Two competing clubs
Washington has begun telling partner governments that they cannot belong to both camps. On one side sits Pax Silica, a US-led grouping built around securing supplies of advanced chips, servers and the minerals and machinery that make them. On the other sits the World AI Cooperation Organization, the Chinese initiative launched to set standards and spread Chinese models and hardware.
The message is not a formal treaty obligation, but officials and analysts describe it as a narrowing of options. Countries that want access to the most advanced American accelerators are being asked to accept limits on Chinese equipment in the same networks. Countries that accept Chinese financing are finding US suppliers slower to deal.
Kazakhstan tries both doors
Kazakhstan, a Central Asian state of about 21 million people, has tried to keep both. Its AI minister, Zhaslan Madiyev, travelled to Washington in June to join the American effort on AI supply chains. Three weeks later he was in Shanghai signing a document that made Kazakhstan a founding member of the Chinese organisation.
That balancing act is getting harder. The two stacks are not interchangeable. The American side offers the fastest chips and the largest cloud platforms, at a price and under conditions. The Chinese side offers open-weight models that can be downloaded, adapted and run on cheaper hardware, along with grants and loans.
Cheap models versus fast chips
China has provided official sector grants and loans for projects using or enabling AI in at least 77 low- and middle-income countries, according to the AidData research lab at William & Mary. Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Bangladesh, Senegal, Cameroon and Kenya are among the largest recipients. Pew Research Center surveys suggest public opinion in middle-income countries has warmed toward China on AI and its regulation.
Aalok Mehta of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies says many governments do not want to choose, because each stack has advantages. But only the United States and China can build frontier models at scale, which leaves everyone else deciding who supplies the compute and the rules that come with it.
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