A time for Pax Silica

By Herbert Vego

WHY do some people oppose the proposed Pax Silica Economic Security Zone project, which is reportedly aimed at boosting the Philippine economy?

Why, when it promises between USD 40 billion and USD 70 billion in foreign investments that would generate more than 100,000 high-income jobs in a 1,620-hectare industrial and technological zone in New Clark City in Tarlac?

Pax Silica is a U.S.-led international economic security coalition of 30 countries launched in December 2025.

As a business concept, Pax Silica in the Philippines was launched in April 2026 to build secure supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and critical minerals while countering China’s technological dominance.

It is designed to manufacture and process goods that support global artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure supply chains, including semiconductors, microchips, and processed silicon components for both local and foreign markets.

Therefore, it would catapult the Philippines into an advanced manufacturing hub for both local and export markets.

Unfortunately, certain advocacy groups are not convinced, arguing that promises of jobs, clean energy, and economic growth overlook the project’s potential costs to agriculture, water resources, workers, and Indigenous communities.

They challenge the Bases Conversion and Development Authority’s claim that the 1,620-hectare project would create secure jobs, rely on renewable energy, and avoid displacing local communities, pointing to reports that residents of barangays O’Donnell, Aranguren, and Santa Lucia in Capas, Tarlac, have already been identified as project-affected persons.

According to the Capas local government, however, more than 30% of its land area is considered productive agricultural land. There are also Aeta communities whose ancestral lands are not formally recognized by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. They could be displaced.

The party-list group AGHAM, or Alyansa ng mga Grupong Haligi ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa Mamamayan, doubts the BCDA’s assertion that the project would primarily run on renewable energy, saying hyperscale AI data centers require uninterrupted electricity that intermittent sources such as solar and wind cannot consistently provide.

Engineer Joshua M. Bingcang, the BCDA president, has repeatedly debunked that notion in the media, stressing that the agency would construct its own power plant.

The project’s projected demand of 3 to 5 gigawatts would likely require fossil fuels or other energy sources because supplying even half of that demand through intermittent sources such as solar farms and windmills would not suffice.

The problem with those conjectures is that they have no irrefutable basis. On the contrary, the communities that would allegedly be displaced by the project have failed to thrive using their traditional farming methods. There is no sense in surrendering to such hopelessness.

Why not simply provide them with alternative sources of income?

On the other hand, there is basis for the pessimists’ fear that the BCDA may not have the capacity to produce up to 120 million liters of water per day to support AI computing, data centers, and semiconductor manufacturing, given the insufficiency of rain and groundwater sources during fair weather.

Can we imagine a giant rainwater cistern meeting Pax Silica’s year-round needs?

Assuming that to be possible, diverting rainwater for industrial use would reduce groundwater recharge and diminish the water available to farmers and downstream communities.

I wonder why Engineer Bingcang has never broached the possibility of desalinating seawater. Bakit kaya?

Desalination is the process of removing salt and minerals from seawater to turn it into clean drinking water.

From what I have learned, Taiwan now depends on seawater reverse osmosis desalination to secure a stable water supply for its high-tech semiconductor and AI hardware manufacturing ecosystems.