Washington is no longer asking for cooperation - it is demanding a choice. According to internal US State Department documents, the US is preparing to tell a dozen countries they cannot be in the American artificial intelligence coalition if they sign with Beijing at the same time. One membership, one side, no double bookkeeping.

The initiative is called Pax Silica and was launched in late 2025. The aim is to secure the supply chains for artificial intelligence, semiconductors and critical minerals - so, the chips, but also the ores without which chips do not exist. Around two dozen countries have joined so far, among them Japan, Australia and South Korea.

The problem has a name: Kazakhstan. It joined in June, then also signed up to the Chinese framework - the only country known to be in both. That case in particular, American sources say, alarmed the administration. It is no accident that this is a country with critical minerals: when you have a mine, you tend to think you also have the right to negotiate with both sides.

"Being part of everything means being part of nothing"

The wording in the draft letter is almost textbook: signing the Pax Silica Declaration is not a subscription to a membership but an obligation - and it cannot be held alongside membership in initiatives whose expectations conflict with American ones. One US official put it more sharply still: it is impossible for anyone to credibly present themselves as a trusted partner in one technological ecosystem while simultaneously accessing the competing one.

On the other side, Xi Jinping in July launched his own World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. The Chinese embassy in Washington replied briefly: politicising technology talks will only slow global AI progress. From Beijing that sounds modest, but they too are building a club with an entry ticket.

So both blocs are doing the same thing and accusing each other of it. And small countries are back in the familiar spot - the one where the big players explain that the choice is free, and then list what you lose if you choose wrong. The Balkans knows this scene by heart from every chapter in which something has to be signed before anything is received.

The question rarely asked out loud: what does the country that signs actually get? So far, from clubs like these, what is owed is well known and what is given is not. If Pax Silica is different, it will show in whether Kazakhstan gets excluded - or whether an exception gets found for it.