Kazakhstan Balances Between U.S. and China AI Blocs

The United States and China have established separate artificial intelligence blocs, leaving many countries caught between the two powers. As the rivalry intensifies, experts warn that the window for nations to choose freely between the U.S.-led Pax Silica and China-led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization may be narrowing.

Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation of about 21 million people, is a rare example of a country trying to bridge that gap. Just three weeks after AI minister Zhaslan Madiyev visited Washington in June to join the U.S. group working to strengthen AI supply chains, he traveled to Shanghai for a signing ceremony.

“Everyone is hedging. We don’t want this binary choice.”

The ceremony made Kazakhstan a founding member of China’s initiative to shape the global AI agenda. Alongside 28 other initial founding countries, including Pakistan and Russia, Kazakhstan hopes to have a voice in setting regional and global AI standards.

Membership in Pax Silica offers more technological partnerships, high-tech manufacturing jobs and a place in global AI supply chains. Kazakhstan also benefits from Chinese investments while trying to avoid a binary choice between the two superpowers.

The country has rich critical mineral resources essential to AI development and cheap electricity to power data centers, which have become politically fraught in the United States. Earlier this year, Kazakhstan’s government signed an investment deal worth up to $10 billion involving Nvidia to build a “data center valley” in the country.

Dana Masalimova, a former Kazakhstan diplomat and independent scholar at Harvard University’s Davis Center, said everyone is hedging and no one wants this binary choice. She described Kazakhstan’s position as “very precarious.”