The United States has just launched Pax Silica-a new strategic initiative to secure artificial intelligence and semiconductor supply chains with a group of trusted allies. Yet, the most important question isn’t one of who joined, but who didn’t. India, hitherto described by Washington as the key Indo-Pacific partner, is absent from the founding group. That sets off some political debate in Delhi and raises more broader questions over technology geopolitics.
According to the US Department of State, Pax Silica represents a flagship framework through which to build a secure, prosperous, innovation-driven silicon supply chain. Its mandate ranges from the critical minerals, energy inputs, and semiconductor design, fabrication, advanced packaging, AI infrastructure, data centers, logistics, and power grids that make up the complete technology stack powering modern AI. The idea is to reduce coercive dependencies and ensure advanced technologies remain within trusted ecosystems.
Who are the members of this alliance?
The first Pax Silica participants are Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the UK, Israel, the UAE, and Australia. Each country has a strategic position in the global semiconductor supply chain-and the AI supply chain-of today: the Netherlands is supplying the most advanced lithography equipment; the US brings chip design and IP; the East Asian allies make the high-end manufacture; other members contribute the capital, energy security, and infrastructure.
Why India is not there
Its omission is emotive, because everyone knows global companies are busily diversifying supply chains away from China. Experts say the decision reflects current capabilities, not diplomatic intent. Every country in Pax Silica brings with it an established comparative advantage which is already at scale. By contrast, India’s semiconductor ecosystem is still developing.
It also has some fairly sharp weaknesses: a large chip design engineer workforce and large reserves of quartz-a key raw material in silicon processing. The actual bottleneck exists in the processing stage. Semiconductor-grade silicon requires very high purities and specialized refining infrastructure-neither of which is yet at scale in the country. This means that raw materials are routinely shipped out for processing elsewhere, leaving India out of the most value-laden parts of the chain.
Friction in Trade and Policy
India’s absence also comes amidst the failure to secure an India-US trade deal after several rounds of negotiations. Industry voices suggest that differences over tariffs, regulatory standards, and market access might have shaped up the makeup indirectly. Dominance over critical mineral processing by China remains at the heart of what the US is trying to overcome with this initiative.
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China: The Middle of Pax Silica
In its fundamental construct, Pax Silica exists to check China’s dominance of critical minerals and rare earth processing, together with large sections of the semiconductor supply chain. Recently, Beijing exported controls, reinforcing Western concerns over coercive supply chains. US officials increasingly treat technology supply chains as strategic assets rather than purely commercial networks, particularly in the era of AI.
Has this shut India out for good? Not necessarily. India was not a part of the Minerals Security Partnership launched by the US in 2022, but later joined in. If India starts putting up semiconductor manufacturing, mineral processing, and supporting infrastructure at a faster clip, analysts say Pax Silica might follow suit.
The larger message for India Pax Silica underlines a stern fact about the emerging AI-driven world order: political alignment is important, but capability is more so. Technology blocs are aggregating around demonstrated capacity, speed, and dependability. For India, the task is to translate ambition into actualization. How fast New Delhi fills the gaps in manufacturing, processing, and infrastructure will decide whether India joins future technology coalitions as a core member or stays peripheral as the norms of the AI economy are set elsewhere.
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