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In a move that upended the international conversation about AI, earlier this month, a researcher at the AI company Anthropic named Jacob Coxon resigned and took to X to sound the alarm about what he saw as a dangerous trajectory. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” he wrote. “This is not a marketing stunt.” A few days later, Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, published an essay on his personal website about what he sees as the urgent need to slow down the pace of AI development. “I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence,” he wrote. “Not just investing in risk prevention but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up.” That same week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told ABC’s The View that he had asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk on his podcast, “‘OK, what are the odds that AI destroys humanity?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘10-20 percent.’ And I’m like, ‘holy crap.’”
As the chorus of warnings about AI from insiders has grown more urgent, the White House appears to have complete confidence in the technology—and not just with President Donald Trump’s insistence when speaking at the United Nations that there was no reason to rein it in. In fact, over the last few months, the Trump administration has poured resources into several tech ventures as part of an effort to win the AI arms race against China.
Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg convenes The Pax Silica Summit, the first convening of a high level, private gathering focused on economic security and the establishment of a new grouping of partners tailored for the AI economy on December 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty
The flagship project is an international initiative led by the United States called Pax Silica, whose goal is to control the pipeline for the raw materials, including crucial rare earth minerals required to power the artificial intelligence boom. Pax Silica, Latin for “silicon peace,” is the creation of Jacob Helberg, the US undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy, and the environment. Last December, the United States, Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom signed an initial nonbinding declaration. Others, including the European Union, joined in the following months, bringing the current number of signatories to 24.
The declaration affirms the participants’ commitment to “mobilizing the immense creative and financial power of private industry and entrepreneurship to make our citizens more prosperous, our nations stronger, and our supply chains more secure.” What the declaration doesn’t explicitly state is its true goal: To wrest control of the AI infrastructure away from US adversaries—primarily China, which currently operates about 80 percent of rare-earth refining and controls 70 percent of lithium-ion battery production—but also Russia and Iran. As Helberg put it in a December media briefing, “Our strategy is to create a competitive edge so steep, so insurmountable that no adversary or competitor can scale it. That’s why our goal is to make America the arsenal of AI in this century.” In March, the State Department announced it would create a $250 million fund to support the project.
“Our strategy is to create a competitive edge so steep, so insurmountable that no adversary or competitor can scale it. That’s why our goal is to make America the arsenal of AI in this century.”
The centerpiece is Pax Silica’s ambitious new project in the Philippines: a planned 4,000-acre economic security zone in New Clark City, about 70 miles north of Manila. The zone is strategically situated within the Luzon Economic Corridor, a development initiative launched in 2024 by the United States, Japan, and the Philippines to transform the island nation into an AI hub. The project will incorporate many industries, from semiconductor manufacturing to data-center tech to supply-chain logistics. Perhaps most important is its proximity to the Philippines’ vast reserves of nickel, cobalt, and copper—all crucial minerals for AI infrastructure. In July, US Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Lipton predicted the project would bring “endless jobs” to the country.
Crucially, companies that operate there will have massive tax advantages—the Philippines promises up to seven years tax free, followed by up to 20 years of steeply reduced taxes. In addition to the tax perks, companies can lock in 99-year land leases and fast-track regulatory approvals. As much as 90 percent of a company’s workforce is allowed to be remote—an attractive proposition for American companies whose employees may not want to relocate to the Philippines.
On a recent episode of a podcast hosted by venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded the data giant Palantir with Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, Helberg laid out his vision for the State Department to act essentially as a business development agency for American venture capital and defense and AI hardware firms. “Our job at State is to remove the diplomatic, regulatory, and geopolitical friction so that American VC can flow into these strategic nodes,” he said. “Pax Silica is essentially building the global highway for American tech and VC to scale fast.”
The names of the companies that will fill those roles haven’t yet been released, but Helberg has strong connections to a powerful network of firms that could fit the bill. According to his federal financial disclosure form, he served as a senior adviser to the data giant Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp from 2023 to 2025, bringing in at least $840,000 in consulting fees over the 16-month window covered by the disclosure. But he’s also a savvy investor. His financial disclosure form also reveals that his estimated net worth is $112 million–$426 million. Clients of his public policy consulting firm include Thiel’s Founders Fund, the defense company Hadrian, and another venture capital enterprise, General Catalyst. In addition to his own relationships with powerful Silicon Valley companies, Helberg’s husband, Keith Rabois, is also well connected. The managing director of a $15 billion VC giant, Silicon Valley-based Khosla Ventures, Rabois also has carried-interest stakes in six separate Founders Fund entities. In November 2020, Helberg and Rabois joined the tech-exec exodus from California to income-tax-free, politically conservative Florida, decamping to a $29 million home in Miami.
For Duran, Pax Silica is “the Trump regime’s brand name for AI colonialism and imperialism.”
