Pax Silica Initiative | 15 Dec 2025

Source: TH

At the inaugural Pax Silica Summit in 2025, India was excluded from the US-led ‘Pax Silica’ initiative, triggering sharp political criticism.

• Pax Silica Initiative: It is a strategic initiative to build a secure, resilient, and innovation-driven silicon supply chain.
  • It aims to reduce China’s dominance and counter coercive dependencies across critical minerals, energy inputs, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, AI infrastructure, and logistics.
  • Key measures under Pax Silica focus on promoting joint ventures and strategic co-investments in high-tech sectors, protecting sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from countries of concern, and building trusted technology ecosystems.
• Countries Included (as of December 2025): US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Israel, UAE, and Australia.

  • Notably, other Quad members (U.S., Japan, Australia) are included, India is not.

• India’s Position: Experts note that India could join Pax Silica at a later stage, as seen in the case of the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), a US -led initiative launched in 2022 to secure critical mineral supply chains. 

  • India joined the MSP in June 2023 along with partners such as Japan, Australia, the EU, the UK, and Canada. 

  • The MSP focuses on minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and the 17 rare earth elements, and is viewed as an effort to counter China’s dominance in rare earth processing and its mining footprint in Africa.