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Pax Silica: How a U.S. Neocolonial Project Is Sparking Resistance in the Philippines

This article was written by the guest writer Siegfred Deduro. Our newspaper already published an Interview with Siegfred on the questions of persecution, imperialist militarization and the national liberation movement in the Philippines: “Revolutionaries are freedom fighters, not terrorists” [- Editorial staff of the Red Flag]


Under the guise of high-tech modernization, the U.S.-led "Pax Silica" framework is being rushed toward final ratification at November’s ASEAN Summit in Manila. While marketed to the Global South as an entry ticket to advanced supply chains, the reality is stark: it is a high-tech corporate enclosure securing critical resources for Western capital. Following the EU’s sign-on in June, Austria stands directly complicit. Yet, as farmers and Indigenous communities in the Philippines mobilize against this neocolonial land grab, a vital front of internationalist resistance is opening—demanding that activists and the Filipino diaspora in Vienna hold the Austrian state accountable.




The initiative was launched at a summit in Washington, D.C., with seven original signatories: the U.S., Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the UK, and Israel. The alliance has since expanded to 24 signatories, including India, the Netherlands, Qatar, and the UAE. The Philippines joined as the 13th member on April 17, 2026, followed by Germany and the European Union on June 23, 2026. As an EU member state, Austria is actively complicit in the project. Its strategic imperatives include:

  • Diversifying away from single-source suppliers of critical refined inputs (currently dominated by China).

  • Safeguarding the physical infrastructure driving the global AI tech race.

  • Rerouting trade networks exclusively through trusted partner nations.

  • Locking down Western intellectual property across all layers of the tech stack.


The Philippines was designated as the first physical Pax Silica site, but it is not intended to be the last; the framework is designed to build a global network. Under Pax Silica, the U.S. and the Philippines announced plans to establish a 4,000-acre industrial hub in the Luzon Economic Corridor. The site—the first of its kind—is being offered by the Philippines as an Economic Security Zone to surge production for inputs vital to U.S. supply chains.



In this architecture, the Philippines operates as a downstream manufacturing node focusing on Assembly, Testing, and Packaging (ATP), while hosting regional acceleration hubs to reshore backend manufacturing. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other advanced industrialized nations act as the primary anchors for capital allocation, security policy coordination, cloud compute infrastructure, and chip design architectures.


Digital Infrastructure, Critical Minerals, and the Imperial Logic of Pax Silica


Despite President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. facing civil liability in the U.S. stemming from federal court rulings on the Marcos estate's widespread human rights violations during his father’s martial law regime, Washington now views him as a reliable ally. Consequently, Marcos Jr. has made the Philippines a willing frontline in America’s "first island chain" strategy to contain China.



The Philippines is already recognized as a hub for Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) services, making it a vital contributor to the global supply chain as manufacturers seek to diversify production. Electronics account for roughly half of its exports. Though this share has declined from a peak of 58.2% in 2020 to 53.4% by late 2024, semiconductor components, parts for electronic data processing, and consumer hard drives remain primary economic drivers.


At the same time, the Philippines ranked 120th out of 180 countries on Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index. Pervasive government corruption creates a climate of impunity, leading to routine violations of environmental and regulatory laws when dealing with foreign conglomerates.



From Street Protests to Water Shortages: Unpacking the Resistance


Pushback against the Pax Silica initiative has brought together a broad coalition of grassroots organizations, indigenous groups, student movements, environmental advocates, and economic analysts. Farmers, factory workers, religious leaders, and students are uniting against what they view as a high-stakes geopolitical gamble, expanding resistance well beyond Metro Manila across the archipelago.




By declaring that profits should flow to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Teodoro has confirmed what many already knew—Pax Silica is not meant to generate jobs for Filipinos as Marcos Jr. promoted, but is instead a war chest for militarization.



At its core, Pax Silica is a U.S. Department of State economic-security strategy to contain China by securing critical mineral and semiconductor supply chains for Western military and dual-use technology. Rather than fostering genuine national industrialization, the Marcos regime relies on raw export frameworks like the 1995 Mining Act—keeping the nation trapped at the bottom of foreign value chains as a source of cheap labor and raw materials.

The local impacts will be severe:

Furthermore, extraction occurs at primary mining sites (Palawan, Surigao), heavy chemical High-Pressure Acid Leach (HPAL) processing is placed in coastal zones (Subic, Batangas), and pre-refined high-purity metals are shipped to primary hubs for integration into semiconductor hardware. Given weak oversight by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), this multi-tiered model risks repeating historical disasters where toxic mine tailings contaminated aquifers and destroyed agricultural lands.


Piggybacking on Washington: The EU’s Green Raw Material Trap


The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) sets ambitious targets for processing, recycling, and securing critical minerals like nickel, copper, and cobalt to feed European green technology and AI infrastructure. However, rather than reducing overall resource consumption, the CRMA relies on "strategic partnerships" that externalize the dirtiest stage of the supply chain—raw extraction—to the Global South.


Under the banner of European strategic autonomy, the EU claims to chart an independent path. In reality, by joining Pax Silica alongside Washington, Brussels acts as a junior partner in an imperial tech alliance aimed at monopolizing the global AI and semiconductor stack.


Austria’s participation through the EU is far from neutral; it actively underwrites a U.S.-led economic architecture designed to bind developing nations like the Philippines into perpetual raw-material supplier status. This exposes the core contradiction of European green social democracy: claiming high domestic environmental standards while piggybacking on imperialist supply chains.


Western industrial policy relies on value capture at the top of the chain (semiconductors, AI algorithms, capital goods) while forcing the Philippines to remain at the bottom. Pax Silica represents a modern form of capitalist enclosure. High-tech economic zones, data center expansions, and mining corridors strip local land rights and sovereign control over resources. The profits, finished chips, and high-value tech accrue to corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley, Brussels, and Vienna—leaving the Philippine working class to absorb economic instability, land displacement, and ecological degradation.



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