Humanity is still recovering from Cold War 1.0, the rusted Iron Curtain and forever-perpetual wars of choice, yet a new Cold War has already set the stage. However, it has new rules of engagement, a new end goal, and a new emanation.

The battleground is set with microchips, rare earths, AI accelerators and maritime chokepoints. Western legacy media has come up with fancy term such as “Pax Silica” for this Tech-IT War. It can simply be referred to as a technology-industrial confrontation centred on China.

The idea is simple: if the 20th century was organised around oil and the dollar, the 21st will be organised around silicon, chips and critical minerals. In this struggle, the United States, particularly under President Donald Trump, appears increasingly aligned with Silicon Valley’s billionaire class to redesign global supply chains with China in the crosshairs.

The first Trump administration framed China as a trade abuser. Tariffs were the weapon of choice but the second iteration of confrontation, being called Cold War Two, is more systemic. It is no longer merely about trade deficits; it is about technological sovereignty. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said China is a threat. In his speech at Munich, he urged Europeans to go full throttle, framing it as an existential necessity and, furthermore, as a reclamation of past legacy. The trade war, colonial ambitions and global hegemony have thus morphed into a chip war and an AI war.

“Pax Silica” refers to a US-led coalition aimed at restructuring global mineral and semiconductor supply chains away from China. Instead of Pax Americana (military hegemony) or Pax Britannica (naval dominance), this is dominance through silicon.

Its pillars include stockpiling strategic minerals; securing alternative suppliers for lithium, cobalt and rare earths; controlling advanced AI chip exports; and strengthening public-private partnerships between government and Big Tech companies.

The underlying logic is unmistakable: China currently dominates refining capacity for many critical minerals and is a key node in global manufacturing. To weaken Beijing’s leverage, Washington seeks to build parallel supply chains. Coincidentally, by design, or by necessity, Trump’s political circle increasingly overlaps with Silicon Valley financiers and tech magnate associated with this new policy ecosystem that include AI and crypto policy influencers and corporate giants such as Google that operates within a tightening web of public-private partnership, where national security and AI development are deeply intertwined. AI competition with China becomes both a geopolitical objective and a corporate growth strategy. Imagine we are still living in a world designed and operated by billionaires. Last centuries were dictated by global banking cartels and financiers, and the future is being dictated by tech giants. What a change!

Because this tech war intersects with classic geopolitics. China’s heavy oil imports transit through maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. Any US strategy that pressures Iran or reshapes Gulf dynamics inevitably has implications for China’s energy security. In this sense, the tech war and traditional geopolitics converge: silicon supply chains cannot be separated from oil routes and naval power. And global banking cartels can live happily ever after with tech oligarchs in a profane union.

Remember last year the EU drumbeat the term “de-risking” in relation to China. Quite obviously, the official rhetoric frames the Pax Silica strategy as “de-risking”, not “decoupling”. Yet the target is evident. Export controls on advanced AI chips, restrictions on semiconductor equipment, and mineral diplomacy are all directed at slowing China’s ascent in high-end manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

Washington presents this as defensive. Beijing views it as containment. The difference between the US-Soviet Cold War and today’s confrontation is economic entanglement. The global supply chain and China are deeply interdependent. Yet both sides are preparing for partial decoupling in the most strategic sectors: AI, chips, minerals and defence tech.

The colonial and post-colonial Western hegemony was more global in philosophy, centred on plundering and financial monopoly. The new infrastructure is more nationalistic, yet in the process it is consolidating power for a new breed of leaches, tech-industrial elite.

When billionaires influence AI regulation, shape export controls and guide mineral strategy, the boundary between public interest and private gain blurs or rather diminishes. If Silicon Valley’s oligarchs define the next phase of US foreign policy, then the Tech-IT War may not simply be a clash of states but a struggle over who governs the infrastructure of the digital century.

The new Cold War will not be televised in black-and-white ideological terms. It will be coded in silicon, written in export controls, and financed by venture capital.

And its name may well be Pax Silica.