Gil Duran, a tech journalist who has written extensively about autonomous zones, sees the Trump administration’s endorsement of Pax Silica as a strong indication of its enthusiastic commitment to AI development—despite increasingly urgent calls from industry insiders who warn of potentially cataclysmic consequences of the breakneck pace at which the technology is moving. Trump’s damn-the-torpedoes approach to AI is particularly troubling considering the Trump family’s own massive stake in the AI industry. For Duran, Pax Silica is “the Trump regime’s brand name for AI colonialism and imperialism.”
Indigenous communities join a protest caravan condemning the US-led Pax Silica Initiative and the Luzon Economic Corridor, organized by Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines, on September 11, 2026. Charles Perez/NurPhoto/AP
Few people would be as perfectly positioned to be Pax Silica’s leader as Helberg—not only because of his extensive tech industry experience and his current position in Trump’s State Department, but also because of the political connections he made during his own conversion from staunch Democrat to Trump administration darling. Helberg, who is 36, has worked in the intersection between Silicon Valley and geopolitics for his entire career, founding a geopolitical-risk forecasting startup, leading Google’s internal global product policy team, and serving on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission under President Biden. In 2021, he published a book, The Wires of War, about the competition between Western democracies and authoritarian governments to control the global tech sector, and the overarching importance of collaboration between industry and government; two years later, he founded the Hill and Valley Forum, an annual gathering of legislators and AI and defense company executives dedicated to countering Chinese influence on the sector.
In early 2024, Helberg was advocating for the United States to ban Chinese-owned TikTok; in a piece for the Intercept, reporter Sam Biddle noted that because of his business dealings with the AI industry, Helberg, who was serving on US–China Economic and Security Review Commission at the time, could profit handsomely from a cold war with China. In December that year, Trump nominated Helberg for his role at the State Department; the Senate confirmed him in October 2025.
Helberg’s personal political trajectory appears to reflect the broader partisan transformation of Silicon Valley over the last decade. As the Washington Post reported, he fundraised for Pete Buttigieg in 2019; by 2024 he was donating $1 million to the Trump campaign. Helberg reflected on his political evolution in a 2024 interview with Jewish News Syndicate. “The Democratic Party forgot its founding principles and allowed themselves to become governed by a woke, progressive ideology that substitutes merit with amorphous and often arbitrary concepts of identity and fairness,” he said. “Perhaps more pernicious, modern-day progressivism paints a worldview that divides the world into oppressors and oppressees.” He also criticized Democrats’ lack of support for Israel. “American Jews who still support Biden should have their heads examined,” he said. “If you support Israel, there’s only one choice in this election.”
Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and Environment, speaking at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA/AP
Rabois, who resigned from the financial technology company Square in 2013 after being accused of sexual harassment, is also outspoken about his political views on social media. In 2023, in the wake of X owner Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, Rabois tweeted, “Without X, we would almost surely be confronting another Holocaust now. So thank you @elonmusk.” On January 24, 2026, the day that ICE agents killed Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, Rabois posted, “No law enforcement has shot an innocent person. Illegals are committing violent crimes every day.” He added, “He unequivocally attempted to draw his weapon. Fuck you.”
Helberg’s current background image on his X profile is a photo of him with President Trump; in a tweet last year, Helberg called Vice President JD Vance “a friend and a role model for a generation of patriots.” When the Philippines joined Pax Silica in April, Helberg gave full credit to the Trump administration. “None of this would be possible without the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Rubio, who have made it a priority to secure America’s supply chains and to strengthen our alliances in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in a speech to Filipino and American lawmakers and diplomats in Washington, DC. “They understood that economic security is national security—and they gave us the mandate to move.”
Helberg’s political transformation occurred against the backdrop of a powerful movement in Silicon Valley libertarian circles—one that would prove influential in the formation of Pax Silica. The ideological groundwork was laid by thinkers who envisioned a new form of governance untethered from traditional nation-state constraints. In November 2021, Balaji Srinivasan, a close friend of Thiel and a former colleague of venture capital titan Marc Andreessen, laid out these ideas in an influential essay, “The Network State.” At the heart of Srinivasan’s idea are autonomous zones that are not governed by the laws of the nations in which they’re physically located but function more like colonies of an expansive digital community.
Helberg’s vision of Pax Silica’s autonomous zone seems to be a natural outgrowth of those ideas—and he has called on members of the Network State community to champion Pax Silica. In July, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Intelligence held a hearing about Pax Silica so that lawmakers could learn about the initiative and discuss oversight. One of the presenters was Erick Brimen, the CEO of an autonomous economic zone called Próspera on the tropical island of Roatán, Honduras, described how he created a thriving economic hub that attracted companies from all over the world. “I can report to the Subcommittee that this is not a theory waiting to be tested,” he said. “Hondurans and Americans built it together. It works.” Próspera is financed by Pronomos Capital, an investment fund also supported by Peter Thiel.
