Where We May Work

Five Tiers.
One Coalition.

The AI Middle Way Coalition is still moving on an accelerated timeline to activate a sequence of five tiers of nations by mid-2028, when Tier Five — an aspirational collaboration between the United States and China — begins. The five tiers are listed below.

The Stakeholder Maps

AI Ecosystem of the Four Possible Founding Nations

Comprehensive maps of the prominent stakeholders shaping each founding nation's national AI strategy — across strategic governance, leading universities, industry, and the community enablers that make a Middle Way possible.

Middle Way
Infographic of the AI ecosystem in Thailand: strategic governance and policy, leading universities, industry and application, and community and enablers.
Thailand
Infographic of the AI ecosystem in Indonesia: strategic governance and policy, leading universities, industry and application, and community and enablers.
Indonesia
Infographic of the AI ecosystem in Mexico: strategic governance and policy, leading universities, industry and application, and community and enablers.
Mexico
Infographic of the AI ecosystem in Brazil: strategic governance and policy, leading universities, industry and application, and community and enablers.
Brazil

Mexico and Brazil are the two nations where the AI Middle Way is currently in development — not yet formal members of the AI Middle Way Coalition.
México y Brasil son las dos naciones donde la Vía Media de la IA está en desarrollo — aún no forman parte de la Coalición.

Roadmap 2026 — 2028

The Five Tiers

Each tier represents a phase of coalition expansion. Tier One, the founding nations, anchors the framework in 2026 with a culminating event in London. Tiers Two through Four expand the coalition through 2027 and into 2028. Tier Five — the apotheosis — sees the United States and China join as aspirational co-architects, completing the bridge between the Global South and the world's two AI superpowers.

  1. Tier One 2026

    Proof of Concept — The Founding Nations

    • Thailand April 29, 2026 — Signed
    • Indonesia June 25, 2026
    • Mexico TBD
    • Brazil TBD
    • South Africa TBD
    • Peru — Latin American Declaration Host TBD

    Culminating event: London — TBD. The G20 Declaration is signed in Johannesburg with South Africa, alongside the other founding partners.

  2. Tier Two 2027

    Expansion — Continental Bridges

    • Kenya
    • Nigeria

    Tier Two activates at the start of 2027 to extend the framework to Latin America's other economies and sub-Saharan Africa's emerging AI leaders.

  3. Tier Three 2027

    Strategic Bridges

    • India
    • Saudi Arabia

    We can bring the framework to two of the most consequential AI players outside the US–China axis.

  4. Tier Four Early 2028

    Institutional Consolidation

    Tier Four may consolidate the coalition through the Vatican, multilateral institutions, and additional national partners, preparing the ground for Tier Five.

  5. Tier Five Mid-2028

    The Apotheosis — USA & China as Co-Architects

    Tier Five represents an aspirational collaboration between the United States and China within the AI Middle Way framework — the apex of the coalition's vision. The United States learns from China's rural AI and education models; China learns to support democratic frameworks. It may be a shared mission to uplift the global lower middle class through structural deflation.

Global Dynamics

Co-opetition: How the US and China Interact with Coalition Nations

When the US and China achieve "co-opetition" — collaborating while competing — two-way interactions emerge with the big nations of the Global South across five tiers.

United States China Mexico India Thailand Indonesia Brazil Peru South Africa THE MIDDLE WAY
US–China Competition
US → Coalition Nations
China → Coalition Nations
Middle Way Nations

Tier One — Proof of Concept

Thailand — Coalition Headquarters

April 29, 2026 · Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok

Professor Soraj Hongladarom activated the Middle Way, accepted by each of the ten leading actors in the AI sector of the Kingdom of Thailand. A plan for equitable AI governance.

