Wired for War: Pax Silica is AI slavery disguised as strength

The EU has signed on to ‘Pax Silica’, a US initiative seemingly designed to shut China and others out of the global AI supply chain and extract resources from Europe for the benefit of Washington’s military-industrial complex.

“America and Europe belong together; our histories are braided, our destiny intertwined,” US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg declared at a summit in Washington on Tuesday. “But we share more than a past. We share a purpose – to build a future that answers to our values and is worthy of our inheritance.”

What is Pax Silica?

Representatives from the EU, Germany, and Greece signed the pact at Tuesday’s summit, bringing the total number of ‘Pax Silica’ signatories to 19. They are:

• Argentina

• Australia

• Chile

• European Union

• Finland

• Germany

• Greece

• India

• Israel

• Japan

• The Netherlands

• Norway

• Qatar

• Republic of Korea

• Singapore

• Sweden

• The Philippines

• United Arab Emirates

• United Kingdom

‘Pax Silica’ evokes imperial Rome in both name and practice. Its signatories agree to “partner on strategic stacks of the global technology supply chain,” including raw materials, energy, logistics, semiconductor manufacturing, computing, software, and models. They pledge to reduce “excessive dependencies” on nations that “undermine innovation and fair competition,” – an implicit reference to China – and “protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access, influence, or control,” – again, a reference to China – in exchange for access to this “full stack of technological advancements that are shaping the AI economy.”

The pact is largely the creation of Helberg, a China hawk and former adviser to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, whose growing power RT has already covered in our ‘Wired for War’ series. 

Who is in Pax Silica and who is against it?

Notably absent from the list of signatories is France, where President Emmanuel Macron has spent years pushing for “digital sovereignty.” France, and Europe more broadly, he argues, need to end their reliance on American technology and develop homegrown alternatives. To that end, the French government has ditched US-made videoconferencing software, swapped Microsoft Windows for Linux, traded Palantir’s data analytics software for the French-developed ChapsVision, and invested public funds in Mistral AI – one of the continent’s few promising AI companies. 

Does Pax Silica undermine national digital sovereignty?