We express our deep concern over the implementation of the so-called “Pax Silica” initiative in the Philippines through the planned Economic Security Zone (ESZ).
Under the Pax Silica, United States and Philippine officials announced the 1,600-hectare ESZ in New Clark City—an expansive development carved out of ancestral lands and agricultural areas about 90 kilometers northwest of Manila, threatening the immediate displacement and loss of livelihood for local farming communities and the indigenous Aeta people. Located within the broader Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC), a US-Japan project, the ESZ is being promoted as an "AI-native investment acceleration hub" designed for semiconductor manufacturing, critical mineral processing, and logistics infrastructure.
However, behind the rhetoric of modernization and economic advancement lies a sinister agenda. The Pax Silica is not about genuine development for the Philippines; it is an aggressive maneuver by the US to secure its tech-military supremacy against global competitors, particularly China. It is a new wave of US imperialist domination and plunder. It seeks to consolidate US geopolitical and military control over strategic territories, resources, and infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific at the expense of Philippine sovereignty, patrimony, and the Filipino people’s well-being.
We are alarmed by reports that US officials and investors are pushing for special jurisdictional control, immunity provisions, and extraordinary legal protections within the ESZ. Such arrangements seriously undermine Philippine sovereignty and democratic accountability while privileging foreign corporations and geopolitical interests over the rights and welfare of the Filipino people.
The Luzon Economic Corridor and the ESZ threaten to intensify conversion of productive agricultural land for military cum commercial use, displacement of indigenous and farming communities, labor exploitation and oppression, environmental degradation and destruction, and militarization of the countryside. The massive infrastructure projects linked to these initiatives—including fuel pipelines, logistics corridors, digital connectivity systems, energy projects, and transport hubs—will primarily serve the accumulation of foreign monopoly capital and the projection of military power rather than the genuine industrialization of the Philippine economy and the upliftment of the lives of Filipinos.
We are concerned that the Philippines’ rich mineral resources are being positioned as inputs for a global artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor supply chain controlled by foreign corporations and imperialist powers. The Philippine experience with critical minerals extraction and processing is replete with ecological devastation, destruction of livelihoods, and human rights atrocities against local communities, including Indigenous Peoples.
Equally disturbing are the links between Pax Silica and corporations and contractors tied to US and Israeli military technologies, surveillance systems, autonomous warfare, and the global arms industry, which reveal the deeply militarized character of this project. The Philippines must not be transformed into a platform for war preparation, the use of technology for war and destruction, and geopolitical escalation of armed conflicts in the Asia Pacific.
We stand in solidarity with the Filipino people and their democratic organizations in the call to reject Pax Silica, stop the ESZ, and reject all forms of imperialist control and militarized development.
We support the Filipino people’s aspiration for genuine national industrialization, economic sovereignty, ecological sustainability, promotion of peoples’ rights, freedom from foreign domination, plunder, and militarization, and just and lasting peace.
Initiated by the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) Philippines
