As the United States and China harden their separate visions for global AI order, the countries caught in between are hedging harder than ever — and experts warn the window for choosing freely between the two AI superpowers may be closing.
In a widely syndicated analysis published on 25 October 2026, the Associated Press reports that the rivalry has crystallized into two blocs: the US-led Pax Silica and the China-inspired World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO). The choice facing governments is stark — American chips and frontier AI technologies on one side, China's more affordable open-source AI systems on the other. For more context on this story, see our ongoing more AI stories.
Two Blocs, Two Pitches
Membership in Pax Silica, the AP reports, brings technological partnerships, high-tech manufacturing jobs and a place in global AI supply chains. The US State Department, using the Trump administration's preferred term for AI, signalled that the bloc is reserved for trusted partners: “Countries can't be trusted partners in Pax Silica while substantively engaging in initiatives that advance a competing vision for super intelligence.”
China's World AI Cooperation Organisation, by contrast, is marketed on openness and inclusiveness. It counted 28 other initial founding countries alongside host China — including Pakistan and Russia — and offers members a voice in setting regional and global AI standards.
“As both major countries in AI, China and the United States should leverage respective strengths in AI rather than guarding against each other,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement reported by the AP. “AI should not be owned by major countries.”
President Donald Trump distilled Washington's competitive framing last month with a simple formulation: “whoever wins AI, wins.” US officials and AI companies have accused China of large-scale “distillation” — extracting capabilities from frontier American models — while Beijing rejects the claims and says the US is pursuing an AI monopoly by restricting China's access to cutting-edge chips and chipmaking machinery.
Kazakhstan's Tightrope
Kazakhstan has become the emblem of the hedging strategy. The AP recounts that the Central Asian nation of about 21 million people sent its AI minister, Zhaslan Madiyev, to Washington in June to join the US group working to strengthen AI supply chains — and, just three weeks later, to Shanghai for the signing ceremony making Kazakhstan a founding member of China's World AI Cooperation Organisation.
The country has substance on both sides of the ledger. Earlier this year its government signed an investment deal worth up to $10 billion involving Nvidia to build a “data centre valley,” while Chinese foreign direct investment reached a record $2.8 billion in 2025, according to local officials, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in July to expand Belt and Road cooperation.
“Everyone is hedging,” Dana Masalimova, a former Kazakh diplomat and independent scholar at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, told the AP. “We don't want this binary choice.” She described Kazakhstan as being in a “very precarious spot” despite its rich critical minerals and cheap electricity for data centres.
Swing Countries From Jakarta to Riyadh
Other governments are running versions of the same play. Indonesia, rich in the nickel and copper that AI infrastructure needs, joined China's World AI Cooperation Organisation while pressing to benefit from both camps. “We should be able to be part of both, put it that way. And choose the best system,” Mari Pangestu, vice chair of Indonesia's National Economic Council, said at a University of Hong Kong Business School event.
Singapore is hosting Anthropic's latest Asia office while the city-state says it is considering joining China's AI organisation. In Saudi Arabia, the AI startup Humain unveiled a platform in September built on an open model from a Chinese AI company — even as the kingdom expands AI computing through a deal with Nvidia.
Not every country can play both sides. France, among the most ambitious AI developers outside the US and China, is charting its own course through Mistral, whose newest model released this month outperforms some advanced Chinese models, per the AP. Japan remains closely aligned with Washington on semiconductors and trusted AI standards, but professor Takahiro Tsuchiya of Kyoto's University of Foreign Studies told the AP it will not reject more affordable Chinese models for “lower-risk applications.”
The Money Follows the Blocs
China has been especially active in courting the developing world. According to the AidData research lab at William & Mary cited by the AP, Beijing has provided official grants and loans for projects that use or enable AI in at least 77 low- and middle-income countries, with top recipients including Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Bangladesh, Senegal, Cameroon and Kenya.
Public opinion may be following the money: recent Pew Research Centre results show people in middle-income countries becoming more positive and trusting of China on AI and its regulation.
A Narrowing Window
Analysts see the space for neutrality shrinking. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's John L Thornton China Centre, told the AP that Washington's powerful network of allies means Beijing must court third countries to build its alternative coalition — which lends leverage to what he called “swing countries.”
For countries like the UK and Germany, which have substantial economic and military capacity but no powerful frontier models of their own, aligning with the US may be vital for access to data centres and chip deals, according to Anton Leicht and Sam Winter-Levy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Their access to advanced AI “depends on the whims of policymakers in Washington and Beijing,” the pair wrote.
China, meanwhile, is closing the technology gap with the US in chipmaking and advanced AI, the AP reports, though it still trails top US capabilities for now — and its open-source approach gives other countries a way to reduce reliance on American systems, as Alberto Lemma, a research fellow at ODI Global, noted.
“Most countries don't want to pick a side ... because there are advantages and disadvantages to each technology stack,” Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told the AP. But with neither bloc showing any interest in coexistence, hedging may soon stop being an option.
Source: Associated Press, “As the US and China form AI blocs, countries are increasingly torn between them” (25 October 2026).---
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