The United States is preparing to tell dozens of countries that they cannot belong to both the American and Chinese artificial intelligence blocs, according to a draft State Department letter reviewed by Reuters and reported on 14 August.

The letter is addressed to the 35 signatories of an American “AI Opportunity Statement” signed in June. Its message is that membership of Pax Silica — Washington’s AI and semiconductor supply-chain framework — is incompatible with joining Beijing’s rival body.

The wording is unusually blunt for a diplomatic text. Being part of everything, it says, amounts to being part of nothing; signing the Pax Silica declaration is not a membership subscription but a commitment, and it cannot be held alongside duplicative initiatives whose expectations conflict with Washington’s own. It urges countries to choose deliberately.

China is not named anywhere in it.

The two blocs

Washington launched Pax Silica last year to secure supply chains for AI models, semiconductors and critical minerals. Around two dozen countries have joined, including close allies such as Japan, Australia and South Korea. The framework pushes members toward joint projects and shared export controls, with the aim of reducing dependence on adversaries for the minerals, models and chips that AI runs on.

In July, President Xi Jinping launched a rival World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization at a conference in Shanghai, promoting Chinese open-weight models as an alternative to American influence over the sector.

The two offers are different in kind, which is what makes the choice awkward. Pax Silica offers investment access, joint projects and a place inside the export-control perimeter. Beijing offers models that can be downloaded and run.

Kazakhstan

One country appears to have prompted the letter. Kazakhstan is the only state known to have joined both initiatives, which Reuters reports set off alarm bells in Washington.

It is not an incidental member. Kazakhstan is a significant potential source of the critical minerals that chip manufacturing depends on, and China has already demonstrated during the tariff disputes that it will use its dominance in that sector as leverage. A mineral supplier hedging between the two blocs is precisely the scenario Pax Silica exists to prevent.

The responses

The State Department told Reuters it would not comment on what it called purportedly leaked internal documents. China’s embassy in Washington said Beijing opposes politicising trade and technology, and that such actions would stifle global AI progress without serving anyone’s interests. The Kazakh embassy did not respond.

Two caveats matter for reading this story accurately. The document is a draft, and it is undated — Reuters could not establish when Washington intends to send it, or whether the text will change first. And Pax Silica itself is a non-binding framework, so “exclusion” means losing access to co-operation and investment channels rather than breaching a treaty.

Why now

The timing reflects a shift in the technical balance. Chinese open-weight models have closed much of the gap with proprietary American systems over the past two years, which weakens the assumption underpinning export controls — that restricting chips restricts capability. If competitive models can simply be downloaded, the leverage moves from software to the physical supply chain: minerals, fabrication plants, and the countries that host them.

There is an irony worth noting. Beijing’s pitch rests on openness, but Reuters reported in July that China is itself weighing restrictions on overseas access to its leading models. Both blocs are offering a version of openness they may not intend to sustain.

For the 35 recipients — many of them countries that trade heavily with both powers — the letter converts a technical co-operation agreement into an alignment test. That is a familiar shape from the telecoms disputes of the last decade, and it did not resolve quickly then either. We explain what “open-weight” actually means, and why it sits at the centre of this split, separately.

Sources

Reuters exclusive by Michael Martina, 14 August 2026, carried by CNBC, US News, Rappler and the Spokesman-Review; The Next Web analysis; statements from the US State Department and the Chinese embassy in Washington.