VOL. I · NO. 8568SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2026
The Daily Buffoon
TARIFFS ✒ EDITORIAL ABSURDITY: 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

US to tell partners they must pick sides in AI race with China

Filed 1w ago · Via freemalaysiatoday.com · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
The Builder
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

A draft State Department letter, reported by Reuters, tells the 35 signatories of a US 'AI Opportunity Statement' they must choose between Washington's Pax Silica initiative and China's rival AI coalition, warning that membership in both is incompatible. Kazakhstan is currently the only country known to have joined both blocs, prompting the letter's blunt line that 'to be part of everything is to be part of nothing.'

Pax Silica, launched last year, aims to secure AI, chip and critical-mineral supply chains among roughly two dozen countries including Japan, Australia and South Korea, countering China's near-monopoly on critical minerals and its July-launched 'World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization.' The State Department declined to comment on the leaked draft, and China's embassy called the push an effort to politicize trade and technology.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Demanding loyalty oaths from countries that would rather hedge their mineral contracts is a very American way of losing a competition for influence. If the pitch needs a threat attached to work, the pitch was never that strong to begin with.
Source: Read the original at freemalaysiatoday.com → Scored: The Builder · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0
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