Cartoon by: Carl Anthony Calumba
Pax Silica is not peace. It is a foreign-led scramble for the raw materials that power AI, wrapped in a name built to sound like partnership. Progress should not need this much spin. When transparency is lacking and accountability is unclear, “progress” stops serving the public and starts serving someone else’s ambitions, and the line towards clear exploitation becomes harder to ignore.
Last April 17, Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo signed the Philippines onto the Pax Silica, a US-led alliance with 14 states that aims to build a global supply chain for AI semiconductors, made from silicon (silica), that focuses producing the microchips that power modern technology on these AI systems.
The center of the initiative is the proposed development of the “first AI-native industrial acceleration hub” in the country, to be placed in a 1,619-hectare Economic Security Zone at New Clark City, Capas, Tarlac, under the Luzon Economic Corridor, an area roughly the size of 26 Silliman University main campuses combined.
It is also expected to strengthen the global semiconductor supply chain while positioning the Philippines as a key player. It also promises foreign investments, infrastructure, jobs, and technological innovation to boost the country’s economy.
What should alarm the public is how questionable the plan is in terms of whether this hub will be beneficial and whether the Philippines is capable of bearing the risks of the proposal.
Under the proposal from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), the United States gets a two-year rent-free lease over the site, treated as the Philippines’ so-called “in-kind contribution” to the partnership. What happens after those two years, and how much the country stands to earn from the arrangement afterward, has yet to be settled.
Annual lease rates from the third year onward remain undetermined, and a separate supplemental agreement governing the site’s operating terms has yet to be signed. A deal this large should not be moving forward while its most basic financial terms are still being worked out behind closed doors.
There is no doubt why the country was chosen. The Philippines possesses rich deposits of nickel, copper, cobalt, and chromite, which are critical minerals for AI technologies and semiconductor manufacturing.
Part of the appeal for Washington is that Pax Silica does not just want these minerals extracted; it wants them processed within the country as part of a supply chain built to reduce reliance on China’s dominance over rare earth elements and critical minerals. Framed publicly as a win for the Philippines because more of the value-added processing stays local, the same arrangement means the nation’s mineral wealth becomes locked into serving a US-led alliance’s strategic interests rather than the country’s own long-term development.
What looks to be Pax Silica being presented as a “groundbreaking project” will inevitably reshape the communities around it, affecting farmers, residents, and indigenous people who could bear the greatest burden if environmental degradation becomes the price of attracting foreign investment.
This is not empty land waiting to be developed. Farmers in Capas, Tarlac reported being asked to relocate to make way for the hub. The area has already seen this pattern before, as bulldozers cleared crops and forest cover on the same New Clark City site during an earlier phase of construction, long before Pax Silica came along. History suggests the land is anything but empty, and the people living on it are the ones left to prove they were ever there.
Beyond mining, the project’s AI infrastructure presents an additional difficulty, where To cool thousands of high-performance computer chips running continuously, AI facilities need massive amounts of electricity and water.
While project officials insist that Pax Silica will not draw from existing community water supplies, the initiative is still expected to consume an estimated 65 to 90 million liters of water daily, with infrastructure designed to accommodate up to 120 million liters daily.
The PAGASA has already issued an El Niño alert this year, with a strong probability of drought and dry spells stretching into 2027 and threatening water, food, and energy supplies nationwide. Committing tens of millions of liters a day to an industrial hub while the rest of the country braces for water shortages is a gamble the public never agreed to take.
It is said that the water will come from rainwater harvesting, storage, treatment, and recycling systems rather than groundwater, adding that any surplus could even be shared with nearby communities.
Even so, these assurances ultimately rest on projected capacities and future technologies, making transparency and long-term accountability essential as the project moves forward.
Environmental groups such as the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment warned that the initiative could strain local water and energy resources, placing communities at risk, and have raised the possible displacement of around 20,000 Aetas and as many as 15,000 farmers.
BCDA President Joshua Bingcang said this claim was inaccurate, noting that the project site is titled public land with no ancestral domain claims. He said some agricultural land will be affected, but that a livelihood program is available for impacted residents, and put the number of affected farmers at only about 10, against the creation of 200 jobs.
So who truly benefits when livelihoods are exchanged for promises that remain uncertain?
The Weekly Sillimanian calls the government and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to suspend the Pax Silica initiative and conduct a thorough public review of its environmental, economic, and social impacts. Progress should not be measured by foreign investment alone, but by whether it protects the nation’s resources and genuinely benefits the Filipino people.
If this is what progress looks like, then we are walking backward—once again trading our land, our resources, and our future for promises that may never truly belong to us.
