Opinion
Pax Silica: The new alliances will be built not only on weapons, but on chips, compute and power
In the AI era, national power increasingly depends on the ability to design, power, secure and deploy intelligent systems - and Israel can become an indispensable partner.
Pax Silica is no longer merely a policy concept. Launched by the U.S. State Department in late 2025 and expanded to 24 signatories at its second summit in summer 2026, it is becoming a practical framework for economic security across the AI supply chain. Its significance is larger than the name suggests: the world is quietly rewriting the rules of global power. In the past, alliances were shaped by military strength, economic scale and geography. Today, a new metric is rising alongside them: the capacity to develop, deploy and sustain advanced technological systems.
At its core, Pax Silica is a framework for cooperation among allied and like-minded countries to secure the full AI stack, from critical minerals and chip design to fabrication, data centers, energy, networks and trusted applications. But its real significance is what it represents: a shift away from fragile global dependency toward trusted, capability-driven ecosystems. Instead of bringing every part of chip production back home, different countries contribute their strengths across design, tools, materials and manufacturing. In the next decade, trust will increasingly be built through technological interdependence.
This is not only about supply chains. It is about sovereignty, and sovereignty now means the capacity to keep essential systems running under stress.
As AI moves from hype into execution, chips are no longer just industrial components; they are strategic infrastructure. But compute must also be connected, cooled, powered and protected, making electricity, networking, cybersecurity and industrial capacity part of the same national-security equation. Nations that cannot secure access to advanced chips, or contribute meaningfully to their development and deployment, will find themselves strategically vulnerable.
This is where the story becomes especially interesting for Israel.
Israel is not a volume semiconductor manufacturing superpower, although Intel’s long presence and Tower Semiconductor’s specialty-fab capabilities give it a meaningful industrial foothold. Its strategic role is also underscored by NVIDIA: Israel is already the company’s largest development center outside the United States, and Israeli teams developed four of the six chips in the Rubin computing platform. But scale is no longer the only measure of power. Israel’s comparative advantage lies in precisely the high-leverage layers that Pax Silica needs: chip design, semiconductor software, photonics, sensing, AI hardware, cybersecurity and dual-use deep tech.
The opportunity is therefore broader than financing fabs. It includes design automation, testing, specialty equipment, advanced materials, power electronics, cooling, grid technology and the software that turns compute into productive physical systems. Israel offers investors high-leverage exposure to these strategic layers, while global industrial partners provide the infrastructure and market access needed for deployment.
Ultimately, Pax Silica is where geopolitics meets execution. Israel joined the initiative as a founding member in December 2025, and the United States and Israel followed in January 2026 with a joint statement on AI, research and critical technologies. The test now is whether declarations become joint R&D, trusted procurement, industrial pilots and cross-border investment. Deep tech has become hard currency, not just a driver of innovation, but a foundation for national security, industrial resilience and global competitiveness.
The broader conclusion is hard to ignore: the strength of future alliances will be determined not only by military arsenals or GDP rankings, but also by the ability to build, power, secure and integrate advanced technology. In that world, Israel’s relative size becomes less relevant, and its innovation density becomes a strategic asset. Nations will not ask only, “How strong are you?” They will also ask: “Can you deliver, at scale, under pressure, and when it matters?”
Yoni Heilbronn is Founder and Managing Partner at IL Ventures.
