Lines in the sand: On India and the Pax Silica alliance

India’s entry into the Pax Silica alliance represents a strategic manoeuvre to secure its technological future by aligning with a U.S.-led coalition focused on the infrastructure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and critical minerals. Its membership could boost domestic industrial goals by complementing initiatives such as India Semiconductor, IndiaAI, and National Critical Mineral Missions. By joining this ecosystem, India will aim to secure raw materials supply and advanced equipment, attract investment, and influence global tech and security standards. India does not currently possess significant capacity in processing critical minerals nor does it extract them in large quantities. That said, for the rest of the world, including the Pax Silica group, the more important implication is in India’s potential to shift the centre of gravity for global manufacturing and consumption. India’s massive demand can be useful to financially justify new supply chains, especially ones not pegged to China; the country can also provide the engineering talent and assembly capacity required to diversify the global technology supply chain. India’s participation could also add significant geopolitical weight to the bloc’s efforts to establish democratic governance for critical technologies, rendering the coalition’s standards more viable.

Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The implications for India include potential economic retaliation from China, such as trade friction, slower market access, or pressure on upstream inputs such as minerals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. The Pax Silica partnership’s focus on “trusted ecosystems” could also translate into rigid expectations regarding export controls and technology-transfer guardrails, which could clash with India’s preference for not locking itself into alliances but, instead, pursuing what External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has called “issue-based alignments”. The government could open itself up to more criticism at home particularly if the U.S.-led bloc also begins to shape India’s domestic AI rules in ways that look externally driven. Smaller Indian firms attempting to join global value chains could also face significant financial burdens and longer timelines due to stricter security audit requirements. In the end, the success of Pax Silica will depend on whether its partners go beyond talks to build a real-world supply chain where raw minerals are mined, refined, turned into chips, and used to power AI systems, all among the pact’s members, creating a secure technology network that drives India’s economic growth while protecting the alliance from disruptions.