As silicon becomes the operating layer of civilization, peace must be guaranteed—just like a room, at every level: the dining table, the house, and the gatherings they point to.

Written by: Block Unicorn

I am not an art, music, or culinary connoisseur. But I have noticed a trend in the business sector that is often overlooked. The most outstanding companies succeed not because they ignore some non-commercial factors that others pay less attention to.

Apple's competitive edge does not lie hidden in the chips it uses, but comes from Steve Jobs's relentless pursuit of the tactile quality of products. Sony's golden age began with its founders’ love for music, who pondered seriously about what a portable music player should feel like.

The common pattern I found in these companies is that they value non-commercial instincts as highly, if not more so, than commercial instincts. These non-commercial instincts are still rooted in human behavior, such as hospitality, craftsmanship, cultural sensitivity, and atmosphere creation. Generally, it is these instincts that serve as the focal point, binding the entire workplace together. They possess the power to connect people from different regions, cultural backgrounds, socio-economic backgrounds, and many other differences.

When I think about how we discuss technological transformation, I always come back to this. Board discussions almost always revolve around competition, infrastructure, bureaucracy, and regulation. Don’t get me wrong; these are certainly important and should not be overlooked, but they are not comprehensive enough. They neglect a crucial aspect, that is the establishment of relationships between people. Connecting one person’s ambitions with another person’s risk tolerance, the founder’s background with the policymakers’ expectations, is one of the oldest channels of communication. Like a table, a room, or enjoying a sumptuous meal together in a well-decorated room with the right people, where the right food is on the table.

In today's article, Peter Noszek, co-founder of SuperAI and TOKEN2049, argues that the era of artificial intelligence requires building its human layer with the same intentionality as the supply chain—establishing trust through bridges, dinners, houses, and rooms.

The American version of the "Pax Silica" is the U.S. State Department's flagship initiative in the fields of artificial intelligence and supply chain security.

The ASEAN framework is more specific: it is an American-led initiative aimed at creating a secure, prosperous, innovation-driven Silicon Valley corridor, covering areas from critical minerals and energy inputs to semiconductors, AI infrastructure, logistics, software, and models.

The implication is clear: the Trump-era America is looking for reliable partners around which to build relationships concerning China. This is essentially a form of countering behavior.

But the significance of Pax Silica goes far beyond ensuring the stack's security. It should also elucidate the human aspect of the AI era and its impact on humanity: the trust relationships, venues, and institutions that help people navigate the greatest technological transformation of our generation.

Official Framework

Guaranteeing the security of the AI supply chain through trustworthy partners in Southeast Asia.

Computing requires power. Chips require minerals, wafer fabs, packaging, logistics, and reliable transport routes. AI companies need to deploy neutral platforms across Asia. Singapore, as a signatory and regional coordination center of the "Pax Silica," is at the heart of this issue.

I just completed an in-depth exploration of the Chinese AI ecosystem, passing through Shanghai. Meanwhile, Washington and Beijing are probing each other in the fields of chips and AI—public postures far ahead of any actual actions.

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, Cindy and I hosted the inaugural "Pax Silica" dinner. Alvin Wang Graylin also attended, and the photo he shared still lingers in my memory. As he later said in the South China Morning Post, "The responsible way is to seek common ground rather than building high walls." He referred to this moment as the "threshold of peace" and warned that inciting confrontation between the two great powers is neither responsible nor ethical.

That was not the China I saw in Shanghai.

Everyone I met was open, curious, and willing to collaborate. Their enthusiasm was directed outward: founders, operators, platforms, and local ecosystems were working hard to think about where their companies, products, capital, and talent should go next.

Some energy is concentrated in Shanghai and Beijing, some is surging in Shenzhen and Hangzhou, and yet more in second-tier cities like Changsha: these cities, with populations of tens of millions, have many aspiring young AI founders eager to internationalize, but they need reliable bridges to enter the right markets.

