Pax Silica and the quiet architecture of exclusion

On 12 December 2025, a group of countries gathered in Washington, D.C. to sign a declaration few people outside policy circles noticed. There were no flags on podiums, no grand communiqués, no adversaries named. Yet what emerged from that meeting may end up shaping the global technology landscape more durably than many treaties that came before it.

The declaration was called Pax Silica. The name sounded deliberately anodyne—almost academic. But behind it lay an idea both simple and unsettling: that the future of advanced technology should be built inside a circle of “trusted” partners, and that trust, once defined, could become the most powerful form of exclusion. This was not a pact in the traditional sense. There were no binding commitments, no sanctions, no enforcement mechanisms. And yet Pax Silica matters precisely because of that. It is not a weapon. It is an architecture.

Pax Silica is best understood not as an alliance or trade agreement, but as a coordination framework. Initiated by the United States, it brings together a group of like-minded countries to align how they think about supply chains, advanced technologies, artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure, and investment risk. At the inaugural summit, the declaration was formally signed by the United States, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore, and Israel. In the weeks that followed, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar joined as additional signatories. Others were present but more cautious. The Netherlands—home to some of the most strategically important semiconductor technology in the world—participated in discussions without immediately signing. European Union representatives attended as observers. This tiered participation was not accidental. Pax Silica was designed to be elastic: firm enough to coordinate, flexible enough to avoid forcing premature choices.

The declaration itself is careful to the point of blandness. It speaks of mutual prosperity, secure and resilient supply chains, the transformative potential of artificial intelligence, and the importance of fair market practices. No country is named as a problem. No red lines are drawn.But in geopolitics, what is not said often matters more than what is.

“Trusted” as a strategic category

The word that appears again and again in the Pax Silica declaration is trusted. Trusted supply chains. Trusted infrastructure. Trusted ecosystems. This is not casual language. In the world of advanced technology—semiconductors, AI compute, cloud infrastructure, critical minerals—trust is becoming a formal category. It determines who qualifies for subsidies, who can participate in public procurement, who gains access to sensitive collaborations, and who attracts long-term capital. Pax Silica does not publish a list of trusted companies or countries. It does not need to. Instead, it aligns the criteria by which such judgments are made. Once those criteria converge across governments, regulators, and major investors, the lists effectively write themselves. This is how exclusion now works: not through bans, but through standards.

No discussion of Pax Silica makes sense without acknowledging who is not in the room. China is not a signatory. It was not invited to sign. And while the declaration never mentions Beijing, it is widely understood as responding to a world in which technological interdependence has become a strategic vulnerability. From a Chinese perspective, Pax Silica looks less like cooperation and more like containment by other means. Not containment through embargoes or tariffs, but through system design. Advanced semiconductors are not just products; they are ecosystems involving design software, manufacturing equipment, materials, energy, capital, and talent. If that ecosystem is coordinated among a group of trusted partners, outsiders find it increasingly hard to plug in—no matter how capable they are.

This does not mean China is cut off from technology. It means it is pushed into a parallel track, where progress is possible but slower, more expensive, and less integrated with global standards. The distinction matters. Pax Silica is not about stopping China. It is about setting the pace and direction of technological development without China at the table.

Perhaps the most consequential aspect of Pax Silica is not governmental at all. By aligning how participating countries think about risk in sensitive sectors, the declaration sends a signal to capital markets. Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurers, and large institutional investors do not need to be told what to do. Once a shared risk taxonomy emerges—linking advanced technology, national security, and geopolitical exposure—investment decisions follow. In this sense, Pax Silica quietly shifts the burden of enforcement from governments to balance sheets. A project does not need to be banned to be starved of capital. It only needs to fall outside the definition of “trusted.” This is particularly significant in areas like AI infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing, where projects are capital-intensive and returns depend on long time horizons. The cost of exclusion compounds over years, not months.

Europe’s dilemma

If China is the most obvious outsider, Europe occupies a more ambiguous position.Some European countries are deeply aligned with the Pax Silica worldview. Others are wary of being drawn into what they see as a technology bloc. The Netherlands exemplifies this tension. Its strategic importance in semiconductor equipment makes alignment attractive to allies—and risky domestically and economically. By allowing observer status and delayed commitments, Pax Silica gives Europe space to maneuver. But that space may shrink over time. As standards converge and ecosystems harden, neutrality becomes harder to sustain.

Pax Silica is not a finished project. It is a foundation.Over the next few years, its influence is likely to grow through practical mechanisms rather than grand announcements. Sector-specific working groups, aligned procurement rules, coordinated subsidies, and converging standards will do the real work. None of these require new treaties. All of them can be justified as prudent governance. More countries will likely join, incrementally. Others will hover at the edges. And some—most notably China—will continue to build parallel systems rather than integrate.

The significance of Pax Silica lies not in its text, but in its logic. It reflects a shift away from the idea that global technology should be governed primarily by markets, and toward the idea that technology ecosystems are strategic assets. In that world, openness is conditional, interdependence is selective, and trust becomes a gatekeeper. Pax Silica does not announce a new Cold War. It does something subtler. It normalizes the idea that fragmentation is not a failure of globalization, but its next phase.

The future it gestures toward is not one of total decoupling, but of managed separation—where systems coexist, but only partially overlap. Whether that future proves stable, efficient, or fair remains an open question. What is clear is this: Pax Silica is not about today’s chips or tomorrow’s data centers. It is about who gets to design the rules of the system in which those technologies will operate. And once systems are designed, changing them is far harder than signing—or not signing—a declaration.