I'm not an art, music, or food connoisseur. But I've noticed a trend in the business world that's often overlooked. The most successful companies succeed because they don't neglect non-business factors that others pay less attention to. Apple's competitive advantage isn't hidden in the chips it uses, but stems from Steve Jobs's relentless pursuit of the perfect feel of his products. Sony's golden age began with its founder's passion for music, and his careful consideration of what a portable music player should feel like. The common pattern I've found in these companies is that they value non-business instincts just as much as, and perhaps even more than, their business instincts. These non-business instincts are still rooted in human behavior, such as hospitality, craftsmanship, cultural sensitivity, and atmosphere. Often, it's these instincts that act as the center of gravity, binding the entire workplace together. They have the power to connect people from different regions, cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and many other differences. This is something I always think about when I consider how we discuss technological change. Boardroom discussions almost always revolve around competition, infrastructure, bureaucracy, and regulation. Make no mistake, these are important and undeniable, but they're not comprehensive enough. They overlook a crucial layer: the building of human relationships. Connecting one person's aspirations with another's risk tolerance, a founder's background with policymakers' expectations, is one of the oldest channels of communication. It's like a table, a room, or a well-arranged room, where the right people share a meal with the right food on the table. In today's article, Peter Noszek, co-founder of SuperAI and TOKEN2049, argues that the age of artificial intelligence needs to be built on its human dimension with the same intent as supply chains—building trust through bridges, dinners, houses, and rooms. The US version of the "Peace in Silicon Valley" initiative (Pax Silica) is the US State Department's flagship project in the areas of artificial intelligence and supply chain security. The ASEAN framework is more specific: it's a US-led initiative aimed at building a secure, prosperous, and innovation-driven Silicon Valley corridor, encompassing everything from critical mineral and energy inputs to semiconductors, AI infrastructure, logistics, software, and models. The implication is clear: the Trump-era US is seeking reliable partners with whom it can build relationships around China. This is essentially a confrontational act. But Pax Silica's significance extends far beyond securing the stack. It should also elucidate the human dimension of the AI era and its impact on humanity: the trust relationships, places, and institutions that help people cope with the greatest technological changes our generation is experiencing. Official Framework Secure the AI supply chain through trusted partners in Southeast Asia. Computing requires electricity. Chips require minerals, wafer fabs, packaging, logistics, and reliable shipping routes. AI companies need to deploy neutral platforms across Asia. Singapore, as a signatory to the Pax Silica and a regional coordinating center, is at the heart of this issue. I just finished a deep dive into China’s AI ecosystem, passing through Shanghai. At this time, Washington and Beijing are testing each other in the chip and AI fields—public gestures far outweighing any actual actions. A few weeks ago in San Francisco, Cindy and I hosted the first Pax Silica dinner. Alvin Wong Grayling also attended, and a photo he shared still lingers in my memory. As he later wrote in the South China Morning Post, “The responsible approach is to seek common ground, not to build walls.” He called this moment “the threshold of peace” and warned that inciting confrontation between the two major powers is neither responsible nor ethical. That wasn’t the China I saw in Shanghai. Everyone I met was open, curious, and collaborative. Their enthusiasm was outward: founders, operators, platforms, and the city-level ecosystem were all grappling with where their companies, products, capital, and talent should go next. Some energy is concentrated in Shanghai and Beijing, some in Shenzhen and Hangzhou, and some in second-tier cities like Changsha: these cities with populations of tens of millions, twenty million, or even thirty million are home to many young AI founders eager to go international, but they need reliable bridges to enter the right markets. From this perspective, Southeast Asia's role becomes clearer, with Singapore at its center: a reliable foothold for AI companies moving between China, the Asia-Pacific region, and global markets. The name is significant because it juxtaposes peace and technological competition. Peace. Stability. Long-term prosperity. Silica. This compound is refined into silicon, one of the fundamental materials of the AI era. The overall issue raised in this statement seems far broader than export controls or data centers: Most institutional responses begin with security. Securing supply chains. Protecting sensitive infrastructure. Reducing coercive dependence. These are all valid points, and I value them highly. But peace also requires communication between people from different systems. It requires creating a space where founders can frankly express their opinions to capitalists; where policymakers can understand the actual needs of builders; where corporate buyers can explain the risks behind slow decision-making; and where there is enough attention to facilitate communication between these three parties. The age of artificial intelligence requires secure supply chains and talent that can continue to thrive even when geopolitics, capital, and deployment timelines become chaotic. Relationship infrastructure. The AI supply chain encompasses chips, minerals, energy, data centers, models, and networks. Each layer ultimately relies on people. Chinese entrepreneurs entering the Southeast Asian market need more than just market research. Frontier labs deploying in Asia need more than just policy documents. Sovereign wealth funds need more than just project resources when evaluating AI infrastructure. Corporate buyers need more than just demonstrations when assessing AI. They need trustworthy translators. Who understands the founders' ambitions? Who knows which institutions can make a difference? And who can follow up after the event? Pax Silica is an open theoretical framework. Its underlying mechanism consists of three parts: bridges to deliver value, shared meals to build trust, and a community to maintain continuity. These three all point to a larger group in which the system can find itself. The mechanism is practical: trust reduces coordination costs, the community increases bandwidth, and repeated contact improves the accuracy of people's perception of each other. Bridges Shanghai, May 2026—Chinese AI is looking to the world. Portia Chang of Google and Ningning of 01.AI are both working to solve a real problem: how to translate domestic development momentum into regional applications. Building bridges is about accelerating the diffusion of technology, information, and value between different systems that would otherwise develop too slowly. Some bridges require capital. Funding can influence the entire market by determining which infrastructure deserves strong support. Some businesses rely on consulting services. The right advisors can help emerging businesses enter new regions, find key buyers, and anticipate potential institutional frictions. Some projects are community-driven. In San Francisco, I saw this through the builder-resident and occupant relationship maps around HF0, The Embassy, The Residency, Frontier Tower, AGI House, and Cerebral Valley. These bridges connect people who may live miles apart but have never actually met. Ray Del Vecchio, co-founder of Cerebral Valley, once used an interesting phrase: "MBSF," meaning months behind San Francisco. It describes the lag between the Bay Area discovering new technologies and their adoption elsewhere. The reverse is also true: "MBSZ," meaning months behind Shenzhen. A bridge can shorten both of these lags. China has its own bridges. Google China, which I saw in Shanghai, is a prime example: it helps Chinese companies expand into the Asia-Pacific market, and Singapore's importance as an operations hub is increasingly evident. Singapore also operates its own bridges. I'm fortunate to work with people at the Singapore Economic Development Board, Singapore Global Network, and Enterprise Singapore, who all understand Singapore's role as a trusted transit point. Pax Silica starts with bridges connecting different systems and spaces where trust builds over time.
