Pax Silica
Pax Silica — from the Latin for 'peace of silicon' — is Professor Jiang's term for a world order structured around control of semiconductor technology, artificial intelligence, and the digital infrastructure of the global economy. Where Pax Americana was built on military dominance and dollar hegemony, and Pax Judaica describes a regional order centered on Israeli-American power in the Middle East, Pax Silica describes a potential new global order in which whoever controls the silicon supply chain — chip design, chip manufacturing, AI training — controls the commanding heights of 21st-century civilization.
The concept of Pax Silica emerges from the recognition that the most critical chokepoints in 21st-century geopolitics are not oil fields or naval straits but semiconductor fabrication plants. TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) produces approximately 90% of the world's most advanced chips — the sub-5nm processors that power AI training, advanced weapons systems, smartphones, and data centers. This concentration of irreplaceable manufacturing capacity on a 36,000-square-kilometer island claimed by both Taiwan and China is arguably the most dangerous geopolitical flashpoint on Earth.
The Pax Silica concept captures the emerging reality that economic and military power in the 21st century flows from control of the digital infrastructure: chip design (dominated by US companies — Nvidia, Qualcomm, Apple), chip manufacturing (dominated by TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea), chip manufacturing equipment (dominated by ASML in the Netherlands), and AI training (dominated by US hyperscalers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon). The CHIPS Act, US export controls on advanced semiconductors to China, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are all attempts to consolidate and formalize US control over this supply chain.
Pax Silica contrasts with Pax Judaica in both geography and logic. Pax Judaica is a political-military order centered on the Middle East, grounded in the specific eschatological and geopolitical logic of US-Israeli alignment. Pax Silica is a technological-economic order with a different center of gravity — Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands — and a different logic: control of the manufacturing means of digital production. Professor Jiang uses both concepts to describe complementary dimensions of the emerging world order: one centered on energy and territory (Pax Judaica), the other on technology and data (Pax Silica).
The question Professor Jiang poses is which order will prove more durable. A world ordered by semiconductor control faces the risk of technological disruption — China is investing massively in domestic chip manufacturing to escape its dependence on TSMC. A world ordered by eschatological alliance faces the risk of religious violence escalating into civilizational war. The end game of both orders converges on the same question: who controls the tools of civilization in the coming century?
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What is Pax Silica? ＋
Pax Silica — 'peace of silicon' — is Professor Jiang's concept of a world order built around control of semiconductor technology and artificial intelligence. Where Pax Americana rested on military dominance and the dollar, Pax Silica describes an emerging order in which chip design (US), chip manufacturing (Taiwan/TSMC), and AI training (US hyperscalers) constitute the commanding heights of global power. Control of the silicon supply chain — from chip design to fabrication to AI training — determines economic competitiveness, military capability, and political power in the 21st century.
How does Pax Silica relate to Pax Judaica? ＋
Professor Jiang uses Pax Silica and Pax Judaica to describe two complementary dimensions of the emerging world order. Pax Judaica is a political-military order centered on the Middle East — the US-Israeli eschatological alliance organizing the region around Israeli security and American energy interests. Pax Silica is a technological-economic order centered on East Asia — the US-Taiwan-South Korea semiconductor supply chain organizing global production around digital infrastructure control. Both are competing architectures for organizing the next century of civilization; the tension between them shapes the geopolitical conflicts playing out across the Middle East, the Taiwan Strait, and the Korean Peninsula simultaneously.