US tells dozens of allies: pick American or Chinese AI, not both

The United States is preparing a blunt message for dozens of countries involved in its international approach to artificial intelligence: pick the American camp or the Chinese one, but not both at once. Any country that still does business with Beijing risks being excluded from the American technology coalition. That is what emerges from a draft letter from the US State Department, seen by the news agency Reuters, addressed to the 35 countries that signed the American "AI Opportunity Statement" in June — a group that includes both members of the Pax Silica framework and other countries seeking to align their AI cooperation with Washington.

Pax Silica versus WAICO

At the heart of the conflict is the Pax Silica initiative, which Washington launched last year to secure the supply chains of AI models, chips and critical raw materials amid fierce technological rivalry with China. Around two dozen countries have already joined Pax Silica, including close US allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea, alongside Kazakhstan.

Beijing did not sit still. In July, Chinese president Xi Jinping launched his own international organisation, the World AI Cooperation Organization, or WAICO for short. Through it, China is mainly promoting so-called open-weight technology — AI models whose underlying parameters are freely available — as a counterweight to the dominance of American AI companies. That strategy is already bearing fruit: Chinese open-weight models are rapidly gaining ground on the closed-source systems of American players such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which those involved say is pushing the rivalry between the two blocs toward a decisive moment.

The Kazakhstan case

The direct trigger for the hardened US stance is Kazakhstan. The Central Asian country, a major supplier of critical minerals, is as far as is known the only country to have joined both Pax Silica and WAICO — and that set off every alarm bell in Washington.

In the draft letter, drawn up by the State Department, the US leaves no room for doubt that such dual membership will no longer be tolerated. "To be part of everything is to be part of nothing," the department writes, making clear that signing the Pax Silica declaration is not a casual subscription but an obligation. Countries are asked to "consciously choose": membership of Pax Silica cannot be combined with membership of "overlapping initiatives whose expectations conflict with ours," the letter states, without ever naming China explicitly.

A US official put it more bluntly to Reuters: "You can't have it both ways." According to that official, it is hard to see how a country can credibly present itself as a trusted partner within one technological ecosystem while simultaneously taking part in a China-designed initiative meant to promote a competing vision of AI.

The US State Department declined to comment to Reuters on what it called "purportedly leaked internal documents." The Chinese embassy in Washington, for its part, said it opposed the politicisation of trade and technology issues, arguing that such actions would, in Beijing's view, only "stifle global AI progress and serve no one's interests."

What this means on both sides of the Atlantic

For US allies in Europe and elsewhere, this escalation is not a distant dispute. Governments that joined the AI Opportunity Statement while also courting Chinese investment or Chinese-built infrastructure now face a binary demand from Washington, delivered in writing rather than in diplomatic hints. Companies operating across both ecosystems — buying chips shaped by US export controls while also selling into, or sourcing from, Chinese-linked supply chains — are the ones most directly exposed to whatever enforcement follows this letter.

The bigger question is whether this ultimatum marks a one-off warning aimed squarely at Kazakhstan, or the opening move in a broader push to formalise Pax Silica as an exclusive bloc. Allies that have so far tried to hedge — taking Washington's security guarantees while keeping commercial doors to Beijing open — will need to decide, in the coming months, which side of that binary they are actually prepared to stand on.