EARLIER this week, an internal draft of a letter being prepared by the US State Department for the 35 countries that have signed on to the “Pax Silica” initiative — the Philippines among them — set off alarm bells, because it would apparently demand that countries “choose sides” between the United States and China in the intensifying competition for dominance in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
As of this writing, the letter has not been released yet, and its leak to reporters from Reuters may, in fact, forestall the implementation of the new US policy. But if the State Department follows through and forwards the letter, the Philippines should utterly reject its terms.
Much has been said about the Pax Silica initiative, which has provoked as much dissent as it has support, even though at this point, there are no clear details about what it would entail. At the moment, it exists only as a general memorandum of understanding between the US and Philippine governments, with the specifics of what investments will be made to be determined through further negotiation. What the Philippine public has been told is that it would focus on the development of the processing of critical minerals needed by the tech industry, as well as manufacturing of key components such as semiconductors, resulting in a significant boost in employment and economic output for the country.
Skepticism is certainly understandable because of the nascent stage of the idea at this point; among our own editorial leadership and our learned columnists, opinions seem to be equally divided between “reject this idea completely,” and “let’s give it a chance.” It is because the Pax Silica plan is still undeveloped that the revelation of the proposed US “us or them” conditions, with “them” referring to China, are so disturbing, because it indicates that the US intends to make geopolitical alignment a nonnegotiable condition for the further economic development it has pitched.
The development of the draft letter by the State Department was apparently triggered by the government of Kazakhstan — that country being a potentially abundant source of the critical minerals being sought to support the US AI and broader tech industries — to also join the China-led “World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization,” announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in July. The Chinese program is designed as a direct competitor of the US-led Pax Silica initiative, and while China has not yet gone so far as to propose the same “us or them” conditionality as the US, it seems to be implied.
From our point of view, the Philippines should view the competing initiatives in terms of what would potentially benefit the Filipino people and the overall economy more. China is rapidly developing AI technology on an “open weight” model, which means that despite starting later, it is advancing more quickly than the US in terms of sophistication of agentic AI models, robotics and integration with commonly used applications. China is also not particularly handicapped by the “circular economy” of the US AI sector, due to greater government support, although it is not without risk in this respect. China has been handicapped to some extent by US restrictions on its technology, but that does not seem to have throttled Chinese AI development as much as the US government had hoped it would. On the other hand, while China might beat the US in terms of the volume of research and development, US developments are still, on the whole, considered superior to Chinese technology. For now.
Although the Philippines has traditionally had a close relationship with the US, the official policy of the government, through several administrations, has been to maintain nonalignment as much as possible. In spite of the ongoing dispute with China over jurisdiction in the West Philippine Sea, our economic and cultural ties to China remain strong, and in fact, far stronger than those with the US. The proposed edict by the US government that participants in its still-undeveloped Pax Silica initiative must choose sides does not in any way benefit our country, because it cuts the Philippines off from potential investment and technology transfer gains from our nearer neighbor and most important trade partner for no reason that has anything to do with the Philippines, but rather US geopolitical posturing.
If, as the US has indicated, the Philippines presents real value to the overall Pax Silica initiative, then our government should accept nothing less than what benefits our people. Being obliged to turn our backs on a great deal of technological development that could do that is unacceptable.
