Pax Silica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Tech Strategy with US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg

What It Covers

US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg explains Pax Silica, a 14-country economic security coalition designed to diversify AI supply chains away from Chinese dominance. The strategy centers on a 4,000-acre economic security zone in the Philippines and private-sector-led industrial partnerships, contrasting directly with China's Belt and Road model.

Key Questions Answered

• •Pax Silica Structure: The coalition's first physical asset is a 4,000-acre zone in the Philippines — one-third the size of Manhattan — currently held as diplomatic property under State Department custody. A two-year negotiation window will establish investor protections, taxation frameworks, and multi-decade legal safeguards before private development begins.
• •AI Supply Chain Scope: The AI supply chain extends far beyond semiconductors to thousands of components including precision reducers, servo motors, rare earth magnets, and actuators. US concentration risk is critically high across nearly all these inputs, with robotics supply chains currently dominated almost entirely by China, making them a priority target for diversification investment.
• •Rare Earth Pricing Strategy: Rare earths are not genuinely scarce — the bottleneck is refining capacity, which is heavily concentrated in China through state subsidies. The administration is simultaneously funding supply-side production expansion in partner countries and negotiating demand-side pricing agreements, with Helberg projecting resolution of the minerals pricing problem before the end of this administration.
• •Private Capital Signal: The State Department actively wants venture capital firms to identify the strongest operators in supply chain-critical sectors, treating VC investment decisions as execution-quality signals to inform government capital allocation. Founders working on rare-earth-free magnets and new materials are specifically flagged as high-priority innovation bets worth government attention.
• •Belt and Road Failure Model: China's infrastructure initiative created debt traps by using state-owned enterprises to build projects at self-determined prices, with debt converting to equity upon default. The US counter-model structures deals as genuine joint ventures where risk and upside are shared with host countries, using commercially viable private platforms rather than government-operated infrastructure.