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Pax Silica: The US Plan to Control AI, Chips, and Data Centers | Edward Ongweso Jr.
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August 26, 2026
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1:14:54Now PlayingAI data centers, the $700 billion buildout behind them, and Pax Silica, the US plan to control global AI supply chains. Tech journalist Edward Ongweso Jr. joins economist Clara Mattei to trace where the money for the AI boom comes from, who it makes dependent, and what it costs the cities that host it.
Recorded in Tulsa the morning after the FREE Forum on data centers, this conversation looks at defining elements of today's capitalism: the 1974 petrodollar agreement and its silicon successor, export controls used as leverage over allies, the Cloud Act and extraterritorial control of data, Gulf sovereign wealth financing American compute, and hyperscaler capital spending on track to clear $700 billion this year.
Edward Ongweso Jr. writes The Tech Bubble and co-hosts This Machine Kills. His reporting has appeared in Logic(s), The Nation, WIRED, and The Guardian.
TOPICS COVERED
✔ What Pax Silica is and how silicon statecraft replaces the petrodollar
✔ How export controls and chip access work as instruments of policy
✔ Why Gulf capital and SoftBank sit behind the American AI buildout
✔ The venture capital model and its pull toward regulatory capture
✔ AI in schools and the measured effects on reading and critical thinking
✔ Technological unemployment, precarity, and layoffs framed as efficiency
✔ Democratic ownership, participatory control, and where moratoriums have held
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#PaxSilica #AIBubble #BigTech #AIDataCenters #SiliconValley #TechPolicy #PoliticalEconomy #EdwardOngweso #ClaraMattei #FREEForum
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