Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. arrived at the Grand Hyatt Manila on Sept. 10 to address hundreds of foreign business representatives assembled for the Luzon Economic Corridor investors’ forum.
Outside the hotel, hundreds of demonstrators had also gathered, carrying signs that read “No to Pax Silica!” The scene reflected both the government’s ambitious plans to ride the artificial intelligence wave and deep ambivalence in civil society.
Police confronted the crowd, shoving them with riot shields and batons on the street outside the hotel lobby. Activists say police injured at least 27 protesters and arrested five. Police, meanwhile, reported minor cuts and injuries to 16 personnel.
Protester Jona Yang, from the activist-scientist group AGHAM, said she was negotiating with the police to cool tensions when they arrested her. “We want the Marcos government and investors to see the outrage all of this has caused,” Yang told Mongabay. “They’re taking away our resources and our lands.”
The Luzon Economic Corridor, or LEC, is an economic initiative focused on the Philippines’ biggest island, begun in 2024. Pax Silica, the U.S.-led global pact to build an AI and semiconductor supply chain that is not reliant on China, includes the LEC. In April, Washington and Manila announced plans to build a 4,000-acre high-tech manufacturing hub in the Central Luzon region.
Pax Silica has become a lightning rod for political and environmental contentions. The government maintains it’s a boon for the Philippine economy. But opponents of the project, including Indigenous and local communities living on the land designated for the project, say it’s an international land and resource grab in the name of U.S. AI ambitions.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Manila in July to affirm bilateral commitment to the project, with a final agreement slated for signing in November.
At the LEC forum, Pax Silica was discussed behind closed doors, and officials gave few details about its future. Angela Ignacio, an undersecretary at the Philippine Department of Finance, told reporters it would be premature to share any details on Pax Silica before plans are finalized. But she did call it a chance for the Philippines to become a “global player when it comes to technologies that will shape the future.”
Heather Variava, senior adviser to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, added that “the goal of the U.S. is always to be an additive, to bring more power, to bring water, to bring more benefits to the Philippines.”
The Pax Silica hub will be built within New Clark City, a government-planned “smart” city inside the greater 79,000-acre Clark area, a former U.S. military complex. Clark is titled and managed by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, or BCDA, an office under the supervision of the president. At a press briefing, development authority chief Joshua Bingcang shared a “conservative” estimate that the facility would need around 3 gigawatts of energy to run. He also said that it would be green and mainly solar powered.
“We are blessed with 300 days of sunshine,” Bingcang added.
Running consistently, the Pax Silica facility would demand about 26.3 terawatt-hours each year; by contrast, the Philippines’ entire service sector consumed about 28 TWh in 2024.
