China's AI alliance just picked up nine new members in a single month.
The World AI Cooperation Organisation launched about a month ago and has already grown from 29 signatory countries to 38, according to reports. The expansion comes just as the US government is reportedly drafting a letter to roughly three dozen countries warning them they cannot belong to both camps. The two blocs are shaping up as rival frameworks for AI standards, infrastructure access, and diplomatic alignment. Neither side has published a full member list or explained how an exclusivity rule would actually be enforced.
This is tech diplomacy borrowing the logic of trade blocs: pick a supply chain, pick a side. For countries without a domestic AI industry, joining either camp is less about ideology than about whose chips, cloud capacity, and export rules they will end up living with. A forced choice tends to produce reluctant winners on both sides.
Washington's ultimatum reads less like confidence and more like an admission that persuasion alone was not working.