Playing both sides of the U.S.-China AI “Cold War” — SkimNews
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- Saudi Arabia launched Humain-m3, an Arabic-language AI model built on open-source technology from Chinese startup MiniMax, while state-backed Humain struck deals with Nvidia and other US firms to build its computing capacity.
- Brazil split a roughly $444 million AI investment in August — about $255 million with Huawei and iFlytek for a Rio de Janeiro supercomputer, and roughly $189 million expected to source from Nvidia — saying the strategy was to avoid relying on "a single company, technology or country."
- Huawei bid to build AI data centers for Egypt's government, competing against an Nvidia-backed proposal, according to Bloomberg.
- Malaysia is evaluating Huawei's Ascend 910C accelerators as the backbone of its sovereign AI initiative, per Bloomberg.
- Washington launched the US-ASEAN AI Spark initiative in July for Southeast Asian public-sector AI adoption and is considering warning countries against aligning with both US- and China-led AI initiatives.
- Kazakhstan joined both the US-led Pax Silica initiative and China's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), while Singapore — a founding Pax Silica signatory — publicly acknowledged receiving a China-led invitation and said it is considering it.
- Brookings Institution's Kyle Chan warned that Washington's pressure to pick sides will face growing pushback, noting that even close allies like Europe are rethinking dependency on American technology.
Why it matters: Washington controls the hardware layer — advanced semiconductors and cloud infrastructure that are hard to replace — but countries that cannot afford American systems are defaulting to Chinese open-source models. The source's own data points (Pax Silica + WAICO dual membership in Kazakhstan, Singapore's deliberation, Brazil's deliberate split) show that if Washington forces a binary choice, it risks accelerating the Chinese AI adoption it seeks to prevent.
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