Dozens of students and community members gathered in Tawes Hall on Saturday, Oct. 24 for a town hall educating students on the expansion of Pax Silica, a global U.S.-led initiative to secure critical minerals — and what students at the University of Maryland (UMD) can do to stop its encroachment on indigenous land in the Philippines.

“What’s the role of us fighting back against Pax Silica?” organizer Rio Gutierrez said during the event. “It’s to shut it down. We can really shut it down.”

Pax Silica, introduced in December 2025, is the U.S.’ latest maneuver in the AI and tech arms race with China — a race some, like think tank American Security Project, call the “new Cold War.” More than 70% of the global supply chain for rare earth minerals — crucial for technologies like smartphones and cameras and ever-needed for AI data center expansion  — is dominated by China. In response to Trump’s aggressive tariffs, China has placed export controls, leading to a severe shortage of rare earth minerals in the U.S.

Pax Silica is cast as a partnership between different countries, each playing their own role in a collective supply chain for rare earth minerals. But the project’s spearheaded by the U.S. — under the Trump administration and with the full support of tech moguls like Peter Thiel.

At the center of the initiative lies a plan to create a 4,000 acre economic security zone for AI development in New Clark City, the Philippines.

The proposed Pax Silica hub is estimated to require 3 gigawatts of power and 39 billion liters of water annually: enough to power more than 8 million homes in the Philippines and fill more than 15,000 Olympic-size swimming pools — which could easily overwhelm existing infrastructure, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. That strain could lead to increased brownouts and blackouts and put economic stress on local residents.

The town hall opened with an overview of that information, stressing the concerning impacts the project could have on local community members — but also bringing up how the project is slated to take place on indigenous Aeta land. The Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), an entity designated by the Philippines’ government to redevelop former U.S. bases, has already begun converting Aeta land, including ancestral burial grounds, leading to sprawling protests across the region of New Clark City. BCDA and the Pax Silica hub seek to displace indigenous people and Filipino villagers to construct infrastructure for private companies serving foreign interests, Gutierrez of Anakbayan College Park said at the town hall.

The event continued with a panel where students representing Anakbayan College Park, TerpCHRP, Filipino Cultural Association (FCA), Kabataan Alliance, and UMD Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) answered questions about Pax Silica and the student movement against it.

For Ny, representing Anakbayan College Park, the ask is simple: for people to decide for themselves what happens to the land they live on.

“Currently they have no say. It’s really the dictates of the United States and their economic and military policies to control what’s going on in the Philippines, and that’s why farmers and indigenous people are really asserting their right to land because they want to choose what they want to do with that land first and foremost,” Ny said. “Maybe AI could be used for good, but how can we do that if they can’t even own the land that they till?”

Kian Valenzuela, the panelist representing FCA, also spoke about the strength of student activism in the Philippines.

“Throughout Philippine history, we see youth and students taking a major part in fighting back against oppression,” Valenzuela said, citing the People Power Revolution in 1986, where youth and students were on the frontlines to oust former president Marcos Senior from authoritarian rule. “There are a lot of things that youth and students can do to contribute to the movement that isn’t just attending protests. We see that today within Filipino student organizations across the U.S., like here at FCA, where diaspora are trying to connect and learn more while using their talents to promote Filipino culture.”

The issue of Pax Silica is relevant to student activists in the U.S., said Nevan McMillian, a junior mechanical engineering major and panelist representing TerpCHRP, because it means fighting against the broader structure of imperialism.

“A strike to imperialism somewhere is a strike to imperialism everywhere,” he said. “To me, it’s a purpose worth fighting for.”

McMillian said that student activists “have a role in the U.S. as well.”

Student advocacy at career fairs, such as “trying to get students to realize that working at employers like AeroEnvironment does directly impact the indigenous people in the Philippines and all over the world” is “the core way to fight back,” he said.

Students within UMD’s Anti-Imperialist Movement (AIM) — a coalition of clubs including TerpCHRP, Anakbayan, and SJP — have consistently flyered about complicity of companies present at career fairs in global conflicts, such as L3Harris and its role in the Gaza genocide.

Is there a precedent for shutting down a project this large, an audience member asked?

“In the Philippines, yes. We kicked U.S. bases out in 1991,” Ny said — and that was met with an outpouring of cheers and applause from the audience.

In 1991, massive decades-long protests in the Philippines pressured the Philippine Senate to vote against a treaty that would have extended the U.S.’ presence on military bases by ten years.

After the panel, the room split into breakout groups where students discussed takeaways from the town hall and potential advocacy ideas, followed by a cultural performance of a song advocating for ancestral land rights in the Philippines.

For Jake Hernandez, a Filipino-American student at UMD and a member of FCA, attending the town hall made him want to get more involved with advocacy on campus and helped him understand that student movements can make real change.

“There definitely is a role for UMD students. [We] are still impacted by this because we all use technology to study,” the sophomore mathematics major said. “We can actually make an impact.”

Cover photo by Riona Sheikh for Al-Hikmah.

CORRECTION: The original version of this story misattributed a quote from Kian Valenzuela to a different speaker. The error has been corrected.