The Trump administration is rapidly expanding an initiative to secure the global AI and tech supply chains.

Led by the U.S., six countries—Israel, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the United Kingdom—came together last month to form a coalition meant to safeguard the supply of silicon that is critical to most tech applications including AI. The effort is meant to span all levels of the supply chain, from critical minerals, energy and advanced manufacturing to semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and logistics.

“It’s meant to be an operational document for a new economic security consensus,” undersecretary of economic affairs Jacob Helberg told Reuters on Sunday.

“We encourage efforts to partner on strategic stacks of the global technology supply chain, including, but not limited to, software applications and platforms, frontier foundation models, information connectivity and network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy,” read a declaration signed by member countries.

Although there are only seven countries in total that have signed on to the declaration, Helberg signaled that both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will be joining the framework this coming week. The Trump administration has also engaged in discussions over the initiative with the European Union, Canada, and Taiwan.

The program is called Pax Silica, modeled after Pax Romana, Latin for Roman Peace. “Silica” is related to “Silicon” in English, but that part is not Latin. The term describes a two-century-long period of relative political stability and economic prosperity in Ancient Rome as the empire, led by tyrannical emperors, doubled in size through notable bloody conquests, going on to eventually include a quarter of the world’s population at the time.

At the heart of this Pax Silica initiative is worries over an AI supply chain dominated by China.

China controls roughly 90% of the world’s supply of rare earth, a group of elements that are crucial for building the computer chips used in smartphones and AI systems.

Last year, China leveraged this power by clamping down on rare earths exports in response to Trump’s tariff measures against Beijing. The counter measures hit the global tech industry hard, and gave China’s Xi Jinping an upper hand in trade talks with Trump.

In response, the United States has led calls for a reduced dependence on Chinese critical minerals, something that treasury secretary Scott Bessent will also push for as he hosts top finance officials from the EU, Canada, Japan, the U.K., Australia, India, Mexico, and South Korea this week.