The

United States

will seek agreements with eight allied nations as part of a fresh effort to

strengthen supply chains

for the computer chips and

critical minerals

needed for

AI technology

, according to the top State Department official for economic affairs.

The initiative, which

builds on efforts

dating back to the first Trump administration, unfolds as the U.S. looks to cut

dependence on China

. It will begin with a meeting at the White House on Dec. 12 between the U.S. and counterparts from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Australia, Jacob Helberg, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, said in an interview.

Helberg, a former adviser at Palantir Technologies Inc., said the summit will focus on reaching agreements across the areas of energy, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and transportation logistics.

Helberg said the countries were chosen for reasons that range from being home to some of the

most important semiconductor companies

to their critical minerals resources.

“It’s clear that right now in AI, it’s a two-horse race — it’s the U.S. and China,” Helberg said. “We want to have a positive, stable relationship with China, but we’re also ready to compete, and we want to make sure that our companies can continue building transformative technologies without being subject to coercive dependencies.”

Helberg’s initiative builds upon years of efforts on critical minerals supply chains by prior administrations largely aimed at helping reduce western dependence on China. The State Department in the first Trump administration launched the U.S. Energy Resource Governance Initiative with the aim of securing supply chains for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt. The Biden administration launched a Minerals Security Partnership that aimed to funnel foreign investment and western expertise to the mining sectors of developing nations.

Even so, the U.S. and other countries have been unable to break China’s stranglehold over rare earths supplies. China is home to more than 90 per cent of global rare earths and permanent magnets refining capacity, compared with just four per cent for second-place Malaysia, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organization.

China announced tighter rare earths export controls in early October, only to agree to a one-year suspension after a meeting between Trump and President Xi Jinping.

Helberg said that unlike the Biden-era initiative, which had more than a dozen core countries, his focus is on producer countries. While the first Trump administration initiative focused on critical minerals, it came before the public release of AI platforms like ChatGPT, and the new plan focuses across all layers of the technology involved in AI, not just one, Helberg said.

Helberg, 36, was previously senior adviser to Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and also co-founded the Hill and Valley Forum, a gathering of tech leaders and U.S. lawmakers focused on national security challenges, especially those related to competition with China and the advancement of AI and other technologies.

In a cable on Tuesday to State Department employees seen by Bloomberg News, Helberg said that “after decades of failed globalization that neither supported domestic industry nor preserved critical supply chains, the United States must leverage our immense wealth and technological edge to secure our leadership” and bring benefits for the American people.

Besides securing technology supply chains, his office’s priorities include promoting trade and U.S. exports, particularly LNG and nuclear energy, to create jobs, Helberg said in the cable. It’s also working to rebuild the U.S. industrial economy via construction of new factories and manufacturing, and to use economic tools to help stabilize conflict zones and end wars.

Trump’s focus on ending wars can lower volatility in global commodity markets and remove a de facto tax cut for American consumers, Helberg said in the cable.

In the interview, he framed the work with trusted allies for his AI initiative as an “America centric” strategy, rather than one that’s reactive to China.

“Countries who are participating understand the transformative impact of AI, both for the size of a country’s economy, as well as the strengths of a country’s military,” he said. “They want to be a part of the AI boom.”

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Bloomberg.com