From this perspective, Southeast Asia's role becomes clearer, with Singapore at the center: it is a reliable landing point for AI companies moving between China, the Asia-Pacific region, and the global market.

Name

This name carries significant meaning, as it pairs peace with the technology race.

Pax

Peace. Stability. Long-term prosperity.

Silica

This compound is refined into silicon, which is one of the foundational materials of the AI era.

The question posed by this statement seems to be much broader than issues of export controls or data centers:

Most institutions' responses begin with security. Ensuring supply chain security. Protecting sensitive infrastructure. Reducing mandatory dependencies.

All of this makes sense, and I value it highly. But peace also requires communication between people from different systems.

It requires rooms to be established where founders can speak candidly to capitalists; policymakers can understand the actual needs of builders; corporate buyers can explain the risks behind slow decision-making; and someone cares enough to communicate among these three parties.

The AI era needs secure supply chains and talent that can continue to thrive even when geopolitical, capital, and deployment timelines become chaotic.

Relationship Infrastructure

The AI supply chain encompasses chips, minerals, energy, data centers, models, and networks. Each layer ultimately relies on people.

Chinese entrepreneurs entering the Southeast Asian market need more than just market research. Cutting-edge labs deploying in Asia require more than just policy documents. Sovereign wealth funds examining AI infrastructure need more than just project resources. Corporate buyers assessing AI need more than just demonstrations.

They need trustworthy translators.

Who understands the founders' ambitions? Who knows which institutions can enact change? After events, who can follow up reliably?

Pax Silica is an open theoretical framework. Its underlying operational mechanism consists of three parts: bridges that convey value, dinners that establish trust, and communities that maintain continuity. Together, these three point to a larger group where systems can find their place. This mechanism is practical: trust reduces coordination costs, communities enhance bandwidth, and repeated contact improves accuracy in understanding one another.

Bridges

Shanghai, May 2026—Chinese AI is looking globally. Portia Chang from Google and Ning Ning from 01.AI are working to solve a real problem: how to convert domestic momentum into regional applications.

Building bridges is about accelerating the diffusion of technology, information, and value across different systems; otherwise, the pace of development in these systems will be too slow.

Some bridges require capital. Funds can influence the entire market by deciding which infrastructures deserve robust support.

Some businesses operate through consulting services. The right consultants can help emerging companies enter new regions, find key buyers, and foresee possible institutional frictions.

Some projects are community-driven. In San Francisco, I saw this through builders surrounding HF0, The Embassy, The Residency, Frontier Tower, AGI House, and Cerebral Valley—these bridges connect people who may be miles apart but have never truly met.

Ray Del Vecchio, co-founder of Cerebral Valley, once used an interesting phrase: "MBSF," which means being several months behind San Francisco. It describes the lag between discovering new technologies in the Bay Area and applying them elsewhere. Conversely, there is "MBSZ," meaning being months behind Shenzhen. A bridge can shorten both lags.

China has its own bridges. Google China, which I saw in Shanghai, is a prime example: it helps Chinese companies expand into the Asia-Pacific market, with Singapore's role as an operations center becoming increasingly prominent.

Singapore also operates its own bridges. I am fortunate to collaborate with people from the Singapore Economic Development Board, Singapore Global Network, and Singapore Enterprise Development Board, all of whom understand that Singapore's role is to be a trustworthy transit point.

Pax Silica begins with bridges that connect different systems and spaces where trust can accumulate over time.

Dinner

San Francisco, April 2026 – The inaugural Pax Silica dinner – attendees included Lux Capital, Cerebras, MiniMax, Khazanah, Stanford HAI, Fireworks AI, SF Compute, Singapore Economic Development Board, as well as numerous building firms and communities from San Francisco.

The smallest complete unit of Pax Silica is a dinner.

