PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made the Pax Silica hub the centerpiece of his artificial intelligence (AI) pitch on Monday. He did not say who would govern its data. In his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA), he called it an ecosystem “that will have AI at its core,” one that would bring quality jobs and revitalize the economy, and placed it within the Luzon Economic Corridor.
That silence is the point. What he skipped is the part that still has no answer.
Start with what has at least been argued in public. In May, Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) President and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Bingcang confirmed that the Philippines turned down a United States request for diplomatic immunity at the planned hub in New Clark City. “That’s their request. But we did not agree to that,” he told reporters. The transaction will proceed under two Philippine laws — the Investors’ Lease Act and the BCDA Law — as confirmed by the Department of Justice. A regular business contract, in his words. The broader terms, however, remain unsettled. The supplemental agreement covering the site’s operating terms remains unsigned, and US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg later said the immunity issue had been taken out of context. The dispute is out in the open.
Pax Silica is the US-led coalition launched in December 2025 to secure supply chains for semiconductors, critical minerals, and AI. Marcos said in his speech that it has 23 member countries. The Philippines joined in April 2026. The local anchor is a 1,619-hectare Economic Security Zone in Capas, Tarlac, billed as the country’s first AI-native hub. Coverage so far has centered on jobs, water, and displaced farmers. Those are legitimate concerns, and I leave them to others. The loudest critics have focused on who controls the zone. This column is about the piece they have left unnamed. An AI hub runs on data, and the public record on that issue is thin.
Read the official language, and the gap is there. The US Embassy says the two governments intend to identify frameworks for the long-term development of the zone that “facilitate sovereign alignment and shared upside as it scales.” The US Department of State says the coalition spans critical minerals and AI infrastructure, with members committing to “protect sensitive technologies and build trusted digital infrastructure.” Trusted by whom, and governed under whose rules, the public documents do not say. The zone’s “joint governance,” the Embassy’s own term, is what critics such as the Makabayan bloc have described as a threat to sovereignty. Yet no one has asked the same question about the data. We have lease terms, water assurances, and job projections in the hundreds of thousands. We have no published explanation of how the zone’s data will be governed.
The timing is the strange part. As the president framed Pax Silica as a national AI strategy, the House technical working group on the AI bill was writing sovereign AI capabilities into that same measure. Rep. Javier Benitez, who is steering the bill, said: “We studied Brussels, Washington and Beijing, but we are writing a Filipino law.” The draft consolidates 26 House bills into a single measure, with strict rules applying only to high-risk systems.
One arm of government is writing AI sovereignty into law. The other is negotiating the site itself with a foreign power. Neither process, based on the public record, refers to the other. The Philippines is preparing to host AI infrastructure before it has an AI law.
The framework agreement is targeted for signing around November. Before then, three questions deserve answers. No one is alleging wrongdoing. The public record simply does not say. Those questions are not abstract. They will determine who can access data inside the zone and whether Philippine regulators retain meaningful authority over the industry built around it.
Where will data generated inside the zone be stored, and can it be transferred across borders without Philippine consent?
How does the Data Privacy Act of 2012 apply within a zone developed under a Philippine-US framework? Enforcement rests with the National Privacy Commission (NPC). Has the NPC been consulted?
If American cloud and AI firms operate the data centers, the US Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (Cloud) Act could, under certain conditions, require those companies to disclose data to US authorities even when the data are stored overseas. Most major cloud providers are American. Has that issue been raised during the negotiations?
Anna Malindog-Uy made the broader case in her Headsight column, “The High Stakes of Pax Silica in the Philippines.” She argued that the full framework agreement should be published, with the applicable law, environmental obligations, data governance rules, and court jurisdiction clearly spelled out. Data governance was one item on her list. I would move it to the top. Of everything she identified, it has received the least public attention, and it will be the hardest issue to address after the agreement is signed.
The president called the hub an ecosystem with AI at its core. The core is data. In May, Helberg unveiled a marker at the New Clark City site. The marker stands. The sentence that governs the data does not.
