We welcome Kazakhstan to Pax Silica. 🇺🇸🇰🇿 @UnderSecE Helberg was proud to sign the Pax Silica Declaration alongside Kazakhstan's Deputy Prime Minister @Zhaslan_Madiyev. Strategic connectivity. Critical minerals. Digital infrastructure and AI. These aren't just capabilities — they're the building blocks of economic sovereignty.

At the second Pax Silica Summit, @UnderSecE Helberg convened interagency partners, government officials, and U.S. industry leaders to secure supply chains and build the industries of the future with those who share our values.

SITUATION EXPLAINED: What does real sovereignty mean in an AI-driven economy? We asked @UnderSecE Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs "A lot of these supranational organizations like the UN or certain politicians in Europe are trying to usurp the term digital sovereignty to mean we must rip out all American technology and rebuild the entire stack within our borders in order for us to be sovereign." "We think that would be a catastrophic mistake. What sovereignty really means is being successful as a country, being strong, and being a net contributor to the innovation ecosystem." "Being sovereign and, as the president would say, living in squalor is not any sovereignty to write home about. Being successful as a country, being a rapidly emerging economy, that is real sovereignty." "Instead of diverting billions of dollars in resources, thousands of people in engineering talent towards rebuilding the stack entirely in-house, that is fundamentally today's and yesterday's technology. It is such a better use of resources to empower your country's builders and compete for the future. Compete for the next platform, not yesterday's platform." "The stack is layers upon layers of different platforms superimposed on top of each other, and there's no ceiling to the stack. If you think about it, OpenAI is a mobile app and sits on top of an operating system, and it sits on top of a cell phone. It sits on top of so many different other platforms that came before it."

SITUATION EXPLAINED: What is the coming great divergence between AI-led and analog economies? We asked @UnderSecE Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs: "My viewpoint is if you look at the data dispassionately and with a cool head, you'll quickly see that unemployment is still around four to five percent. Very, very low." "There was a study published just recently that basically shows that companies who incorporate AI actually lead to a higher demand for workers. They're hiring more because their company is more productive, they're more competitive, they have more revenue over time, and they're reinvesting those resources into hiring more people." "There was a study published by the Council of Economic Advisors that I had the opportunity to co-author that basically posits that there is a very good chance that countries who lag in incorporating AI across their economy will likely have much, much lower rates of economic growth than countries who do." "What that means is a widening of the gap, what we call a great divergence, a divergence between AI-led economies and analog economies."

SITUATION EXPLAINED: What is the most overlooked part of the AI supply chain? We asked @UnderSecE Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. "One of the parts of the supply chain that really doesn't get enough attention is actually normal manufacturing." "There's been a lot of attention on semiconductor fabs and on minerals. There hasn't been enough attention on who's manufacturing normal components, whether it's screws or encasings for cell phones or actuators." "A lot of the times the manufacturers are the same. It is really electronics manufacturers that have expertise with manufacturing consumer electronics." "That is actually something that we have been quite focused on. It really is the genesis of our effort to establish an economic security zone, in partnership with the Philippines, which we're very excited about and is progressing quite well."