#53 Pax Silica: Why Are We Choosing to Depend on Bullies?
This is an unusual issue. The last two weeks have been unusual too. Most of my free time since that text to Per has been spent trying to understand what Sweden just signed, and why. There are more links than usual. The claims matter and I want you to be able to verify them. There's also a call to action at the end, which is new for me.
TLDR: Sweden quietly signed a US-led tech agreement called Pax Silica without public debate or EU alignment. We asked the foreign minister seven questions. When the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet picked up the story, she replied to the journalist by text message, but our questions remain unanswered.
Wednesday evening, March 18. A text to my friend Per Axbom:
"Antar att du har koll på detta? Funderar på vad det betyder för vår digitala suveränitet?" ("I assume you've seen this? Wondering what it means for our digital sovereignty?")
I'd come across a government press release on LinkedIn. Sweden had signed something called Pax Silica. I'd never heard of it.
Per hadn't either. But Per, being Per, started digging. What he found surprised us both.
On March 17th, Sweden's foreign minister Maria Malmer Stenergard flew to Houston, Texas, and signed a declaration called Pax Silica. Crown Princess Victoria was there to observe. The initiative, described by the US State Department as its "flagship effort on AI and supply chain security" covers cooperation across software, semiconductors, minerals, and energy infrastructure. Sweden became the second EU member state to sign, after Greece. The EU itself has not signed. France, Germany, Italy. None of them.
The person Malmer Stenergard shook hands with was Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment in the Trump administration. Helberg is also a senior advisor to Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, the surveillance and defense company co-founded by Peter Thiel. In February, Le Monde described Helberg as Trump's direct link to France's far right.
I had not seen a single Swedish daily newspaper reporting on Pax Silica, or Malmer Stenergards meeting with Helberg, when Per sent me his findings.
The Letter
Per, Christian Landgren, Pontus Wärnestål, Fia Ewald, Daniel Melin, Marcus J. Österberg, Göran Westerlund, Jimmy Nilsson, Pierre Mesure, Kerstin Beckman co-authored an open letter to the foreign minister alongside me. Per did the lion's share of the research and the initial drafting. Christian sharpened the final version.
We asked seven questions. They are not complicated. They are the questions any government should be able to answer before signing something like this.
- What contacts and meetings preceded Sweden's decision to join, and when was the decision made?
- What obligations, if any, has Sweden taken on under Pax Silica?
- How will this initiative relate to EU work and any upcoming agreements between member states?
- What expectations may arise around Swedish natural resources, such as the Per Geijer deposit in Kiruna, within such a cooperation?
- How is it ensured that Swedish actors can develop and operate AI systems within national infrastructure, without requirements for data transfer or dependence on external platforms?
- How is it ensured that Swedish actors can continue to use and combine open models from different sources, without being constrained by geopolitical bloc formation?
- How is it avoided that the cooperation leads to lock-in to individual suppliers or technical ecosystems?
Sara L Bränström at Svenska Dagbladet picked up the story. The foreign minister declined an interview. The response, by text message, noted that Pax Silica is about securing global supply chains and that Sweden has been "in continuous and close dialogue" with the EU.
No explanation of what was actually agreed to, and no answers to our questions.
The Dependency
According to a Proton study (yes, Proton has a commercial interest in that finding) more than 90% of Sweden's listed companies depend on American software for their core operations. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together control more than 70% of Europe's cloud market, while European alternatives barely reach 13%. In 2025, the ICC's chief prosecutor lost access to his Microsoft-based email following US sanctions. It is disputed exactly how, but the court subsequently ditched Microsoft entirely and moved to open source software.
And in case there is any doubt about what the US actually wants, here is JD Vance at the Paris AI Summit in February 2025: "The United States of America is the leader in AI and our administration plans to keep it that way. The Trump Administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American designed and manufactured chips."
And the White House, on January 21st 2026: "The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for American AI dominance by accelerating innovation, infrastructure development, and deregulation while establishing global dominance through technology exports."
Not partnerships or collaborations. Dominance.
Our own prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said about energy: "Europa måste bli oberoende av fossila bränslen från länder i Mellanöstern och från Ryssland." ("Europe must become independent of fossil fuels from countries in the Middle East and from Russia.")
He understands dependency risk perfectly well. Just not, apparently, when it comes to digital infrastructure.
At the launch of Sweden's own Digitalisation Strategy 2025–2030 in May 2025 Digitalization minister Erik Slottner said: "Idag är vi till stor del beroende av amerikanska molntjänster — vilket många av förklarliga skäl inte vill vara."("Today we are largely dependent on American cloud services — which many for understandable reasons do not want to be.")
The strategy document announced a new cloud policy (bottom of page 11) to address exactly that dependency.
The Ericsson Connection
After Svenska Dagbladet picked up the story about our open letter, Daniel, one of our co-signatories, wrote an article on LinkedIn that pointed toward Ericsson and that made me curious.
In his speech at the signing ceremony, Helberg mentioned Ericsson, repeatedly.
"Sweden is not merely a diplomatic partner. Sweden is a 5G power. Ericsson — born in Stockholm, built over 150 years of relentless engineering — is one of the only companies on Earth capable of building trusted, sovereign-grade 5G infrastructure at scale. As our coalition works to ensure that the arteries of the digital economy run through trusted networks and not through systems beholden to rivals and adversaries, Ericsson is not a footnote to that mission. Ericsson is central to it."
And immediately after the ceremony, Helberg flew from Houston to Dallas to personally meet with Ericsson's CEO Börje Ekholm and tour Ericsson's US 5G factory.
The Wallenberg family are major owners in Ericsson, controlling a quarter of its voting power through dual-class shares despite holding less than 10% of its stock. Jacob Wallenberg sits on Ericsson's board as Vice Chair. Their relationship with Swedish governments, across party lines, across generations, is one of the most documented structural features of Swedish political economy.
Ericsson's current CEO, Börje Ekholm, sat on the Swedish government's own AI Commission which helped inform Sweden’s AI strategy. The same commission was chaired by former Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg.
Just weeks before the Pax Silica signing, Computer Sweden’s Marcus Jerräng wrote about how Ekholm was publicly lobbying against European digital sovereignty ambitions. The US is Ericsson's largest market, representing 40% of the company's revenues according to the 2025 annual report (page 11). In short, Swedish digital sovereignty could cost Ericsson billions.
I want to be careful here. I'm not claiming corruption. But I find it hard not to wonder. Did Sweden sign Pax Silica as a matter of national strategic interest? Or as a service to one of its most powerful corporate families?
The government hasn't explained its reasoning. The foreign minister declined to be interviewed by SvD. Her press secretary responded by text message. No explanation of what was actually agreed to, and no answers to our questions.
You cannot build digital sovereignty by deepening your dependence on an administration that has spent the past year bullying its own allies. You cannot depend on bullies.
The questions we asked about Pax Silica are important, but the problem they point to is even bigger. Sweden has no coherent strategy for digital sovereignty. Decisions with long-term consequences for our independence are being made quietly, without debate, without accountability.
That's not good enough.
If you want to add your name to ours and help keep the pressure on, the letter is now open for co-signing.