This is the US Department of State fact sheet, issued by the Office of the Spokesperson on December 11, 2025 (modified December 13, 2025), announcing Pax Silica, a US-led strategic initiative to build a secure end-to-end "silicon supply chain" — spanning critical minerals, energy, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and frontier models — across trusted allied nations. The initiative was convened by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg, with an inaugural summit held December 11–12, 2025. Primary text: state.gov. Membership and accession developments — including the February 2026 India accession and the June 2026 EU accession move — are tracked on Pax Silica (US-Led AI Supply-Chain Initiative).
Summary
The fact sheet describes Pax Silica as a US-led strategic initiative to build a "secure, prosperous, and innovation-driven silicon supply chain" spanning critical minerals and energy inputs, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI infrastructure, logistics, and "foundational models and applications." The State Department frames it as a "positive-sum partnership… not about isolating others — but about coordinating with partners who want to remain competitive and prosperous," aimed at reducing coercive dependencies, protecting "the materials and capabilities foundational to artificial intelligence," and ensuring aligned nations can "develop and deploy transformative technologies at scale."
The fact sheet notes that the name fuses the Latin pax (peace/stability/prosperity, as in Pax Americana / Pax Romana) with silica, the compound refined into the silicon at the base of computer chips, presenting the initiative as an attempt to construct a durable, US-anchored economic order for the AI age. The governing premise, repeated across summit materials, is stated as: "Economic security is national security, and national security is economic security."
Participants
The inaugural summit (December 11–12, 2025) was convened by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg and brought together eight core partners — Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia — with guest contributions from Taiwan, the European Union, Canada, and the OECD. The fact sheet states that these partners host much of the global AI supply chain's most important firms and investors, naming Sony, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, SK Hynix, Temasek, DeepMind, MGX, Rio Tinto, and ASML.
Deliverables and expected outcomes
Participating countries affirmed commitments to:
- Pursue projects addressing AI-supply-chain opportunities and vulnerabilities across priority critical minerals; semiconductor design, fabrication, and packaging; logistics and transportation; compute; and energy grids and power generation.
- Pursue new joint ventures and strategic co-investment opportunities.
- Protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access or control by countries of concern.
- Build trusted technology ecosystems, including ICT systems, fiber-optic cables, data centers, foundational models, and applications.
Helberg directed US diplomats in Washington and overseas to operationalize the summit through identification of infrastructure projects and coordination of economic-security practices.
Key claims
As an AI-policy instrument, the document is a non-binding declaration plus a standing diplomatic process, rather than a treaty or regulatory rule. Its operative content is the bloc geometry it sets out: a trusted-supplier grouping aligning hardware, minerals, energy, and model governance, positioned against China's vertical-integration strategy. It functions as the allied-coordination component of US AI-competition strategy, alongside the harder instruments of export controls and the Quad Critical Minerals Framework.
Provenance
Canonical host: state.gov (Office of the Spokesperson; HTTP 200; dated December 11, 2025). Distinctive passages — "Pax Silica is a positive-sum partnership," the eight-country roster, and the pax/silica etymology — were confirmed against the fetched primary document during the June 4, 2026 gap scan. Corroborated by the Atlantic Council, ORF, CNBC (February 2026), and the Economic Times (India accession).
Relationships
- instance-of: US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics — the strategic contest the initiative is built to address
- related: Pax Silica (US-Led AI Supply-Chain Initiative) — the living tracking page for membership and accession developments
- related: Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework — the minerals-specific framework Pax Silica's critical-minerals leg overlaps
- related: Export Controls (AI) — the harder counterpart instrument