If Próspera is a model that Pax Silica’s architects want to emulate and expand upon, it’s worth taking a closer look at what’s actually going on there. In Próspera, companies can either select regulations from a menu of the legal frameworks from 36 countries or propose their own. Because of this decentralized approach to regulation, biotech companies in particular have flocked to Próspera. Minicircle, a gene therapy startup, conducts human trials targeting muscle building and longevity—research that would require FDA approval in the United States. Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur known for his extreme approach to anti-aging treatments (his motto: “don’t die”), received “reversible gene therapy only available under Próspera’s regulatory framework.” The zone advertises “15x faster commercialization of drugs” and “70 percent accelerated research timelines.”
A proposed area where Pax Silica hub might be built in Capas, Tarlac province. Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty
Adjacent to the zone sits Crawfish Rock, an indigenous village of the Garífuna people whose residents told the Guardian in 2022 that Próspera’s creators had originally pitched it as a “real estate and community development project.” Only later did the Garífuna discover the plans to create an autonomous city where the amount of acreage landowners hold determine what they’re allowed to vote on. In 2022, the villagers became embroiled in disputes with Próspera over drinking water; that same year, Honduran President Xiomara Castro made moves to end the project. Próspera’s backers sued the country for $11 billion, roughly one-third of the country’s GDP.
In 2024, the Honduran Supreme Court declared autonomous zones unconstitutional—yet Próspera has continued operating in a legal gray area. Honduras’ new administration, led by Nasry “Tito” Asfura, appears to be more supportive of Próspera, but he hasn’t yet challenged the Supreme Court’s decision. Próspera recently named its own civil prosecutor to enforce its rules—a move that activists called a “modern coup.” Proceedings around Próspera’s lawsuit remain ongoing.
Critics of Pax Silica worry that the project will replicate the worst tendencies of the colonialism the Philippines has endured with a Próspera twist: unbridled industrial growth with few environmental and labor protections. The Philippine government already appears to be worried about outsized American influence—in May, it denied a US request for diplomatic immunity in the special economic zone.
“The Philippines is being exploited here as it always has been. There will be some beneficiaries on the ground, but the very arrangement of deregulated special economic zones is a way of exploiting the locals to the benefit of foreign capital.”
Van Jackson, a political scientist at New Zealand’s Victoria University who has written extensively on geopolitics and technology, offered a broader critique of the initiative’s architecture. “The Philippines is being exploited here as it always has been,” he wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “There will be some beneficiaries on the ground, but the very arrangement of deregulated special economic zones is a way of exploiting the locals to the benefit of foreign capital.”
Pax Silica’s high-profile cheerleaders appear unfazed by the challenges that Próspera has faced. Last December, two days after the founding of the initiative, White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks praised Pax Silica. “Congratulations to @UnderSecE Jacob Helberg on the formation of Pax Silica,” he tweeted. “One of the key ways to win a technology race is to create the largest ecosystem. Pax Silica helps us do that.” In July, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted that Pax Silica “shows why forward-looking diplomatic strategy matters.” Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised both Helberg and Pax Silica in a roundtable convened by President Trump on the topic of mining. “Jacob has been phenomenal,” he said. “He came up with something called Pax Silica, and it’s an initiative that leads our efforts to partner with the private sector and invest in mining and refining and in processing as well as the end-use applications of that.”
In an email to Mother Jones, a State Department spokesperson noted that Helberg signed an extensive ethics agreement prior to his confirmation. ”The Under Secretary works with his team, including ethics officials at State, to ensure that his work remains free from any conflicts,” the spokesperson wrote.
Duran, the tech journalist, sees in the Trump administration’s endorsement of Pax Silica a tacit acknowledgement of a new cold war, one in which “the rare earths and minerals are the new uranium,” he says. “They call it ‘peace,’ but it’s really preparation for massive conflict in the 21st century.” The Trump administration appears determined to enter this war—even as public sentiment “is sharply turning against both this regime and against AI and the data centers,” Duran says.
On social media, Helberg battles with the naysayers. In a May tweet, an entrepreneur named Arnaud Bertrand called Pax Silica “basically vendor lock-in: you hand over your critical minerals, align your export controls with Washington’s, regulate AI the way America wants, and in return you get to be a US ‘trusted partner,’ whatever that means these days.”
Helberg clapped back, “The US is home to the world’s largest technology companies—a fact I’m sure deeply irritates you. The idea that being part of their supply chain is ‘subservience,’” he added, “is an ignorant loser mentality.”
In the end, public sentiment may not matter—because through projects like Pax Silica, it’s not government but private companies that will make the rules around the pace at which the United States pursues AI dominance. The Trump administration is “full speed ahead,” says Duran, “regardless of the political reality on the ground.”
