A proposed industrial hub in the Philippines is putting an unusually local face on a global effort to secure the materials, factories and infrastructure behind artificial intelligence: the question of what happens to water, land and jobs when the next generation of technology arrives.
In New Clark City, in Tarlac province north of Manila, the Philippine government has designated about 1,620 hectares for a planned advanced manufacturing and technology hub under Pax Silica, a U.S.-led initiative launched in December 2025 to strengthen supply chains for semiconductors, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and related infrastructure. The Philippines joined the initiative in April.
The project is still being developed. Government officials say the site is intended to attract manufacturers, technology companies and energy businesses, rather than become primarily a collection of data centres. The Bases Conversion and Development Authority, which oversees New Clark City, says more than 30 companies have expressed interest and estimates the project could eventually generate between 130,000 and 190,000 direct jobs, with hundreds of thousands more indirect and induced positions.
For communities near the proposed development, however, the promise of jobs is only one part of the calculation.
Questions about water have become a central test of whether the industrial transformation envisioned by governments can coexist with the needs of people already living and working in the area. The BCDA says the project is expected to require between 65 million and 90 million litres of water a day and proposes surface-water harvesting, storage, treatment and recycling rather than drawing from the existing community supply. It has also described a system capable initially of supplying up to 120 million litres a day, with possible expansion to 300 million litres.
Those assurances followed public concerns over whether a technology hub could place pressure on local water resources. Philippine officials said the National Water Resources Board had determined that available sources within the project area could meet the proposed demand without reducing supplies for surrounding communities. The government has said water allocation would be monitored by the water board, the environment department and the BCDA.
The concerns extend beyond water.
Environmental groups and organizations representing farmers and Indigenous communities have questioned the potential effects of the development on land, ecosystems, energy use and community rights. One environmental group cited by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre raised concerns about possible displacement of Aetas and farmers and the environmental demands of large technology facilities.
BCDA President and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Bingcang has rejected the suggestion that the project would displace farmers or Indigenous people. He said the proposed site lies within an area already designated for development under the New Clark City master plan and pointed to land allocations for Indigenous communities elsewhere within the wider Clark economic zone.
That dispute illustrates the wider challenge facing Pax Silica as it moves from diplomatic declarations to physical projects.
The initiative began with seven countries — Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States — signing its declaration in Washington in December 2025. Its stated ambition is broad: to connect the supply chain from raw materials and energy through advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, AI systems and logistics, reducing dependence on single sources while strengthening cooperation among participating countries.
By June, the European Union had signed the Pax Silica declaration. Finland had joined in April, while the initiative's network of participating governments continued to expand. The European Commission said its participation was intended to strengthen supply-chain resilience and create opportunities for European businesses while contributing to technological and economic security.
For countries joining the initiative, the attraction is not simply access to chips. It is the possibility of moving further up a technology value chain increasingly shaped by AI.
India, which joined in February, described Pax Silica as cooperation covering the technology stack from critical minerals and semiconductor fabrication to advanced AI systems and deployment infrastructure. Finland has emphasized collaboration in technology, investment and innovation. The Philippines is presenting its proposed New Clark City hub as a way to develop domestic industrial capabilities and retain more highly skilled workers at home.
Bingcang has called the prospective development a way to turn the country's pool of engineers, researchers and technology graduates into what he described as a “brain gain” rather than continued outward migration of talent. He said the proposed hub is intended to emphasize manufacturing and high-value industrial activity because those sectors offer greater employment potential than data centres alone.
That emphasis reflects a broader economic calculation behind the initiative. Governments are seeking resilience not only by securing supplies but by creating places where more stages of production can take place. In Europe, proposed semiconductor legislation similarly calls for projects that reduce dependence on non-domestic suppliers and strengthen the region's security of supply across manufacturing, materials, equipment, packaging and other parts of the semiconductor ecosystem.
Yet building resilience at national or international scale can create new questions at community scale.
In New Clark City, the promised industrial transformation remains largely prospective. Officials say initial site development for the Pax Silica hub is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2028, while investors are still assessing the proposed site.
That leaves time for the practical questions to be answered before construction begins: how water will be secured during dry periods, how environmental safeguards will be enforced, how land rights will be protected and how promised skilled employment will reach workers in surrounding communities.
The answers will matter beyond Tarlac. Pax Silica is designed to make global technology supply chains more secure, but its success will ultimately be measured in places where those supply chains become physical — where factories occupy land, facilities consume energy and water, and workers and communities live alongside the infrastructure intended to power the next era of computing.
