On the last day of the India AI Impact Summit—a high-powered international mega-event focused on A.I., now in its fourth iteration—India signed Pax Silica, a U.S.-led declaration seemingly focused on semiconductors. While India’s accession to the same was not entirely unforeseen, becoming a signatory nation this quickly was not on the cards either. In the original Pax Silica Declaration signed in December 2025, India was not a signatory or even a participatory country. Concerns were voiced about India having missed the opportunity to work with like-minded countries to shape semiconductor supply chains. It was only in January 2026 that U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor stated that India would be invited to join the grouping.

Accordingly, a few questions arise for consideration: What changed in the last two months, and why did India sign this declaration now, at the AI Impact Summit? What can India expect from the Pax Silica, and how can it make the most of it?

Here, three things bear specific mention.

First, the scope of Pax Silica was initially seen as convoluted. Indian popular media burnished the semiconductor-centric credentials of the declaration. Some saw it as a grouping of major players in the semiconductor supply chain. Gor called it an initiative that would build a silicon supply chain, enmeshed with complementary supply chains ranging from critical minerals to energy inputs and advanced manufacturing. Others have called the Pax Silica grouping a “club” where insiders would be able to enforce chokepoints in the semiconductor supply chain.

The U.S. State Department, however, never strayed from the original message, that Pax Silica was always about AI, more than it is about semiconductors. The Pax Silica Declaration and even the Indian government’s recent Economic Survey acknowledge the Pax Silica as having a clear objective to ensure that “economic value and growth will flow through and across all levels of the global AI supply chain” and that it will “build the AI ecosystem of tomorrow.” “Artificial intelligence” appears seven times in the Pax Silica Declaration compared to “semiconductors,” which appears just once. It was always more about AI, which is why India signed the declaration during the AI Impact Summit.

Second, the Pax Silica appears to be the front-end of the effort to promote the American technology stack and, in the process, encourage AI diffusion, particularly as a means to contain Chinese-origin technologies. Indian interlocutors would be pleased to hear this. In January 2025, the Biden administration announced an AI Diffusion Rule that bracketed India in the Tier 2 category, restricting its access to advanced semiconductor chips to a license-only basis.

The AI Diffusion Rule was eventually rescinded in May 2025. The Pax Silica goes a step further and does a volte-face. It endeavors “to provide access to trusted partners to the full stack of technological advancements that are shaping the AI economy.” There is no licensing requirements attached to this yet.

Furthermore, as concerns grow in the United States over India’s “deepening technology dependencies” on Chinese technologies, and as traditional allies like the UAE increasingly “engage with China in developing their AI capacity,” the window for American AI tech stack to offer “credible alternatives” is narrowing. As nations pursue sovereign AI goals, particularly middle powers like India, the U.S. tech stack will also have to compete against homegrown options. Here, the U.S. State Department must exercise deft diplomacy to avoid coercive tactics to adopt their technology, or at least give requisite assurances that if adopted, such tech will not be arbitrarily withdrawn.

India, however, is unlikely to be taken for granted in this context. While it may appear that the large influx of Chinese tech in India’s larger electronics supply chains is sufficient for it to consider American alternatives, it is likely to continue to hedge against any crippling dependence on the United States for critical technologies. Even if India were to prohibit Chinese participation in its AI supply chains, it would likely be similar to its approach to Huawei’s participation in its telecommunication and networking gear market, not at the behest of Washington. Additionally, India’s recent interim trade deal with the United States is arguably the most stringent when it comes to the rules of origin (ROO), where the deal readout states that both parties “will” establish ROOs. In contrast, other deals merely talk about having the “right to establish ROOs.” This will be constructive in strengthening India’s bona fides as a trustworthy partner.

Third, India may be placed favorably for AI diffusion, but to establish itself as a trusted partner, it will have to do more, and here, it has its task cut out. India fares modestly at nearly all elements of the AI tech stack described in the Trump administration’s July 2025 executive order for “Promoting the Export of the AI American Technology Stack.” Among the various hardware constituents of the AI tech stack—chips, servers, accelerators, data center storage, cloud services, and networking—India has some distance to go in terms of offering viable homegrown options. While it has made strides in building homegrown foundational models and AI applications, the main bottleneck—raw compute power required to train and run foundational models—remains a key constraint. Despite having made inroads to democratize access to compute by offering low-cost access, India’s processing power admittedly comes from NVIDIA’s Blackwell graphics processing unit and Google’s Tensor processing units.

Furthermore, Indian firms that seek to operate in this AI tech stack may prioritize low-cost AI tech hardware from third-party Chinese vendors over governmental preferences for indigenous equipment providers. Here, U.S. export controls have thwarted Chinese AI firms from developing and exporting their AI systems, as the shortage of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and chips means that more Chinese firms have to rush to fill this gap, thereby foregoing lucrative markets such as India, in favor of meeting surging internal demand. India, too, should do more with the upcoming Indian Semiconductor Mission 2.0 scheme to build and offer financial support to homegrown firms that can deliver in this area. This is within the realm of possibility—Indian firms are among the top ten global suppliers of equipment like uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and switchgears, which are regularly used in hyperscale data centers.

The Pax Silica declaration comes at a moment when multipolarity is accelerating. Technological competition between China and the United States is intensifying and supply chains are increasingly being weaponized. The declaration is welcome at a time like this. However, we should hold our applause, as the finer details remain to be sketched out. How this is executed will determine whether the promise of Pax Silica can be realized. India will also have to do some homework before it can expect any gains from this framework. For now, it is a good start to build an ecosystem of AI supply chains that will serve to counter China’s.