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Kazakhstan has joined both the U.S.-led Pax Silica partnership and China-led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), positioning it between competing technology, AI-governance, and strategic supply-chain initiatives. Pax Silica focuses on building trusted supply chains across AI, energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure, while WAICO is presented as a multilateral AI-cooperation and governance body. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have also joined WAICO, and Uzbekistan has sought Pax Silica membership.
A reportedly drafted but unsent U.S. State Department letter indicated that Pax Silica participants could face pressure not to join overlapping organizations whose expectations conflict with the U.S.-backed initiative. Such restrictions would challenge Central Asian governments' multivector foreign policies and could force choices between Washington and Beijing. The prospect is complicated by China's—and Russia's—established influence over regional critical-mineral industries, which are central to AI and advanced-technology supply chains.
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Thailand reportedly paused 166 data-center projects, including projects under construction and awaiting approval. The pause was linked to efforts to establish rules on resource use and domestic economic benefits from data-center investment.
Uzbekistan's ambassador to the United States, Furqat Sidikov, said Uzbekistan had submitted a diplomatic note to the State Department requesting to join Pax Silica and opposed restrictions on participation in international initiatives.
Reuters reported that a U.S. State Department draft letter to 35 AI Opportunity Statement signatories said Pax Silica commitments could not be held alongside duplicative initiatives with conflicting U.S. expectations. The draft did not name China and apparently had not been sent.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Paul Kapur visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, including a meeting with Zhaslan Madiyev on digital development in Kazakhstan.
WAICO was established during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, with Kazakhstan as a founding member; Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan also joined. UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the signing as a guest.
Kazakhstan officially joined the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative. Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev signed the Pax Silica declaration and an AI Opportunity Partnership joint statement in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. State Department launched Pax Silica as an initiative focused on AI and supply-chain security, including energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure.
China proposed the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), an international organization focused on AI governance.
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At the C5+1 artificial-intelligence conference in Astana, U.S. State Department official Mark Cameron said stronger cybersecurity and trusted digital infrastructure are prerequisites for increased U.S. private-sector investment in Central Asia. The United States committed **$5 million** through CRDF Global for regional support covering incident response, critical-infrastructure protection, financial-sector security, and cybersecurity policy. Central Asian governments outlined AI priorities spanning energy supply, data centers, compute capacity, high-quality data, workforce development, local-language models, regulation, and cybersecurity. U.S. initiatives—including the American AI Exports Program established under the policy to promote exports of the American AI technology stack, potential DFC support for Tele2 Kazakhstan modernization, and ExportAI—are positioned to back trusted AI, telecoms, cybersecurity, and data-center projects in the region.
Sep 29, 2026
The White House announced new programs to operationalize President Trump’s AI action plan, including export-ready **“American AI stack”** packages, a proposed **U.S. Tech Corps**, and expanded work on technical standards intended to counter foreign influence over global technology governance. The initiatives were unveiled around the India AI Impact Summit and are positioned as a mechanism to accelerate domestic AI deployment while strengthening U.S. influence over international AI and technology standards. In parallel, India formally joined **Pax Silica**, a U.S.-led effort to secure end-to-end supply chains spanning critical minerals, semiconductor manufacturing, and AI/data-center infrastructure, and signed a joint statement on an India–U.S. AI partnership at the same summit. Separate reporting on OpenAI’s *Stargate* data-center initiative—describing partner disputes among OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank and delays in planned U.S. AI data-center buildouts—does not align with the White House standards/export and Pax Silica policy actions and appears to be a distinct business/infrastructure story rather than the government-led initiatives announced at the summit.
Jun 29, 2026
China has moved to formalize its influence over international AI policy by launching the **World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO)**, a new governance body backed by 29 founding countries and promoted by Xi Jinping at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Reporting indicates Beijing is using WAICO to advance themes such as “true multilateralism,” Global South partnership, and a more state-centric model of AI oversight that could normalize concepts tied to cyber sovereignty while placing less emphasis on independent stakeholders and human-rights safeguards. China has paired the initiative with AI cooperation centers, capacity-building offers, technology-sharing programs, and support for open-source AI, potentially extending Chinese standards and platforms abroad. The move comes as AI governance remains fragmented worldwide and regulators struggle to keep pace with security, safety, and criminal-use risks. Reviews of the global landscape describe the **EU AI Act** as the first comprehensive binding framework, while the United States continues with executive orders and state-level measures and the United Kingdom relies on a regulator-led model; earlier U.S. policy also emphasized the safe, secure, and trustworthy development of AI through federal action. In Canada, governance debates have sharpened around both infrastructure and accountability, with organized resistance to large data-centre expansion and British Columbia seeking accountability from OpenAI over allegations it failed to alert law enforcement after detecting threatening chatbot activity before the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, underscoring how national responses are diverging in the absence of a single enforceable global standard.
Jul 22, 2026