Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, a former Google executive, has secured a deal with the Philippine government for a 4,000-acre economic security zone dedicated to AI-related manufacturing. This agreement, forged in May 2026 as part of his Pax Silica initiative, aims to solidify U.S. technological dominance and secure supply chains for transnational corporations.
Helberg's personal financial disclosures reveal he sold millions of dollars of investments in tech companies, including OpenAI, Palantir, Tesla, and Meta, in December 2025 and January 2026. These sales occurred just months before his May 2026 deal with the Philippines, illustrating the direct intersection of personal capital accumulation and state policy formation. His initiative, Pax Silica, has already enlisted 24 countries, including the European Union and mineral-rich nations like Chile and Kazakhstan, to sign a declaration linking arms with the U.S. Helberg, who assumed his position in October 2025, frames this effort as opposing Beijing’s “systemic weaponization” of global supply chains. He states, “Technology is the whole game. Whoever leads the world technologically will likely also lead economically and militarily.”
Rick Claypool, a research director at the left-leaning nonprofit Public Citizen, observed a “synergy between this fully unrestrained Trump White House and big tech and big tech billionaires who have real policy preferences in blocking AI regulation.” He added, “The default position has become what’s good for big tech billionaires is what’s good for America.” Helberg’s rapid rise reflects the increasing integration of tech executives into key roles of state power, with other figures like recently departed White House senior policy adviser for AI Sriram Krishnan and David Sacks, special adviser on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, holding influential positions.
Helberg literally married into the ranks of U.S. tech titans when he wed venture capitalist Keith Rabois in 2018. Rabois is a member of the so-called PayPal mafia, a grouping of early tech investors that included Sacks, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel.
Securing Capital's Supply Chains
Pax Silica aims to end U.S. dependency on Beijing’s dominance in rare earth minerals, which has seen export restrictions starve U.S. defense and civilian manufacturing of essential production materials. Helberg says his role is to ensure supply chains deliver “reliable inputs at market prices,” rather than at prices dictated by Beijing. This ensures predictable profit margins for U.S. capital. In May 2026, he also pitched greater U.S. access to Guyana’s bauxite reserves, further demonstrating the drive to secure raw materials for industrial production. The initiative is a re-invention of the Biden administration’s Minerals Security Partnership, notably “stripped of its emphasis on clean energy transition, consultation with communities and ethical business operations.” This reveals how state policy quickly sheds any pretense of social responsibility when capital accumulation is the primary goal.
French tech entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand called Pax Silica “structurally neocolonial” over a proposed clause in the Philippine development contract that would apply U.S. common law rather than Philippine law. Helberg dismissed this criticism on X, calling Bertrand's perspective an “ignorant loser mentality.” When another critic described Manila’s rejection of the common law clause as Filipinos “rising up against Pax Silica,” Helberg accused them of being part of a group of “failed-commentators-turned-paid-for-mouthpieces.”
The State as Enforcer for Tech Monopolies
Helberg’s influence extends to direct legislative action, having met with dozens of members of Congress from 2023 to 2024 to persuade them to pass legislation that would outlaw TikTok. Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., credited his efforts as instrumental in the bipartisan legislation passed in 2024, which required TikTok’s Beijing-based owner ByteDance to sell the app to a non-adversarial buyer or face a ban from U.S. app stores. Former President Trump delayed the ban five times last year while a deal was negotiated to divest the app to “American owners,” illustrating the state’s role in transferring ownership to domestic capital.
Helberg co-founded the Hill & Valley Forum in 2022, a gathering where tech executives, lawmakers, and administration officials discuss countering China’s national security threats. Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Founders Fund and a co-founder, noted “backroom conversations that turned into nuclear- and energy-related policies and of several fundraising rounds that came together because of Hill & Valley.” This forum directly links private capital’s interests with state policy and financial gain. An unnamed person familiar with Helberg’s tenure on the congressionally funded U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted his emphasis on tech sector approaches, saying, “There was a point when he said, ‘We’re going to war with China.’ But it wasn’t some dispassionate military analysis. It struck me as something that was in line with particular tech industry interests — companies like Palantir — that were trying to sell new technologies to the Pentagon.” Helberg later renewed his friendship with Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies, and joined Palantir in 2023 as Karp’s senior adviser.
Helberg left Google in 2020 after what he called “militant” staff protests against Project Maven, a military AI project, and an abortive effort to re-enter the Chinese market. This demonstrates workers' resistance to capital's military-industrial ventures.