On the menu today: I suspect 23-year-old activist — who graduated high school at age 20 — is a reliable weathervane for what topics are hot in the world of the international left. First it was climate change, then it was opposition to Israel and sailing to Gaza, and now . . . opposing a U.S.-led international working group to reduce the artificial intelligence supply chain dependency on communist China. In the eyes of certain kinds of progressives, the People’s Republic of China — the country that emits the most carbon, almost three times that of the United States — is always the hero of the story, and the U.S. is always the villain. Meanwhile, a journalist close to Vice President JD Vance wonders if President Trump is sabotaging Vance’s 2028 hopes. Read on.

Greta Thunberg, China, and

I’ll get to Greta Thunberg in a moment; mentioning the name of Time magazine’s 2019 person of the year always sets off an explosion of furious comments. But if you want to understand Thunberg’s latest crusade, you must know the backstory.

Put aside any qualms you may have about the retro-Roman name; “Pax Silica” is a good idea, maybe one of the best of the second-term Trump administration.

If you want to use artificial intelligence, you need chips, and if you want chips, you need to start with silicon mining and refining, and then critical trace elements such as gallium and germanium; “rare earth elements like neodymium, europium, and dysprosium enable magnets, phosphors, and specialized semiconductors crucial for AI systems.” China dominates 98 percent of the gallium refining and 60 percent of the germanium refining, creating significant supply chain vulnerabilities for every other country. Those are two of 17 rare earth metallic elements that are necessary for producing all kinds of technological products, not just AI chips.

In other words, every country’s ability to develop AI is dependent upon the ability to keep the supplies from China arriving, and in the past two years, China has tightened the supply considerably:

to the United States remain substantially below levels recorded before Beijing imposed sweeping export restrictions in April 2025. Despite successive agreements in Geneva, London, and Busan intended to restore supplies, American manufacturers continue to face shortages of materials essential to automotive production, aerospace manufacturing, semiconductors, and national defense.

Currently, the U.S. has some capacity to mine rare earths, but very little capacity to process it into usable form:

. . . U.S. companies face many challenges derived from China’s rare earth market monopoly, including drastically lower returns, non-competitive prices, and industry stagnation. Furthermore, most American rare earth demand comes from the commercial sector, with only five percent derived from the defense industry.
As a result, the U.S. imported over 13.6 million kgs of rare earths in 2024 alone, roughly equivalent to 13,600 metric tons. While the MP Materials mine produced 45,000 tons of rare earths in the same year, much of that quantity (roughly 80%) was exported for refinement. As a result, domestic industry only accounted for 20% of U.S. rare earth consumption in 2024.
The only U.S. facility able produce rare earth magnets, MP Materials’ plant in Texas, is projected to have the capacity to produce 1000 tons of neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets per year by 2027. These rare earth magnets are essential components of F-35s, Tomahawk Missiles, and both Virginia and Columbia-class submarines. . . .

Back in December, the U.S. State Department unveiled “Pax Silica” — an artificial intelligence supply-chain initiative, aiming to build a coalition of trusted partners to compete with China on the supply chains that make AI possible. The U.S. is partnering with Argentina, Australia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Taiwan is also in, but it’s listed separately as a “Non-Signatory Participant,” lest we run afoul of the One China policy. Many more countries signed on to the Pax Silica “opportunity statement,” declaring, “The future of AI should be built on a foundation of trusted collaboration, economic security, innovation, and fair competition.”

The Pax Silica initiative has been underway for about a year. The U.S. State Department has announced an AI supply chain credentialing platform with Panama’s ports and customs authorities and a partnership with Stanford University to develop an advanced manufacturing curriculum that educational institutions across Pax Silica economies can adopt and deliver in their own classrooms.

In a second term that has featured far too many counterproductive and petty spats with our long-term allies, Pax Silica increases our cooperation with allies. In an administration that is far too hostile to international trade, this is an effort to build international supply chains with countries we trust and with which we have shared values — or at least more shared values than we have with the PRC. In an administration that has usually been at war with higher education, this is using some of the best minds at some of America’s most respected schools to help ensure America’s businesses in the AI supply chain are resilient and adaptable. And it addresses one of our most serious strategic vulnerabilities. It is a win-win-win-win.

You know who Pax Silica is bad for? The People’s Republic of China.

