A CPU with the flag of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations will ultimately face a choice between integrating US or Chinese technology, writes Eric Rudenshiold. (Shutterstock/Mahir Asadli)

Central Asia’s Technology Trap

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Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan may be pressured to choose between the two powers they have spent decades balancing.

Since their independence 35 years ago, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have spent significant time practicing strategic balancing in their foreign policies. They have sought to counterbalance the interests and demands of their large neighbors, while courting would-be partners elsewhere. In doing so, they have cultivated constructive relationships with the United States, Europe, Turkey, the Gulf states, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and China. By alienating none and partnering with all to secure trade and connectivity, the strategy has served them well so far.

Now, however, advances in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and digital technologies appear to be testing whether soft multi-vector balancing can survive. The United States and China are developing competing international frameworks that increasingly seem bent on partitioning access to technologies that promise to drive the next generation of economic and geopolitical power.

Washington’s Pax Silica initiative features access to trusted supply chains of semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, logistics, energy, and digital infrastructure. To secure exclusive hardware access and technology sharing, membership in this coalition of like-minded countries may soon come with strict requirements on principles such as data privacy and ethical AI development.

China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) may sound like a counterproposal on the surface, but it is instead an open-access, inclusive grouping of countries seeking broad international membership. Joining WAICO includes technology sharing, as well as open-source development and assistance for building AI capabilities. For countries seeking to develop and advance their own technological capabilities, both propositions seem attractive. One, however, is increasingly being represented as incompatible with the other.

Central Asia’s Choice Between China and the United States

Reuters reported in August that the United States was preparing to tell countries that seek to participate in both Pax Silica and WAICO will have to choose between the two. Though not fully articulated, the US policy direction views participation in China’s technology ecosystem as a security vulnerability for high-end US technological components and as an incompatible, competing vision for artificial intelligence. This discrepancy creates a particularly difficult challenge for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as both seek to participate in both initiatives.

Kazakhstan joined Pax Silica in June 2026, then joined the China-led WAICO framework several weeks later, in July. Uzbekistan seeks similarly to belong to both organizations. Consistent with how they traditionally manage international relationships, such instincts are understandable. But this may be a case in which multi-vector diplomacy runs into a hard technological wall.

Pax Silica and WAICO are not hi-tech embodiments of West and East that skilled actors can bridge. The two represent very different approaches to an emerging technological order. Pax Silica extends access to trusted supply chains and reduced dependence on potentially coercive suppliers. The US framework includes all-encompassing access to semiconductors, connectivity, advanced manufacturing, logistics, and energy. Beyond AI access, Astana and Tashkent are drawn to American and allied technology, investment, supply chains, and markets.

The WAICO model is different and oriented towards design and development. Its approach emphasizes access to AI, open-source technologies, capacity building, and reducing the technological divide between advanced and developing countries through the roll-out of........

© The National Interest