‘Strategic and essential’: US envoy Sergio Gor hails India’s entry to Pax Silica

“We can share AI technology with the world, and especially with partners like India. Critically, India brings strength. Peace does not come from hoping that adversities will play fair. We all know they are wont. Peace comes through strength, and India understands this. India understands strong borders. That strength, that sovereignty, is exactly what Pax Silica amplifies,” Gor said.

The US State Department had said that the initiative will entail protecting sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access or control by countries of concern and building trusted technology ecosystems, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems, fibre-optic cables, data centres, foundational models and applications.

While India has concerns over China’s involvement in India’s critical infrastructure, such as telecom, the West has worries over extreme dependence on China. The US has been engaged in a trade war with China to decouple due to the widening trade gap, and India has been positioning itself to get a share of the manufacturing supply chain shift.

Measures under Pax Silica would also include “pursuing new joint ventures and strategic co-investment opportunities”. India currently lacks an AI infrastructure of global scale and stands to gain from the likely investments and partnerships under the initiative.

“The initiative responds to growing demand from partners to deepen economic and technology cooperation with the United States and understanding that AI represents a transformative force for our long-term prosperity. Recognition that trustworthy systems are essential for safeguarding our mutual security and prosperity,” the US State Department had said.

Researchers have pointed out that the countries being roped in for the initiative are among the top countries when it comes to AI and semiconductor supply chains. The US, for instance, leads in design and IP for the semiconductor chips, and the Netherlands is essential for the lithography machines, which are used for printing chips.

“We also recognise that artificial intelligence (AI) represents a transformative force for our long-term prosperity and that trustworthy systems are essential to safeguarding our mutual security and prosperity. We believe that economic value and growth will flow through and across all levels of the global AI supply chain, driving historic opportunity and demand for energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, technological hardware, infrastructure, and new markets not yet invented,” the US State Department said.

India’s entry in Pax Silica comes with considerable investments committed by US companies in Indian AI infrastructure last month alone. Microsoft late last year announced plans to spend $17.5 billion to expand its AI infrastructure and cloud computing capacity in India over the next four years. The investment, its largest in Asia, is on top of the $3 billion announced by the tech giant earlier this year, with Microsoft clarifying that it is on track to spend that amount by the end of 2026.

Google also announced investments worth over $15 billion over five years to set up an artificial intelligence data centre in Andhra Pradesh, in what would be its biggest investment yet in the country. The tech giant has partnered with the Adani Group and Airtel to build the infrastructure for the project, which also includes the construction of a new international subsea gateway. In a blog post, Google said the data centre will create “substantial economic and societal opportunities for both India and the United States”.