# Jacob Helberg **Entity class:** United States government official **Office:** Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment **Confirmed:** October 7, 2025 (Senate, 51–47); assumed office October 16, 2025 **As of:** 2026-11-13 ## Definition **Jacob Helberg** (born 1989) is the 22nd United States Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, succeeding Jose W. Fernandez. The office is the State Department's senior economic position and carries commercial diplomacy, energy statecraft, critical-minerals policy, and technology-transfer and export-control questions under a single mandate. The Department and Helberg himself frequently use the shorthand **Under Secretary for Economic Affairs**, which is the form that appears in much of his public attribution. ## Role in Pax Silica Helberg led the launch of [[wiki/Pax Silica|Pax Silica]], described by the State Department as its flagship effort on artificial intelligence and supply-chain security. The Pax Silica Declaration was signed by nine countries, and the initiative extends toward a coalition including Japan, South Korea, India, the United Arab Emirates and Australia. On January 16, 2026 he announced the United States–Israel joint statement on artificial intelligence, research and critical technologies, framing it as the two states uniting their innovation ecosystems. Before government he served as senior advisor to the chief executive of [[wiki/Palantir Technologies|Palantir Technologies]] and worked on technology-and-national-security policy focused on strategic competition with China. ## Why the portfolio matters to the architecture The statutory title places **energy** in the same office as technology diplomacy and export control. That combination is structurally significant to any account of coalition compute: generation capacity, minerals access, and the licensing perimeter around advanced accelerators are governed from one authority rather than distributed across competing bureaus. Reading the office this way makes energy sovereignty and model capability a single portfolio question rather than two adjacent ones. ## Relationships - **leads:** [[wiki/Pax Silica|Pax Silica]]. - **department:** [[wiki/U.S. Department of State|U.S. Department of State]]. - **prior role:** [[wiki/Palantir Technologies|Palantir Technologies]]. - **policy domain:** [[wiki/Technological Sovereignty|Technological Sovereignty]], [[wiki/Semiconductor Sovereignty|Semiconductor Sovereignty]], and [[wiki/Coalition Compute Supremacy|Coalition Compute Supremacy]]. ## Related Articles - [[articles/NVIDIA, Pax Silica, and the Peace We Are Building Into Silicon|Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, Pax Silica, and the Peace We Are Building Into Silicon]] — quotes his January 2026 announcement and reads the energy component of his portfolio as the binding constraint on the compute stack. - [[articles/US-Israel Pax Silica Alliance Downgrades EU and UK|Pax Silica: US-Israel Alliance Downgrades EU/UK for the West's New Rules-Based Order]] — the collection's keystone analysis of the partnership he announced. - [[articles/India Super-Scaler and Pax Silica|India Super-Scaler: Completing Pax Silica's U.S.–Israeli New Rules-Based Order]] — the coalition expansion his office is assembling. ## Related Reminders - [[reminders/AI Superpower/The United States and Israel Are Uniting Their Innovation Ecosystems by Jacob Helberg|The United States and Israel Are Uniting Their Innovation Ecosystems]] ## Sources / Provenance - [Certification of Ethics Agreement Compliance, Jacob Helberg](https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS%2BIndex/279035953FF344BC85258D860032F18F/%24FILE/Helberb%2C%20Jacob%20-%20Final%20EA%20Certification.pdf), U.S. Office of Government Ethics — confirms position title and confirmation date. - [Statement of Jacob S. Helberg, Nominee for Under Secretary of State](https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/06/11/2025/061025_helberg_testimonypdf), Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, June 10, 2025.