Amid growing competition with China, the United States is leveraging a key instrument of American soft power and diplomacy to extend its influence in artificial intelligence: the Peace Corps.

The White House on Friday introduced the “Tech Corps” initiative, a Peace Corps program aimed at promoting American AI abroad and supporting partner nations in implementing advanced technologies.

The Peace Corps, an independent U.S. government agency, sends American volunteers abroad to support local development projects in areas such as education, health, agriculture, and economic growth.
The new Tech Corps will follow a similar model but will focus on technology.

It will recruit, train, and deploy volunteers with tech expertise—including engineers and STEM graduates—to provide “last-mile” support for implementing American AI solutions overseas, particularly at the application level.

The executive order is part of broader U.S. efforts to counter the global influence of Chinese technologies, particularly in developing countries.

Chinese companies have made inroads in some of these nations by providing open-source or open-weight models that are affordable, highly customizable, and capable of running on local infrastructure—examples include Qwen3 and Deepseek.

While the complete list of countries in the AI Exports Program has yet to be revealed, India is expected to participate, with the Commerce Department expressing support last week.