the Republic of Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. These signatory countries tend to rely on the United States for defense and trade, even as the United States depends less on them as export destinations (refer to figure 6.2). Other strategic factors, such as the opportunity to be a partner in deploying capital and building infrastructure to accelerate national AI objectives, may also explain why some countries have chosen to participate. Although few of the participants are developing countries, the role that such dependencies may play in influencing their decisions makes it pertinent for developing economies. Raw materials and data are rarely sufficient to rebalance the dependency that developing countries have on the major AI powers A striking feature of the AI ecosystem is that, while control over the highest-value segments of the AI stack is concentrated in a few leading economies, several raw materials essential to this stack are geographically concentrated in developing economies (for further details, refer to chapter 2). In principle, control over these critical raw materials could give developing countries an opportunity to rebalance their interactions with leading economies. However, extraction alone Figure 6.2 Pax Silica Declaration signatories share strong defense, economic, and trade ties with the United States Signatory has defense ties with the US US is a top-five financial service export destination for signatory US is a top-five goods export destination for signatory Signatory is a top-five financial service export destination for the US Signatory is a top-five goods export destination for the US 0 10 20 30 40 60 50 70 Share of signatories (%) 80 90 100 Source: WDR 2026 team, based on data of the CEPII-BACI (Centre d’études prospectives et d’informations internationales/ Center for Prospective Studies and International Information–Base pour l’Analyse du Commerce International/Database for International Trade Analysis) Dataset, CEPII, https://www.cepii.fr/DATA​_DOWNLOAD/baci/doc/baci​_webpage.html, and WTO-OECD (World Trade Organization-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Balanced Trade in Services dataset, https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/gstdh_batis_e.htm Note: A country is considered to have defense ties with the United States if it hosts or provides access to a US military base, has a framework agreement with the United States for defense cooperation, or has a defense pact with the United States. Financial service exports include the categories financial services and insurance and pension services. Goods export values are calculated by aggregating all products between each exporter-importer pair. AI’s Political Impact: Reshaping Power Within and Across Countries 205