Overview
- China launched the World Organization for Cooperation in AI (Waico) in July and secured declarations from 29 countries, including Brazil, to promote open-source models and broad participation.
- The United States created Pax Silica in December 2025 and expanded it to 23 countries plus the European Union in June to concentrate access through a ‘trusted partners’ network and to secure semiconductor, minerals and energy supply chains.
- Brazil signed Waico but Brasília says it will not depend on any single model and will keep dialogue with all initiatives while pursuing a strategy for digital sovereignty.
- Experts warn the U.S. model risks excluding many countries and locking them into paid, closed-source systems while open-source tools require local compute, storage and skills to be useful, a gap that can force spending on foreign cloud contracts.
- The competing blocs are likely to shape which countries buy chips, cloud services and infrastructure and could push middle-income states either to deepen ties with Beijing or Washington or to speed public investment to retain national control; the UN secretary-general and China’s president framed Waico as both an opportunity and a collective safety risk.