The key facts

  • The US and China have formed competing AI blocs: Pax Silica and the World AI Cooperation Organization
  • Kazakhstan is participating in both groupings simultaneously and receiving investment from Nvidia and Chinese companies
  • Kazakhstan participates in both groupings simultaneously and receives investments from Nvidia and Chinese companies
  • The EU is expanding chip production and building federated cloud infrastructure but lacks its own frontier AI model
  • The EU is expanding chip production and building a federated cloud infrastructure, but lacks its own advanced AI model

Two blocs and 'swing countries'

The United States and China are forming separate blocs around themselves in the field of artificial intelligence, seeking to set standards and distribute the benefits of the technology, Euronews reports. The US-led coalition has been named Pax Silica — the term the Trump administration uses for AI in general; the EU is already part of it. Beijing, in turn, is promoting the World AI Cooperation Organization, which has 28 founding members, including Pakistan and Russia. The US State Department warned that 'countries cannot be considered reliable partners in Pax Silica if they are essentially participating in initiatives that promote a competing vision of superintelligence,' while the Chinese embassy in Washington stated that 'AI should not belong to major powers.' Experts note that the window of opportunity for freely choosing between the two superpowers may be narrowing.

Kazakhstan: an example of dual participation

Kazakhstan, with a population of about 21 million, has become a rare example of a country trying to work with both blocs. In June, AI Minister Zhaslan Madiev visited Washington to join the American group on strengthening AI supply chains, and just three weeks later traveled to Shanghai for the ceremony that made the country a founding member of the Chinese initiative. 'Everyone is trying to hedge their bets. We do not want such a binary choice,' said Dana Masalimova, a former Kazakh diplomat and associate at Harvard University's Davis Center. The Kazakh government previously signed an agreement involving Nvidia to create a 'data center valley' worth up to $10 billion, while Chinese direct investment reached a record $2.8 billion in 2025, according to local officials. Indonesia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia are pursuing a similar strategy: Indonesia and Singapore are participating in or considering joining the Chinese organization, while Anthropic is opening an office in Singapore, and the Saudi startup Humain unveiled a platform built on an open model from a Chinese company while maintaining its agreement with Nvidia.

The European alternative and its limitations

Europe is trying to become a third force, but, as Euronews notes, sovereignty requires not only its own model but also computing power, chips and infrastructure. In June, the EU presented the European Tech Sovereignty Package, which includes expanding chip production, growing the network of data centers and integrating them into the power grid. Funds have been allocated under the Chips Act: €319 million to Austria's Infineon Technologies, €5 billion in Italy and €1.6 billion in the Czech Republic. The EU is also building federated cloud and AI infrastructure, connecting existing national nodes into a network that operates across borders. However, the bloc has no frontier model comparable to the developments of OpenAI, Anthropic or China's DeepSeek; France's Mistral is one of the few notable European contenders. Alarm in European capitals was triggered by the forced shutdown of Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models in June and the shutdown of the Starshield satellite network in Ukraine. At the same time, Brussels is positioning itself as a global regulator: the AI Act adopted in 2024 is called by Brussels 'the world's first comprehensive set of rules on AI,' although companies secured a delay of the rules for high-risk systems through the AI Omnibus bill.

Dependence on China and the price of independence

A serious constraint on European ambitions remains trade dependence: the EU's trade deficit with China amounts to €1 billion per day, and up to 90% of rare earth elements, according to the Euronews report, is coming from China. Beijing has agreed to create a 'green corridor' to speed up the issuance of licenses for rare earth elements and permanent magnets for the EU under an initial trade agreement. For countries without their own advanced models, access to AI systems 'depends on the whims of politicians in Washington and Beijing,' note Anton Leicht and Sam Winter-Levy of the Carnegie Endowment. At the same time, China is narrowing the technological gap, although it still lags behind the United States, and is financing AI projects in at least 77 low- and middle-income countries, according to AidData lab data. 'Every country in the world is, one way or another, thinking about AI sovereignty,' said Alok Mehta of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that perhaps no country other than the US and China is capable of building such large models.