70M
Population
$574B
GDP
2006
Meaningful Broadband Adopted

Thailand's 800-year tradition of balancing between greater powers — from Ayutthaya's diplomacy between European empires to modern navigation between the US and China — makes it the natural home for the Middle Way Coalition. Chulalongkorn University, the nation's premier institution, provides the intellectual anchor through Professor Soraj Hongladarom's work on AI ethics and Buddhist philosophy.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Philosophical

Buddhist majjhimā paṭipadā (middle way) provides the conceptual foundation. This is not imported Western theory — it is indigenous philosophy applied to contemporary governance.

Institutional

NBTC adopted Meaningful Broadband — the framework led by Professor Craig Warren Smith — as national policy in 2006. Thailand has existing institutional capacity for technology governance frameworks.

Strategic

Thailand's ASEAN membership, its position between Chinese and US influence spheres, and its history of diplomatic non-alignment make it credible to all parties.

Indonesia — Proof of Concept

June 25, 2026 · Habibie Family Library

Presented by Ilham A. Habibie, Indonesia’s leading AI sector actors agreed on a plan to extend democratization to the country’s five hundred local districts (kabupaten), thereby extending democratic governance to the local level.

270M
Population
$1.4T
GDP
2007
Meaningful Broadband Adopted

Indonesia is where the theory becomes practice. The world's largest Muslim democracy, fourth-largest population, and the nation that already proved cooperative formalization works through the Gojek model. Ilham Habibie's Wantiknas framework provides interministerial coordination at the presidential level, and Sri Mulyani's fiscal reforms expanded the taxpayer base from 4.35 million to 16 million — pre-AI.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Economic

Gojek proved AI-enabled cooperative formalization at scale. 2+ million drivers voluntarily formalized. The Sri Mulyani fiscal framework is ready to be AI-enhanced.

Institutional

Wantiknas (National ICT Council) under Ilham Habibie provides presidential-level interministerial coordination. Meaningful Broadband adopted 2007.

Educational

Nadiem Makarim's Merdeka Belajar reforms created the "how to learn" pedagogy. The AI Middle Way scales this to just-in-time employment pathways.

Mexico — Americas Bridge

October 21, 2026 · Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Luis Josué Lugo Sánchez, director of UNAM’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities (CEIICH), will host Craig Warren Smith, co-founder of AI Middle Way, to discuss how AI builds on earlier innovations to close the digital divide. Further UNAM sessions may follow, related to the government’s emerging AI policy.

130M
Population
$1.8T
GDP
60%
Informal Economy

Mexico sits at the intersection of North and South America, a USMCA member that is also the gateway to 650 million Latin Americans. Its tianguis market tradition — open-air trading networks predating the Aztec empire — represents the world's most sophisticated informal economy infrastructure, ready for digital formalization.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Geographic

USMCA membership gives Mexico unique leverage: the US needs Mexico's cooperation, which creates bargaining power for data sovereignty terms that other nations can emulate.

Cultural

The tianguis tradition and Catholic social teaching (via media) provide indigenous frameworks for cooperative economics that predate and enrich Middle Way philosophy.

Scale

130 million people and Latin America's second-largest economy. Success in Mexico makes the case for Brazil (215M), Colombia, Argentina, and the rest of the continent.

See the full Mexico City agenda →

Brazil — Towards a possible São Paulo Declaration

Third quarter of 2026 · São Paulo · In development

Brazil is the current focus of the AI Middle Way Coalition, but efforts are restricted by the presidential election of 4 October 2026. The first phase stays academic and civil-society only; government engagement follows the vote.

215M
Population
#2
Latin America AI Index (ILIA)
R$23B
PBIA 2024–2028 Plan

Brazil is governing AI through three moving instruments at once — a stalled framework bill (PL 2338/2023), a national investment plan disbursing slowly, and a data-protection authority acting as de facto regulator. Nothing binding has yet been enacted. Meanwhile PIX and Gov.br give the country a vertical spine most nations lack: instant payments and a digital identity layer with over 130 million accounts, already reaching ordinary people. The opening for the Middle Way is the gap between political sovereignty and technical sovereignty — a “sovereign cloud” that still runs on foreign rails.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Scale

215 million people and Latin America's largest economy. Brazil hosts the next eLAC Ministerial Conference, and the EU–Mercosur agreement contains no AI provisions — an open lane for a Brazil-led regional blueprint.

