The United States has assured India that future artificial intelligence models will not be “cut off” days after Washington abruptly banned Anthropic’s advanced models on national security grounds, a senior Indian official told the South China Morning Post on Thursday.
“There was an understanding, and something that they [US officials] certainly mentioned, that access to technology, once it is provided, will not be cut off. I think that was an assurance,” said S. Krishnan, secretary of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and leader of India’s delegation for the summit.
India raised its concerns over the AI “kill switch” on the sidelines of the “Pax Silica” summit in Washington – a US-led initiative designed to build China-free AI supply chains.
“The American concern is fundamentally how these models could potentially be used, and they were looking at a review mechanism for some of this internally before they are released,” Krishnan told the SCMP.
In early June, the Trump administration issued an export control directive on national security grounds barring foreign nationals from using Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
The company subsequently cut off access to both models worldwide without any warning.
“Our intention is very much to continue a gradual, measured approach to how we release Anthropic models in a way that’s safe, both for ourselves, but also for our Indian counterparts,” Jacob Helberg, the US under secretary of economic affairs, told Indian media agency ANI.
The restrictions on Anthropic’s models sparked unease in allied capitals and renewed efforts by countries to develop their own models and pursue “digital sovereignty”.
French President Emmanuel Macron criticised the US move as “strictly nationalist”, while Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu called for reducing digital “dependencies”.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also said the controls highlighted the risks of “overreliance on certain models”.
Even as concerns grow over dependence on American technology, Pax Silica continues to expand, with the European Union, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece joining the initiative on Tuesday, while Kazakhstan, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama are set to be formally admitted on Friday.
Pax Silica is focused on securing AI-related supply chains and aims to create sustainable ecosystems across semiconductors, logistics and critical minerals by leveraging partners’ technological and investment strengths.
Sources close to the discussions told the SCMP that China’s AI ambitions and its dominance in critical minerals supply chains remain major binding factors in the informal grouping.
“We didn’t seek a world where every supply chain is a pressure cooker and every dependency a potential weapon,” said Christopher Landau, deputy US secretary of state, without naming China.
“Our combined capabilities are something no command economy can match alone.”
US officials also announced a US$50 million initiative called “Pax Pass”, a platform that will help members move high-value AI supply chain products through the Panama Canal using cargo verification, AI-powered risk assessments and pre-approved expedited processing.
Helberg also highlighted the recently announced economic security zone with the Philippines, hinting that more such projects are in the offing.
“Our hope is that this is only the first of a handful of such zones across the Pax Silica network,” he added.
The proposed 1,619-hectare (4,000-acre) economic zone near Manila sparked political backlash over suggestions that it could be governed by US laws or granted diplomatic protections.
Joshua Bingcang, president and chief executive of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, said in May that US officials had sought to place the zone under US jurisdiction, but “we did not agree to that”.
Pax Silica’s expansion comes days after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sharpened the Trump administration’s focus on China’s AI advances.
“The biggest risk to AI is China getting ahead of us,” Bessent said at the Economic Club of New York, outweighing concerns over safety or job losses. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
