — the State Department’s own readout of the Second Pax Silica Summit counts Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark and El Salvador among the countries that have signed on, alongside close US allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea.

The message is an exclusivity rule. A US official put it more diplomatically than the draft itself: “It’s difficult to see how a country can credibly position themselves as trusted partners in one technology ecosystem while simultaneously signing up for an initiative designed by China to advance a competing vision for AI.”

In other words: choose your chip supplier and cast your governance vote in the same breath.

The two rival blocs

On one side stands Pax Silica, the initiative Washington launched in 2025 to secure supply chains for AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals. About two dozen countries have joined. The framing is economic — a “trusted partners” coalition covering the entire silicon stack, from critical-mineral mines to frontier models — but the strategic intent is explicit: keep the most advanced AI supply chain away from Beijing’s reach.

On the other side is the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), the Chinese-led body that Xi Jinping launched in July 2026, headquartered in Shanghai and pitched as a more inclusive, developing-world-friendly forum for AI governance. Twenty-nine countries have joined, including Pakistan, Russia — and Kazakhstan.

That last name is the flashpoint. Kazakhstan, a critical-minerals powerhouse whose reserves the US very much wants inside its AI supply chain, is currently the only country publicly known to have signed both frameworks. Its dual membership is widely read as the proximate trigger for the letter.

Why it matters

By pressing countries to choose sides, the US hopes to starve China of resources in the race to build the most sophisticated AI — technology that could translate into military or economic dominance. Three implications stand out:

1. Non-alignment is collapsing. For two years, middle powers from Southeast Asia to Central Asia have operated on the assumption that they could take American chips and Chinese demand simultaneously. If this letter goes out, that hedge gets priced out. Governments in the 35 signatory capitals will have to calculate what “excluded” actually costs before responding.

2. The stakes are minerals as much as models. Pax Silica’s remit runs from uranium and rare earths through advanced packaging to foundation models. Kazakhstan is precisely the kind of supplier both blocs need — which is exactly why its double-signing forced Washington’s hand. Expect the exclusivity logic to harden around critical-minerals agreements first, where leverage is greatest.

3. Beijing gets a recruiting pitch either way. If the ultimatum lands as bluntly as the draft reads, Shanghai starts to look like the more welcoming host for countries that resent binary choices. WAICO’s inclusivity branding was built for precisely this moment.

Important caveats

The story comes with real uncertainty. Reuters is the only outlet that has reviewed the draft; the reporting does not say the letter has been sent, and it does not spell out what exclusion would concretely cost a country — whether chip export licenses, frontier-model access, or infrastructure funding. Nor does it name any signatory besides Kazakhstan that is currently straddling both camps. The letter could still be softened, delayed, or leaked-then-denied into oblivion.

But the direction of travel is unmistakable. Since 2025, Washington has steadily converted AI cooperation from an open invitation into a loyalty test — export controls on advanced chips, entity-list expansions, and now coalition exclusivity. The draft letter is simply the moment the invitation acquired an RSVP deadline.

For the 35 countries receiving it, the calculation is stark: the US controls the frontier models and much of the silicon stack today, but China controls the minerals, the manufacturing base, and — for many of them — the largest export market. Whichever way they jump, the age of comfortably hedging between the two AI ecosystems is drawing to a close.