In the long arc of nations navigating the promises and perils of foreign-led development, the Philippines now stands at a familiar crossroads. The Management Association of the Philippines has offered conditional support for the Pax Silica AI industrial hub in New Clark City — a project tied to a US-led economic security partnership — insisting that opportunity without accountability is merely risk by another name. Their call for an independent oversight body reflects a hard-won wisdom: that transformative investment and extractive investment can look identical at the signing ceremony, and onl