If there was anything new in the President’s State of the Nation Address last week, it was two words: Pax Silica.
To the uninitiated, Pax Silica is a United States-led initiative to carve out and secure its own global AI supply chain in the face of China’s virtual control of critical minerals and rare earths as well as emerging dominance in chip fabrication and AI software development.
So far, 24 countries have signed the agreement, each having a place in the chain — from mining and minerals processing, semiconductor and chip manufacturing, energy production, logistics, data centers, to the actual deployment of AI technologies.
By joining Pax Silica, the Philippines hopes to ride on America’s mad scramble for global AI dominance. Our buy in? Aside from our rich mineral resources that are most crucial to AI, there’s 1,600 hectares of raw land in Capas, Tarlac, to be transformed by the US into an “Economic Security Zone” (ESZ) — ostensibly an “AI hub” that would host data centers, minerals processing facilities, and probably some semiconductor manufacturing, assembly and/or testing plants.
And of course there’s our relatively cheap, docile, skilled, and English-speaking labor force ready for exploitation.
