The Global Beat by Gerald Lacuarta

A pair of maps has been making the rounds online. One shows a blue coalition called Pax Silica, clustered around the United States and its partners, with the motto “Securing the Silicon Supply Chain.”

The other, in red, charts China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO, stretching across much of the Global South.
The caption accompanying the maps was blunt: “So this is the battle line for the new cold war, huh?”

Here in Central Luzon, that battle line is no longer abstract. It runs through 1,620 hectares of New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac—and through communities where people have been farming, drawing water, and raising families long before anyone began calling the area an “AI-native industrial hub.”
Clark has been here before.

For decades during the old Cold War, Clark Air Base was a strategic chess piece between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest American military installations outside the continental United States, serving as a forward base for projecting power across Asia and containing communist influence.

When the bases agreement ended and the Americans left in 1991, the land was converted for civilian use. Clark became an airport, a freeport, a business center, and one of Central Luzon’s biggest development stories.

Now the same former military reservation is being drawn back into great-power rivalry. This time, the weapons are not tanks and bombers but semiconductors, critical minerals, data centers, and artificial intelligence. The old Cold War between Washington and Moscow has given way to an increasingly open technological contest between Washington and Beijing.

Clark is once again on the board.

The Philippines joined Pax Silica in April. Its flagship local project is a planned industrial hub inside New Clark City, on land managed by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. Officials say it could attract tens of billions of dollars in investment, create 130,000 to 190,000 direct jobs, and help the Philippines move beyond assembling electronics and exporting raw minerals.
The first phase could begin within three to five years. Full development may take three decades.

For many people in Clark, Angeles, Mabalacat, and Tarlac, those numbers sound like the next great economic opportunity after the BPO boom. Thousands of families in Central Luzon have benefited from the growth of Clark, and it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that Pax Silica could create another generation of well-paying jobs.

But residents closest to the proposed site are hearing something else.

Farmers and Aeta communities in Barangays Sta. Lucia, O’Donnell, and Aranguren have raised fears about their homes, farms, and water sources. Miriam Ventura, a farmer from Sta. Lucia, has said that hundreds of families in her barangay could be affected. Petronroniza Capriz-Muñoz, an Aeta chieftain from Sapang Kawayan, has spoken about land not as a commodity on a development map, but as the community’s home, livelihood, and inheritance for future generations.

Those voices should not be reduced to a paragraph in an environmental report after the major decisions have already been made.
The government says no farmers will be displaced. But a promise alone is not enough. It must be supported by a public map of the final project boundaries, a complete accounting of the families and farms within and around the site, and legally enforceable protections. A press statement is not a land-rights policy.

The project also raises hard questions about water and electricity. Semiconductor plants and data centers are resource-intensive operations. If Pax Silica requires new reservoirs, transmission facilities, power plants, or groundwater extraction, the public deserves to know where these will be built, who will pay for them, and whether nearby households and farms will end up competing with the hub for basic resources.
Central Luzon residents should not have to subsidize an international technology project through higher electricity rates, depleted wells, reduced irrigation, or the conversion of more agricultural land.

This is where the discussion must move beyond slogans about innovation.
The hub must produce more than assembly-line jobs. Any agreement should include measurable commitments for training Filipino engineers, technicians, programmers, researchers, and plant managers. Universities and technical schools in Pampanga and Tarlac should be part of the project from the beginning, not invited later to provide low-cost labor.

Technology transfer must also mean more than allowing Filipinos to operate foreign-owned equipment. Local companies should receive opportunities to become suppliers, develop intellectual property, and participate in higher-value work. Otherwise, the Philippines could remain where it has long been in the global electronics industry: essential to production but far from the most profitable parts of the business.
The same standard should apply to local economic benefits. Jobs, procurement contracts, training funds, and tax revenues must remain in the communities hosting the project. A development of this scale should produce public benefits that residents can see—not only investment figures announced in Manila or Washington.

Sovereignty is another concern that cannot simply be waved away.

Early reports suggesting that the zone might operate under American law or enjoy diplomatic immunity were firmly rejected by Philippine officials. They insist that the project will remain under Philippine jurisdiction and operate under the BCDA charter.

Good. That condition should be absolute.

There should be no legal gray zone, no special immunity, and no future arrangement allowing foreign companies or officials to avoid Philippine labor, environmental, tax, or criminal laws. If exceptions and side agreements begin appearing once investors arrive, the sovereignty assurances being offered today will mean very little.
Globally, Pax Silica is Washington’s attempt to build trusted supply chains for the chips, minerals, computing systems, and infrastructure that power artificial intelligence. China’s WAICO offers a competing vision, emphasizing cooperation with developing countries and the narrowing of the technology gap.

By joining Pax Silica, the Philippines has moved closer to the American-led side of this contest. That choice may bring access to capital, advanced technology, and partnerships with countries seeking alternatives to Chinese-controlled supply chains. It may also reduce our dependence on a single market for minerals and electronics.

But alignment has a price. The Philippines is tying part of its industrial future to a rivalry that will probably intensify for decades.
We should therefore stop treating every concern about Pax Silica as opposition to progress. Farmers asking where the boundaries will fall are not opposing technology. Aeta leaders defending ancestral land are not rejecting national development. Residents asking about water, power, pollution, and jurisdiction are asking the questions government should have answered before unveiling a project of this size.

Before the first phase proceeds, several conditions should be non-negotiable: public disclosure of the final site and infrastructure plans; independent environmental and water studies; binding protection for farmers and Indigenous communities; guaranteed Philippine jurisdiction; clear targets for local hiring and technology transfer; and regular public reporting of the project’s water use, power consumption, jobs, contracts, and tax contributions.

If these requirements make the project more difficult or expensive, so be it. Safeguards are not obstacles to development. They are what separate development from exploitation.

Pax Silica could help the Philippines move up the semiconductor value chain and establish Central Luzon as a serious technology center. I want that promise to be real. But grand strategy does not automatically put food on a farmer’s table, lower an electric bill, protect a watershed, or create a career for a Filipino engineering graduate.

The maps of the new cold war look clean from a distance. On the ground in Capas, the lines pass through farms, water sources, ancestral claims, and actual communities.
Clark was once used as a chess piece in the struggle between Washington and Moscow. We should not allow it to become one again in the contest between Washington and Beijing.

This time, the Philippines must do more than host the board. We must set the rules—and enforce them.