Read this in The Manila Times digital edition. ↵ When I drew up, more than a decade ago, the vision and plan for a new smart and green metropolis for the Philippines, I recognized the need to curate the foundational locators of the Clark Green City (now New Clark City). The pioneer locators will shape the face and the future of this new metropolis. Hence, this must be done strategically and with deliberate haste. Far more than the branding, we envisioned the New Clark City as not merely the center but the driver of innovation in the country. To do this, we made significant investment in building the Luzon Bypass Line to be the backbone of the national broadband strategy. For the development of human capital, BCDA donated 70 hectares of land for a new UP campus, 20 hectares for Technological University of the Philippines and another 20 hectares for the Philippine Science High School. For life sciences, I brought UP College of Medicine and Japan’s Riken Institute to build together the cutting-edge technologies for medicine. We brought first the institutions of learning, research and innovations. The inclusion of the Philippines in Pax Silica in more than a thousand hectares of land in New Clark City ushers the transformative factor in our vision for Clark. Silica is easy to overlook because it is everywhere. It is sand and stone, glass and fiber, the physical base of silicon chips and the digital economy that runs on them. It is ancient and modern at the same time. To speak of “Pax Silica” is to borrow from historical phrases like Pax Romana or Pax Americana, but to shift the focus away from empire and toward infrastructure, material intelligence and shared prosperity. Peace here is not the absence of conflict; it is the presence