The Philippines — a country with good reason to fear Chinese aggression and coercion — was the 13th country to join the Pax Silica initiative, and back in April, the Philippine government unveiled big plans to turn their country into a key hub for manufacturing facilities key to AI development:

As part of the country’s commitment, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) has allocated a 4,000-acre lot in New Clark City to serve as a Pax Silica Coordination Office where technology firms, research institutions, and government agencies can converge to build a robust AI ecosystem, accelerate innovation, attract high-value investments.
Strategically located within the Luzon Economic Corridor, the Coordination Office is the first of its kind to be established under Pax Silica. It is being designated as a “Golden Node,” a new model for AI-native investment acceleration hubs.
“The Golden Node is not about recreating the factories of the last century. It is about building the manufacturing ecosystems of the next century — AI-native from day one, anchored in the rule of law, and integrated into a network of trusted nations that will define global supply chain resilience for decades to come,” U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg said in a separate statement.

Guess who’s leading the charge against Philippine participation in Pax Silica?

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has joined calls to reject the US-led Pax Silica initiative.
Expressing support for Filipinos protesting US President Donald Trump’s scheduled visit, Thunberg stressed that “labor, land and minerals should serve the people and the planet, not fuel the wars and ambitions of imperialist powers.”
“Pax Silica is a US-led initiative to secure critical minerals and technology supply chains, but whose interests does it really serve?” Thunberg posted on TikTok.
U.S. Ambassador Lee Lipton earlier said no Pax Silica deal will be announced during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit.
Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said the Pax Silica deal is unlikely to be finalized during Trump’s visit.

It’s like the rhetoric is on autopilot, isn’t it? “Wars and ambitions of imperialist powers” . . . Where’s her objection to the more than 1,000 AI datacenter facilities in China? Or the more than 40 rare earth research centers? Why isn’t she protesting all the Chinese rare earth mining and refining and processing going on?

The Philippines had a free election in 2022. Whatever you think of Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. — yes, the son of the former president who was notoriously authoritarian — the current president won in a landslide with more than 58 percent of the vote. The Philippines will have another election in 2028; Philippine presidents are limited to one term. The economy of the Philippines isn’t doing so hot, and so the government sees Pax Silica as a way to create jobs, raise wages, and develop infrastructure.

Thunberg posted that message opposing Pax Silica in a video on TikTok. You know, the Chinese propaganda tool whose new management isn’t as separate from its old Chinese management as promised?

Employees at the new company, officially named TikTok USDS Joint Venture, still work regularly with the global TikTok organization, according to current and former employees, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, and internal communications reviewed by POLITICO Magazine. That includes coordinating over new features, sharing information about dangerous trends on the app and collaborating over policies. U.S. employees also still use an internal chat system called Lark, which was built by TikTok’s former Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to communicate and share information with both their U.S. and global counterparts.
Other efforts to separate the companies are relatively modest. At TikTok office buildings, U.S. employees can go to TikTok global offices on different floors but are required to get a chaperone, an employee said, and are prohibited from bringing laptops. Prior to the deal, U.S. employees could mostly move freely between the U.S. and global offices.

So, to recap: On a Chinese-built social media app, Greta Thunberg is urging Filipinos to rise and oppose a U.S.-led international initiative designed to reduce the rest of the world’s economic dependence on China and vulnerability to pressure from Beijing, and to stop a project that will create jobs and opportunities within the Philippines, a sovereign nation that is our ally.

President Trump will visit Manila next week for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit.

ADDENDUM: Vice President JD Vance is on good terms with journalist Sohrab Ahmari, who writes for UnHerd. Back in June, Amari traveled with Vance on Air Force Two, as the vice president was returning from negotiating the memorandum of understanding with Iran. In that interview, Vance said the Iranians had agreed to “send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command], and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes.” Note that at that time, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were and are still designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

As far as I can tell, that IRGC-CENTCOM proposal never became a reality.

I mention this because this morning, Ahmari writes:

It also can’t be ruled out that the president harbors a semiconscious wish that no one can or should succeed him at the head of the MAGA column — a danger Vance likely contemplated when he first resolved to join Trump’s 2024 ticket.

Earlier this week, I wrote, “President Trump Doesn’t Want a Post-Trump GOP.” It appears some journalists close to the vice president are reaching the same conclusion.