Dinner
San Francisco, April 2026 – The inaugural Pax Silica Dinner – attended by Lux Capital, Cerebras, MiniMax, Khazanah, Stanford HAI, Fireworks AI, SF Compute, the Singapore Economic Development Board, and numerous San Francisco builders and communities.
The smallest complete unit of Pax Silica is a dinner.
The dinner is intimate enough to build trust, yet formal enough for people to attend with sincerity. It allows the host to subtly integrate often separate aspects: cutting-edge capabilities, infrastructure, funding, policy, corporate deployment, culture, taste, and human-centered design.
The planning is reflected in seating arrangements, staff rotations, music, food, the pace of the dinner, initial encounters, and the comfort of people being able to communicate openly. I like to think of an event as an interface. The dinner is the cornerstone of this layer: it sows the seeds of dialogue, fosters beneficial exchanges, and naturally leads to follow-up exchanges the next morning. A room functions when the various worlds within it are close enough to perceive each other. At the Pax Silica dinner in San Francisco, several people sat side-by-side without crossing the aisle as required. Some lived only miles apart. Others regularly traveled between Asia and the United States but needed suitable shared containers. This June, during Singapore AI Week, Cindy and I will host the next Pax Silica dinner in Singapore.
The House
The house is a place where the hallway is no longer just a part of the schedule.
The space Cindy and I are creating is a tech and culture hub on the Pacific coast. Teak floors, jade tiles, a long table that seats twenty-four, Peranakan-style light streaming through tall windows, a garden courtyard, people coding, people cooking.
It's a salon, a restaurant, a gallery, a studio, and a relaxation space all in one. It's a node in the Southeast Asian cutting-edge technology corridor in San Francisco, offering both the warmth of home and the rigor of an institution.
Founders from Asia should be able to find suitable restaurants immediately upon arriving in San Francisco. Singaporean delegations should be able to understand the Bay Area without turning it into a study tour. Pioneers should be able to experience Southeast Asia through its people, food, art, and music.
Founders from Asia should be able to find suitable restaurants immediately upon arriving in San Francisco. Singaporean delegations should be able to understand the Bay Area without turning it into a study tour. Pioneers should be able to experience Southeast Asia through its people, food, art, and music.
It is here that empathy comes into play. Everyone who enters the room carries something: ambition, mission, fatigue, risk, family, national interests, a desire to be understood. A good environment allows people to let go of some of these. In the Silicon Age, for Pax Silica to truly embody peace, it must be centered on hospitality. As Donatus Schaumburg-Lippe reminds me, embassies are built for continuous dialogue: they are permanent places where trust can be maintained before, during, and after negotiations. Pax Silica House brings this philosophy into the age of artificial intelligence. Chairs, menus, music, guest rooms, the initial ten minutes, and follow-up the next morning: these are what transform an abstract corridor into a trustworthy place. Schelling Point: Singapore as a focal point: an isolated AI ecosystem can converge here. Schelling points are places where people can meet without needing to coordinate every step beforehand. Everyone comes because everyone believes others will come too. Artificial intelligence desperately needs this. The work I'm focused on—connecting different nodes in Silicon Valley and Asia, connecting founders with sovereign wealth funds, connecting AI developers with those who decide the direction of their applications—can only truly work when these people can reliably and repeatedly come together. Dinners and parties can create intimacy. But intimacy has its limits. A dinner can hold twenty people, a party can hold a quarter. Beyond a certain point, the bridge needs a wider span: a large enough gathering for the entire decentralized ecosystem—labs, funds, government agencies, platforms, data centers, universities, founders' homes—to anticipate each other's participation and plan the year around it. That gathering laid the foundation, and Pax Silica provided the nourishment. Dinner sows the seeds of conversation, the house keeps them warm, and the gathering makes them inevitable—what was merely a potential collaboration in April becomes evident in June, as the truly suitable people finally and unequivocally come together. Pax Silica's mission is to make larger spaces function more effectively: to bring together people who trust each other, to let the seeds of conversation sprout, and to foster closer relationships. Dinner is the smallest complete unit, while the gathering is the largest. Singapore is the ideal place to host large gatherings—its proximity to China, its developed Western culture, and its reputation in Southeast Asia and Europe make it important enough for organizations to attend without invitation. As silicon becomes the operating layer of civilization, peace must be guaranteed—like a room, on every level: the dining table, the house, and the gatherings they represent.
Hui Xin
YouQuan
Alex
Joy
Aaron