US and Eight Allies Sign San Francisco Declaration to Shield AI Supply Chains

The United States and eight allies signed the San Francisco Declaration on the Secure Foundations of Enduring Prosperity in San Francisco on Sunday (November 15), pledging to jointly list the artificial intelligence technologies and supply chains that need protecting — including semiconductors, critical minerals and energy — to reduce reliance on China. The Financial Times reported the signing, the latest document under the Pax Silica initiative; Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the European Commission are expected to join next week.

Nine countries sign, promising a list of protected technologies

Besides the United States, the signatories are Japan, Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom, South Korea, India, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. According to the Financial Times, the declaration commits the countries to jointly identify the sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure needed to build what President Donald Trump has called "super intelligence," to share information on diversifying supply chains, to set up working groups on AI supply-chain vulnerabilities, and to develop "economic hubs" meant to draw investment into the industries involved. Jacob Helberg, the State Department's under secretary for economic affairs, who negotiated the pact, briefed the FT on its contents.

The declaration's core idea is a single sentence: economic security is national security. What is new, compared with past joint communiqués, is the promise of a list — a named set of technologies the group agrees deserve protection from theft or unauthorized transfer to actors who could use them for military or intelligence advantage. Export controls run on lists in practice: Washington already maintains the Commerce Department's Entity List and coordinates dual-use controls through the Wassenaar Arrangement, but it has never had an allied roster of AI-specific chokepoints.

If the list is specific, smaller allies gain something to point to

If the list eventually names specific items such as high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, lithography servicing, or the data-centre power equipment that frontier training depends on, a mid-sized member state will have a joint document to point to when a domestic company asks why it cannot sell to a Chinese buyer. That is the mechanism the coalition has been missing.

But signatories keep their own export-control regimes, and nothing in a declaration binds a member to act. The group includes India, which wants Pax Silica's manufacturing and talent pipeline far more than a licensing regime aimed at its own trading partners, and Gulf states that have spent two years buying Chinese as well as American technology. If the roster of protected technologies lands as a broad description of "AI infrastructure" rather than a schedule of specific items, it will function as a press release with a mailing list.

Sensitive timing, days before the APEC summit

The timing is telling: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit opens in Shenzhen on November 18, where Trump is due to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The FT reports that Washington accuses Beijing of failing to honour commitments under the trade truce the two leaders struck late last year, and arriving at the summit with eight allies signed onto a joint protection list puts a floor under the American position before the meeting starts.

Notably, as of Sunday evening, the State Department's Pax Silica page had not published the text of the new declaration, so for now the only account of what was signed comes from the FT. The Pax Silica initiative was launched in 2025, and its original declaration already has 25 signatories — 24 countries plus the European Union — with Taiwan participating without signing. The San Francisco Declaration is a second, tighter instrument layered on top, not a fresh accession round.

(File photo: illustration of a semiconductor fabrication plant.)