Pax Silica: 13 Nations Decide Who Gets AI Chips

Thirteen nations now control who gets advanced computing power and who doesn't. The US-led Pax Silica semiconductor alliance has grown from seven founding members to 13 signatories since December 2025, backed by a newly announced investment fund targeting $4 trillion. China isn't invited. But a $2.5 billion chip smuggling prosecution and ByteDance's 36,000-GPU workaround in Malaysia suggest the fortress has cracks. The Albis Perception Gap Index scored this story 6.5 — 3.87 billion people in excluded regions didn't even see it announced.

The Fortress Takes Shape

On December 12, 2025, seven countries signed the Pax Silica Declaration in Washington. The name borrows from Pax Romana — but swaps legions for lithography machines.

The original seven: the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, the UK, and Israel. Within weeks, the Netherlands, Qatar, and the UAE signed on. India joined in February 2026. Greece and Sweden followed in March.

Each country holds a piece of the silicon stack. Japan makes the chemicals and optics. South Korea has Samsung's fabs. The Netherlands hosts ASML, maker of the only machines on Earth that can print chips below 7 nanometres. Singapore is a packaging hub. India brings rare earth processing and a market of 1.4 billion.

Then came the money. On March 23, Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg announced a Pax Silica investment fund with a $4 trillion target. The US government will seed it with $250 million. SoftBank, Singapore's Temasek, and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala — managing over $1 trillion combined — are founding members. The fund's priorities: energy, critical minerals, and semiconductor infrastructure for allied nations.

The scope expanded after the Iran war. What started as an AI supply chain pact now includes energy infrastructure projects, driven by the Hormuz blockade's impact on chip production. Helium from Qatar — essential for cooling semiconductor fabs and MRI machines — became a strategic weapon overnight.

The Cracks

Here's where the story splits.

US media frames Pax Silica as a historic achievement. The State Department calls it a "positive-sum" partnership reducing "coercive dependencies." Thirteen nations, trillions in investment, a unified tech stack from mine to motherboard.

Chinese state media sees something else entirely. The South China Morning Post warns of "strategic repositioning rather than genuine peace." Commentators on Weibo have been more direct — the phrase "乌合之众唱空城计" (a ragtag alliance singing an empty-city strategy) circulated after Sweden's accession, suggesting the alliance is theatre meant to scare China into overreacting.

Both sides have evidence.

The fortress argument: Pax Silica members account for roughly 90% of the world's advanced chip manufacturing capacity. TSMC (Taiwan, a guest participant), Samsung (South Korea), and Intel (US) produce virtually every chip below 7nm. ASML's EUV lithography machines — which only the Netherlands makes — are the bottleneck for anyone trying to build cutting-edge fabs. No ASML, no advanced chips. Period. The bluff argument: On March 19, the US Justice Department charged Super Micro Computer co-founder Wally Liaw with smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia AI servers to China. The scheme ran for years through shell companies and false end-user certificates. SMCI's stock crashed 22% in a day.

That's not a leak. That's a river.

Days earlier, ByteDance — TikTok's parent company — secured access to 36,000 Nvidia Blackwell B200 GPUs through a Malaysian cloud operator. Nvidia confirmed no objections. The chips sit in Malaysia, not China. ByteDance's engineers access them remotely. Technically legal. Practically, it defeats the entire point of export controls.

Who's Missing

The alliance's gaps tell their own story.

Taiwan isn't a full signatory — only a "guest participant." This is the country that makes over 90% of the world's most advanced chips through TSMC. The reason is diplomatic: signing Taiwan as a sovereign partner would infuriate Beijing at a moment when Washington wants economic pressure, not military escalation.

Germany is absent entirely. This is Europe's largest economy, home to Infineon (a major automotive and industrial chipmaker), and the site of TSMC's new €5 billion Dresden fab. France and Italy — home to STMicroelectronics, a global power and automotive chip giant — are also missing.

The Center for European Policy Analysis noted the pattern: "Political trust and perceived strategic alignment are preferred over pure technological heft." Translation: this isn't about who makes chips. It's about who follows Washington's lead.

There's also a contradiction the alliance hasn't resolved. In January 2026, the Bureau of Industry and Security quietly shifted export licensing for Nvidia H200 and AMD MI325X chips to China from "presumption of denial" to "case-by-case review." As analyst Pablo Chavez put it: "Discipline for the coalition, carve-outs for Washington."

The US demands allies coordinate export controls while keeping its own back door ajar.

What 3.87 Billion People Don't See

This story ran in US, European, and East Asian media. It didn't run in the Middle East (beyond Qatar and UAE's own membership coverage), South Asia (beyond India's accession), Latin America, or Africa.

That matters because the alliance's decisions affect everyone. Advanced chips don't just power AI chatbots. They run MRI machines, power grids, satellite navigation, weather forecasting, and military systems. If you can't access the chips, you can't build the infrastructure. Computing power in 2026 is what oil was in 1973 — the commodity that determines which economies grow and which stall.

Arm's announcement this month of its first custom-designed chip in 35 years, purpose-built for AI workloads, underscores the stakes. The architecture that powers 99% of the world's smartphones is now competing directly in the AI chip space — and it's a Pax Silica member's technology.

The Self-Sufficiency Paradox

Export controls and alliances create a paradox that neither side likes to discuss.

CSIS published research this week showing that US chip restrictions "prompted China to implement an all-out, government-backed effort to improve self-sufficiency in all aspects of semiconductor design and production, an effort that has already resulted in a number of startling achievements."

Huawei's Mate 60 Pro used a domestically manufactured 7nm chip — something Western analysts said China couldn't do for years. DeepSeek built competitive AI models on restricted hardware. China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) makes semiconductor self-sufficiency a top national priority.

Every wall the alliance builds makes China more determined to build its own. Every smuggling prosecution proves the walls leak. Every ByteDance workaround proves smart routing beats blunt restrictions.

The question isn't whether Pax Silica can lock China out. It can't — not completely. The question is whether 13 nations coordinating their supply chains can stay ahead fast enough that the gap keeps growing.

What Happens Next

The March 28 Iran ceasefire deadline looms over everything. If strikes resume, energy prices spike again. Helium supplies from Qatar tighten further. Chip fabs that need helium cooling face production cuts. The same war driving Pax Silica's expansion into energy could starve the semiconductor production the alliance exists to protect.

Sweden joined eight days ago. Greece joined before that. More countries will sign. The $4 trillion fund will attract capital in a world desperate for supply chain security.

But the fortress only works if the walls hold. Right now, $2.5 billion in smuggled chips and 36,000 GPUs in Malaysia say they don't.

Computing power decides who builds the future. Thirteen countries just decided that question shouldn't be left to the market. Whether that's wisdom or hubris depends entirely on which side of the wall you're standing on — and whether you even knew the wall existed.