Key Notes
- US plans to tell the 35 signatories of its June "AI Opportunity Statement" they must choose between Washington's Pax Silica AI/minerals coalition and Beijing's rival framework, or risk exclusion.
- The trigger is Kazakhstan, a key critical-minerals source and the only country so far to join both Pax Silica and China's new World AI Cooperation Organization, which Xi Jinping launched in July to promote Chinese open-weight models.
- The State Department declined to comment on "purportedly leaked" documents, and China's embassy called it politicizing tech that would "stifle global AI advances.".
The United States is preparing to tell dozens of countries they must choose a side in the artificial intelligence race with China, warning they will be excluded from a US-led coalition if they also join Beijing’s competing framework, Reuters reported based on a US official and an internal draft it reviewed.
The document is a draft letter prepared by the State Department, addressed to the 35 signatories of an “AI Opportunity Statement” signed in June. That group includes members of Pax Silica, a US initiative launched last year to secure supply chains for AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals, along with other countries seeking to align their AI cooperation with Washington.
Roughly two dozen countries have joined Pax Silica, including close allies Japan, Australia and South Korea, as well as Kazakhstan, a significant potential source of the critical minerals that advanced technology depends on.
Kazakhstan is the specific trigger. It is the only country so far known to have joined both the US initiative and China’s coalition, which set off alarm in Washington. The draft letter frames signing the Pax Silica Declaration as a binding commitment rather than a loose membership, stating that “to be part of everything is to be part of nothing” and urging countries to “choose deliberately.”
It says membership “cannot be held alongside” duplicative initiatives whose expectations conflict with Washington’s, without naming China directly. A US official put it more bluntly, saying the aim is to make clear that countries “cannot have it both ways.”
Several caveats matter. The draft is undated, and Reuters could not determine when or whether the US will send it, or if it might be revised first. The State Department declined to comment on “purportedly leaked internal documents.” China’s embassy in Washington said it opposes politicizing trade and technology, warning that such actions “will only stifle global AI advances and serve no one’s interests.”
China Treats AI as a Sovereign Contest
The move reflects how thoroughly AI and its supply chains have become instruments of geopolitical strategy. Washington’s explicit goal is to starve China of the minerals, chips and partnerships needed to build the most advanced AI, capability it fears could translate into military or economic dominance.
The pressure escalated after Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a rival World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in July, promoting China’s open-weight models as an alternative to US influence. China has also wielded its near-monopoly over critical minerals as leverage in the tariff conflict with the Trump administration, which is why locking in suppliers like Kazakhstan matters so much to Washington. The contest is no longer only about who builds the best models but about who controls the physical inputs that make them possible.
The Risk of Forcing a Choice
The strategy carries real risks for Washington. Demanding that countries pick a side could backfire with nations that prefer to hedge, particularly resource-rich states like Kazakhstan that benefit from courting both powers and may resent an ultimatum. Forcing a binary choice could push some partners toward Beijing rather than away from it, especially as Chinese open-weight models grow more competitive.
That competitive backdrop sharpens the stakes: Chinese systems from labs like Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek have rapidly narrowed the gap with, and in some benchmarks overtaken, models from US companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and they are often cheaper and freely downloadable. That makes China’s offer genuinely attractive to developing nations weighing cost and access against alignment with Washington.
The episode illustrates a broader shift in which AI cooperation is being organized into competing geopolitical blocs, much like Cold War-era alliances, raising the question of whether the world is heading toward two increasingly separate technology ecosystems. For now the letter remains a draft, and how forcefully Washington ultimately presses the demand, and how partners respond, will shape whether the strategy consolidates the US coalition or fractures it.
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