Washington is buying land, not building bridges. To compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the U.S. is acquiring a 4,000-acre industrial plot in the Philippines to operate as a forward-deployed base under American common law. Jacob Helberg, the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, explained on No Priors that this ‘Pax Silica’ model uses legal certainty to attract private capital, creating supply chains outside China’s reach. The goal is to replicate this across a 14-country coalition.
“We’re going to treat it as if it’s a diplomatic platform for private capital to go build the supply chain infrastructure.”
- Jacob Helberg, No Priors
The economic cold war is being fought with crude tools. On TFTC, analyst John Arnold noted that independent ‘teapot’ oil refiners in China are facing deeply negative margins. He argued the U.S. is pulling levers in the Persian Gulf, allowing tension near the Strait of Hormuz to spike oil costs China can’t pass to consumers. This creates asymmetric pressure before diplomatic summits, where Trump arrives seeking deals.
Those summits reveal a power shift. On Breaking Points, Saagar Enjeti argued Trump’ ‘obsequious’ tone in Beijing signals U.S. weakness, with domestic inflation and a stalemate in Iran weakening his hand. China’s readout from the meeting focused on red lines over Taiwan, a topic omitted from the U.S. version. Meanwhile, The Daily reported that China, which imports 30% of its oil through the strait, wants the conflict resolved but watches the U.S. struggle with a ‘second-rate power.’
The strategy extends beyond chips to robotics and minerals. Helberg said China ‘subsidizes the hell’ out of mineral refining and dominates robotics actuators. The U.S. response is to create competitive pricing for Western-processed minerals by year’s end and back ventures that can execute on hardware. This venture-backed foreign policy treats supply chains as a market to be won.
Consensus is forming around forced economic entanglement as the only detente path. On All-In, David Friedberg argued that bidirectional trade deals lower U.S. consumer costs and create shared abundance. The administration brought tech CEOs as a sales force to secure orders for Boeing jets and soybeans, betting that deep interdependence prevents war.
Yet the race accelerates risks. The Daily highlighted ‘Mythos,’ an unreleased Anthropic model so effective at hacking infrastructure it’s considered an offensive weapon. Both nations are months from deploying such capabilities, racing ahead of guardrails. As Helberg noted, over a third of U.S. economic growth is now AI-driven, making every supply chain link a national security imperative.
“The AI revolution is fueling over a third of current U.S. economic growth.”
- Jacob Helberg, No Priors
