American diplomats to ramp up efforts to help sell AI in Asia

HOUSTON - The Trump administration’s Pax Silica initiative has entered the retail phase.

The US State Department’s flagship effort to build what it has described as a “durable economic order” for the artificial intelligence age will have American diplomats rehearsing their sales pitches soon, with a set of new initiatives to sell American-made AI products in Asia.

One of the initiatives, which debuted on Feb 19, is dubbed the “concierge”.

It seeks to leverage roughly 270 US diplomatic posts worldwide to provide “logistical and consultative services” that will help make it easier for Pax Silica signatories – Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Israel, Britain and Greece, apart from Singapore – to buy American AI.

The US-led grouping, which was launched in Washington in December 2025, seeks to create a “technology architecture of trust” that includes the whole AI supply chain, from sourcing critical minerals and semiconductors, to data centres and energy.

Non-signatory partners in Pax Silica include the European Union, the Netherlands, Canada and Taiwan. 

Pax Silica’s concierge aims to ensure that trusted US tech partners have a “clear, expedited path” to the latest AI hardware.

Under another initiative called “Edge AI”, the State Department is asking for bids to award up to US$200 million (S$253 million) in funding to mobile operators and manufacturers for making “secure, high-quality and affordable smartphones” available across the Indo-Pacific region.

These would be aimed at displacing low-cost devices from Chinese providers like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and others by subsidising trusted alternatives, such as Apple iOS and Android-based ecosystems from US allies like South Korea’s Samsung. The Chinese firms have their own operating systems.

South-east Asia and India, the main markets for mid-tier to low-end smartphones, are being eyed under this initiative.

Significantly cheaper Chinese smartphones have a market share of about 60 per cent in both South-east Asia and India.

Developers and manufacturers have until May 20 to submit proposals, with awards subject to congressional appropriations, the State Department said, adding that smartphone original equipment manufacturers based in Pax Silica partner countries would get priority.

A State Department spokesperson told The Straits Times that the US expects to receive a “positive response” to its initiatives from partners who “value transparency and autonomy”. 

“By lowering the cost of trusted technology, we are empowering local entrepreneurs and developers to lead the AI revolution within a secure architecture,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Our focus remains on providing a superior, market-driven choice, as opposed to our adversaries and competitors,” the spokesperson added, without naming the rivals.

Asked if China might push back against the US plans, the spokesperson struck an assertive note: “We do not seek conflict, but we will not apologise for putting America first and ensuring that the Indo-Pacific remains a free and open engine for global growth.”

Additional details will be forthcoming about how to take advantage of this service, the statement said.

Diplomats promoting their countries’ companies is common, but establishing a dedicated concierge service represents a bolder step.

Within the concierge service, the US is also promoting the use of encryption-based techniques – instead of just contractual promises – to monitor how US-origin AI chips and tools are deployed in the Asia-Pacific and ensure they are not tampered with.

For instance, it involves using cryptographic verification to prove that AI chips and servers are made by approved vendors, shipped through approved channels and installed only in authorised data centres.

“The future of global security is not only about who has the fastest chips, but also who uses them within a technology architecture of trust,” the State Department said in a statement announcing the concierge.

US officials say that of the billion people using America’s leading AI platforms, more than three-quarters log on from outside the US. Major US companies export the US AI stack and operate AI data centres around the world.

Mr Jacob Helberg, US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and the lead architect and political champion of Pax Silica, has admitted that it was a tricky path to want to sell technology and fence off competitors at the same time.

Two conditions – the best innovation and the most diffusion – have to be met for the US to win the AI race, he said in a press briefing in December 2025 after Pax Silica was announced. 

“The challenge is that any diffusion makes the innovation landscape more competitive.

“Every time we diffuse our technology, it inherently makes the innovation landscape a bit more competitive because there are more players who actually have access to our innovations that can then compete with us,” he said.

Mr Helberg, a 36-year-old French American, is a former Google executive and adviser to Palantir chief executive Alex Karp.

In 2023, he co-founded a group called the Hill & Valley Forum to narrow the gap between Washington and Silicon Valley. It brings together senior leaders from Congress, the US government, industry leaders and global partners to preserve the US edge in AI. 

In 2021, he wrote The Wires Of War: Technology And The Global Struggle For Power, which called for a stronger US strategy against China’s technological ambitions.

As early as July 2025, the Trump administration had declared that it wanted to make it as easy as possible for South-east Asia to buy American AI.

It remains unclear where initiatives such as Pax Silica will gain traction, particularly given the lower cost of operation associated with building applications on advanced Chinese models, said Mr Paul Triolo, a prominent expert in global technology policy, especially the US-China tech competition.

“Few companies in the Global South need the most advanced model capabilities of US AI leaders, such as OpenAI and Anthropic,” Mr Triolo, senior vice-president for China and technology policy lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told ST.

“And appeals to side with the US and exclude China from AI stack development and application deployment are likely to find few takers at the moment,” he said.

The Trump administration’s rhetoric around Pax Silica, on display at the recent India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, focuses on US “technology dominance”, urging countries to focus on using US hardware and software that come with “trust” and “Western values”.

“This may appeal to some smaller countries, including some with US security support,” Mr Triolo said.

“But for some countries in the Global South, likely the prime targets of US initiatives, Chinese companies may provide a cheaper and less politically charged choice,” he said.

Already, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which has built much of the telecoms and data centre infrastructure in Africa, is offering Chinese open-source models as part of its cloud services platform, at affordable prices that likely meet the needs of many Global South countries. 

However, the middle power countries, capable of supporting some level of AI development and deployment, are reluctant to become overly dependent on the US or China for hardware and software required to develop AI, Mr Triolo noted.

Efforts that encourage countries to purchase expensive US hardware and run expensive US AI models may have less appeal, he observed.

“Tying US aid for these types of purchases to essentially ‘choosing sides’ and attempting to force countries to cut ties with China, as the US has done in the Middle East, is not likely to appeal to countries that already rely on Chinese firms to support a major portion of their IT infrastructure,” he added.