Intellectual

Ronaldo Lemos (ITS Rio) and Luca Belli (CTS-FGV) already argue publicly for “divergent approaches” to AI governance — the Middle Way thesis in Brazilian terms. USP's C4AI provides the São Paulo academic host.

Custody

The Yẽgatu / Nheengatu project with FOIRN is built on Indigenous data sovereignty: communities own the data they generate. The same “custody” argument developed in Oaxaca is directly citable in the Rio Negro.

Read the full Brazil briefing →

South Africa

60M
Population
55
AU Member States Represented
TBD
G20 Declaration Signing

South Africa joins the founding tier of the AI Middle Way Coalition, representing both its national government and the 55 member states of the AU. The G20 Declaration is signed in Johannesburg, in partnership with CSIR, DCDT, the AU Commission, and the University of Pretoria. The event positions the Coalition as a civil-society activation track preceding the UK G20 2027 agenda-setting cycle, building on South Africa's 2025 G20 Cape Town AI Task Force outputs.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Continental

The African Union's 55 member states and 1.4 billion people. South Africa's institutional capacity makes it the natural bridge between continental coordination and Coalition implementation.

Institutional

CSIR, DCDT, the Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, NACI, HSRC, and AIISA — South Africa's AI ecosystem is rich but fragmented. The Coalition supports a coordinating spine.

G20 Continuity

South Africa held G20 chair in 2025; the UK holds it in 2027. The Johannesburg event bridges that handover and ensures the Cape Town AI Task Force gains are inherited rather than discarded.

See the full Johannesburg agenda →

Peru — Vatican Connection

34M
Population
$268B
GDP
Pope Leo XIV
Dual US-Peruvian Citizenship

Peru's strategic value to the coalition is concentrated in one extraordinary asset: Pope Leo XIV's dual US-Peruvian citizenship and two decades of pastoral work in Peru. The Vatican's convening power — the ability to bring nation-states to the table — transcends geopolitics in ways that no other institution can match.

Three Reinforcing Dynamics

Moral Authority

Pope Leo XIV can convene conversations that no diplomat, CEO, or foundation president can. The Vatican's 2,000-year track record of institutional persistence provides credibility.

Cultural

Andean ayni reciprocity — the pre-Columbian tradition of mutual aid — aligns with cooperative formalization principles and provides indigenous philosophical grounding.

Americas Anchor

Peru connects the coalition to the Andean nations (Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia) and the broader Latin American solidarity tradition.

See the full Lima Declaration →

Tier Two — Expansion (2028–2030)

From 400 Million to 2 Billion

Current Partners

Thailand April 29, 2026 · Signed

Coalition headquarters. Chulalongkorn University anchors the intellectual framework. Meaningful Broadband adopted as national policy in 2006.

Indonesia June 25, 2026

Proof of concept. 270 million people. Wantiknas under Ilham Habibie provides presidential-level interministerial coordination.

NEXT

Mexico TBD

Americas bridge. 130 million people. USMCA leverage and the tianguis tradition of cooperative trade networks.

South Africa TBD

G20 Declaration signing in Johannesburg, hosted with CSIR, DCDT, the AU Commission, and the University of Pretoria. South Africa represents both its national government and the 55 member states of the African Union.

London Culmination TBD

Tier One culminates with a convening event in London that closes the founding year and sets the stage for Tier Two (Kenya and Nigeria) in 2027.

Peru — Latin American Host TBD

Peru participates as the Latin American Declaration host. Pope Leo XIV's dual US-Peruvian citizenship provides unique convening power across geopolitical divides.

Brazil TBD

215 million people. Latin America's largest economy. Pix instant payments already process 150M+ transactions daily, demonstrating the digital public infrastructure capacity needed for cooperative formalization at scale.

The Coalition Is Open

Nations, foundations, and enterprises that share the vision of a third path for AI governance are welcome.

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