Leaked US Letter Presses 35 Nations to Commit Exclusively to Pax Silica AI Bloc

The missive echoes the 1949–1994 CoCom export-control regime, when Washington barred allies from selling advanced technology to the Soviet bloc; then, as now, strategic tech chokepoints (then jet engines and ICs, now GPUs and lithium) became tools of alliance discipline. It also revives the 1985 ‘Toshiba scandal’, where Japan was briefly ostracized for selling controlled CNC gear to Moscow—signaling that even close allies can be punished for straddling camps. Structurally, the letter embodies the broader post-2018 trend toward techno-nationalist blocs and weaponized supply chains, replacing the 1990s ideal of a single, rules-based global market. If enforced, it could hard-code incompatible AI standards, chip design ecosystems, and mineral routes for decades, much as the mid-20th-century split still shapes aviation and rail gauges today. Yet history also shows such rigid partitions erode—CoCom collapsed within 45 years as technology diffused—suggesting that any digital “iron curtain” erected now may eventually be undercut by market forces, open-source innovation, and the sheer mobility of code over a 100-year horizon.