Dinners are intimate enough to foster trust, yet formal enough to encourage genuine attendance. They allow hosts to cleverly integrate usually separated aspects: cutting-edge capabilities, infrastructure, funding, policy, enterprise deployment, culture, taste, and human-centered design.

Organization is evident in the seating arrangement, personnel rotation, music, food, dinner pace, first impressions, and the comfort level for people to communicate candidly. I like to see events as interfaces. Dinners are the cornerstone at this level: they sow the seeds of dialogue, facilitate beneficial exchanges, and naturally lead into follow-up conversations the next morning.

When the worlds in the room are close enough to perceive each other, then that room serves its purpose.

At the Pax Silica dinner in San Francisco, several people sat close together but did not cross designated aisles. Some lived only a few miles apart. Others were already shuttling between Asia and the U.S., but needed the right shared containers.

This June, during Singapore AI Week, Cindy and I will host the next Pax Silica dinner in Singapore.

House

A house is a place where the corridor is no longer just a step on the agenda.

The space Cindy and I are creating is a technology and culture center on the Pacific coast. Teak floors, jade stone tiles, a long table seating twenty-four, light streaming through tall windows in Peranakan style, and a garden courtyard where some are coding and others are cooking.

It serves as a salon, a dining room, a gallery, a studio, and a rest space. It is a node of Southeast Asia’s cutting-edge technology corridor in San Francisco, offering the warmth of home alongside institutional rigor.

Founders from Asia should be able to find the right restaurants immediately after arriving in San Francisco. Singapore delegations ought to understand the Bay Area without turning it into an exploratory trip. Pioneers should experience Southeast Asia through people, food, art, and music.

It is here that empathy can play a role. Everyone who walks into the room carries something: aspiration, mission, fatigue, risk, family, national interests, desire to be understood. A good environment can help people let go of some of that.

In the silicon age, Pax Silica must center on hospitality to truly embody peace. As Donatus Schaumburg-Lippe reminded me, an embassy is established for the sake of sustained dialogue: they are permanent spaces that can maintain trust before, during, and after negotiations. Pax Silica House brings this concept into the era of AI. Chairs, menus, music, guest rooms, the initial ten minutes, and the follow-up the next morning: it is these that transform an otherwise abstract corridor into a trustworthy place.

Shelling Point

Singapore as a center of gravity: an isolated AI ecosystem can converge here.

A shelling point is a place where people can converge without needing to coordinate every step in advance. Everyone comes because everyone believes others will come too.

The urgency for this in AI is significant. The work I focus on—connecting different nodes between Silicon Valley and Asia, connecting founders with sovereign capital, connecting AI developers with those who decide its application directions—only truly works when these people can reliably and repeatedly gather together.

Dinners and gatherings can create a close atmosphere. But intimacy has its limits. A dinner can accommodate twenty people, and a gathering can host a quarter’s worth of attendees. Beyond a certain threshold, bridges need a broader span: a sufficiently large gathering that allows the entire dispersed ecosystem—labs, funds, government departments, platforms, data centers, universities, founders' homes—to anticipate each participant’s involvement and organize a year-round plan around it.

That gathering lays the foundation, while Pax Silica nurtures it. Dinners sow the seeds of dialogue, houses keep the dialogue warm; gatherings make dialogue inevitable—what was merely a potential collaboration in April becomes evidently concrete by June, as the truly right individuals have finally congregated undeniably together.

The mission of Pax Silica is to enable larger spaces to play greater roles: to gather those who trust each other, to allow the dialogue seeds to germinate, and to enhance mutual relations. Dinners are the smallest complete units, while gatherings are the largest units. Singapore is an ideal site for hosting large gatherings—it is close to China, has a developed Western culture, holds a high reputation in Southeast Asia and Europe, and its significance is such that major institutions attend voluntarily without needing an invitation.

As silicon becomes the operating layer of civilization, peace must be guaranteed—just like a room, at every level: the dining table, the house, and the gatherings they point to.