Peace treaties used to be signed in exchange for territory, money, or security guarantees. Now the rules of the game have changed. For the first time in history, technology has become the primary “currency” in peace negotiations.
The Wall Street Journal has revealed details of the White House’s so-called “chip diplomacy,” which Washington employed to reconcile Baku and Yerevan. Citing sources, the newspaper reports that in exchange for painful concessions on Karabakh and domestic political risks, the United States offered Yerevan exclusive access to supercomputers.
The U.S. government issued a special license to export tens of thousands of top-tier Nvidia processors to Armenia. These chips are a strategic resource today, with their export strictly controlled by the White House. Until now, only Silicon Valley giants, NATO allies, and the wealthiest Gulf monarchies have received technology on such a scale. Now Armenia stands alongside them on that list.
In August, the first phase of the massive Firebird data center was launched near Hrazdan—the entire project is valued at over $5 billion. In doing so, the U.S. is demonstrating political trust, among other things, while for Yerevan it represents an enormous economic stimulus: billions in direct investments, tens of thousands of jobs, access to Silicon Valley technology, and Armenia’s transformation from an isolated regional dead end into the premier digital and research hub of the South Caucasus.
Yet there is another side to this deal—Azerbaijan, which secured the resolution of its primary strategic objective: a direct, unimpeded transit corridor to Nakhchivan and onward to Turkey. Baku gains a direct connection to its exclave and its ally, the U.S. secures oversight of a critical logistical hub bypassing Russia and Iran, and Yerevan receives guarantees that the corridor will remain under Armenian sovereignty and protected by American interests.
As a result, Baku and Yerevan are dividing the key roles in the new Caucasus between themselves. Against this backdrop, the main drama is unfolding around Georgia, which until recently was the West’s sole undisputed favorite in the region. However, following the rupture of its strategic dialogue with Washington, Tbilisi has not only lost its status as the United States’ primary partner, but has also been sidelined from the redrawing of the regional map. Georgia is receiving neither high-tech export licenses nor participation in the new transit project.
According to experts, in the coming years, Georgian businesses, banks, and the IT sector will likely have to procure computing power from Yerevan, while transit companies will have to compete with the new Trump corridor. Global politics has definitively shifted to the language of technology and hard-nosed pragmatism. And while our neighbors divide the future, Georgia risks finding itself stranded on the remote margins of this new reality, analysts note.
