Articles

• TAGS:
• Maritime
• South China Sea
• Philippines

Introduction

While there has been growing awareness around the subject of digital disinformation in recent years, efforts to understand its granular consequences and ways to address it are only beginning to scratch the surface.

In the Indo-Pacific region, nowhere is this clearer than in the South China Sea.

The intersection between digital disinformation and one of the region’s hottest flashpoints demands greater attention, including from the wider range of stakeholders in the US-Philippine alliance and Manila’s broader network of partners and friends.

Disinformation is widely seen as a tremendous test for democracies globally. Many authorities and political leaders are grasping for quick, effective ways to dissuade people from adopting and spreading false beliefs that degrade democratic discourse and can possibly lead to violent or dangerous actions.

Disinformation has spread to the online space, and it has become pervasive over time, forcing corporations, democratic governments, digital platforms and citizens to actively counter digital disinformation.

Initial data reveals that efforts take on the form of various kinds of policy interventions, encompassing fact-checking, application of foreign sanctions, algorithmic adjustments and counter-messaging campaigns.

According to Herodotus, when threatened by the Persians with such a multitude of arrows that they obscured the sun during the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, the Spartan warrior Dienekes responded, “Then we will fight in the shade.”

This quotation has been reinterpreted over time, and thus its original meaning has evolved.

The original statement highlighted the paradoxically advantageous effect of fighting in the shade instead of under the blazing sun. Fighting digital disinformation can be likened to just this. Given the insidious and persistent nature of this threat, opposing it requires a careful study of its underlying currents of politics, power and propaganda.

The Stakes

Digital disinformation is widely recognised as a challenge today for the world in general and the Indo-Pacific in particular, with major stakes for countries and their peoples.

Misinformation and disinformation ranked as the most severe global risk among respondents for two years in a row. As many as 60% of respondents in Asia said they were concerned about what is real or fake online when it comes to news, per the Reuters Institute, pointing to the scale of the issue within the region.

The concern in these quantitative metrics is reinforced by qualitative evidence as well. Officials closely tracking disinformation efforts say privately that there has been an alarming multifold surge in disinformation activities across parts of the Global South like Africa and Latin America, fuelled in part by alignment between China and Russia in the context of intensifying strategic competition.

Lessons are also being learned in real time as conflicts play out in Ukraine and the Middle East, with the expectation that the future landscape will also be shaped by emerging trends, including the use of artificial intelligence.

In the Indo-Pacific more specifically, policymakers have already begun incorporating disinformation and misinformation scenarios into contingencies around flashpoints like Taiwan. Media strategies are also being shaped with varying degrees of transparency around a wide range of areas, including content-sharing arrangements, training programmes, media network capacity-building mechanisms, government legislation and local fact-checking initiatives.

The Case of the South China Sea and the Philippines

The South China Sea has emerged in recent years as an epicentre of disinformation in the Indo-Pacific. Some of the efforts by China-linked hackers to target Southeast Asian government actors have already surfaced in the public domain, exposing what usually stays in the shadows given the unwillingness by most regional governments to publicly disclose and attribute such activities themselves.

The Philippines has been a notable exception to this quiet approach, thereby also placing the US-Philippine alliance at the heart of this challenge. In particular, Philippine officials have pointed to digital disinformation waged by China targeting governmental structures, broad societal cohesion and popular trust.

Two cases offer examples of disinformation and malign influence operations waged by China. One, Chinese ships ordered Filipino fisherfolk who entered Scarborough Shoal – located inside the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – that they had entered Chinese waters. They were harassed, bullied and prevented from fishing inside the lagoon.

Two, the Chinese Embassy claimed that Western Command Chief Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos agreed on a new model in the South China Sea during a January 2024 phone call with Colonel Li Jianzhong, China’s defense attaché. The Chinese Embassy released a portion of the supposed transcript of the alleged conversation to two Philippine newspapers and allowed reporters to listen to an excerpt of the supposed recording.

Vice Admiral Carlos confirmed that Colonel Li of the Chinese embassy called him in January 2024, but he denied having formalised any agreement with China on a new model to handle tensions. This has forced former Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo to assert that there has never been a Cabinet-level agreement on any of the Chinese proposals pertaining to the Second Thomas Shoal.

Officials closely tracking Chinese disinformation efforts say that Beijing has three aims: 1) driving a wedge between the US-Philippine alliance, which stands in the way of its maritime assertiveness; 2) sowing distrust among Filipino citizens to undermine the president’s political position for the remainder of his presidential term since he is seen as undermining Beijing’s objectives, and; 3) portraying Manila as a “lonely troublemaker” in Southeast Asia to further isolate it regionally and allow Beijing to deal bilaterally with other South China Sea claimants.

These efforts could potentially escalate even further heading into 2026. Conversations with Chinese interlocutors reveal that they are aware that 2026 could be a consequential year for the South China Sea given that the Philippines will be chairing ASEAN and will also be marking the 10^th anniversary of the arbitral tribunal ruling.

Countering Disinformation in the South China Sea

China has weaponised information by waging cognitive warfare on the South China Sea, and thus, countering disinformation in the maritime region requires a multipronged effort. This includes ensuring coherent government policy to maximise clarity, supercharging fact-checking mechanisms to evaluate content as well as enhancing digital literacy to boost information assessment capabilities among the wider population.

The Philippine government has already undertaken some of these steps, including embedding journalists in resupply missions and empowering a National Maritime Council to coordinate interagency efforts.

In the future, the Philippines may consider establishing a Philippine Strategic Cognitive Terrain Research Center, directed by the Office of the President, to counter China’s narrative warfare.

As China conducts perceptual manipulation operations that will dominate the cognitive space, this institution needs to close the exploitable cognitive gaps where malignant information thrives. The Center could identify opportunities to employ psychological, ideological and informational approaches that are waged within grey zones, which are characteristic of modern warfare. The Philippines can further tap into the assistance of its closest partners, including the United States and Australia, to better understand cognitive dissonance theory and interrelated psychodynamic concepts to effectively deal with the manipulation of societal perceptions.

However, more needs to be done both by the Philippines as well as with willing allies, partners and friends. Diplomatically, the confluence in 2026 of the Philippine ASEAN chairmanship and the arbitral tribunal ruling anniversary offers a valuable opportunity for Manila to reframe the narrative of its widening global partner network around regional norms and international law, contrary to Beijing’s portrayal of it as an isolated claimant.

Economically, managers of the US-Philippine alliance need to integrate coercion scenarios targeting trade and the country’s national grid as well as other critical infrastructure into more sophisticated contingency planning, both in private and public engagements, as a signalling mechanism to Beijing and other regional actors.

As these efforts play out, the Philippines should also continue to embed its own efforts within those of its wider partner network, given similar disinformation challenges in other parts of the region, such as the Pacific or Taiwan, as well as shared future dynamics in this space, including the use of artificial intelligence technologies to transform disinformation campaigns.

Conclusion

To successfully resist digital disinformation, democratic states must recognise the problem. Ignoring digital disinformation will lead to deleterious consequences. Philippine political leaders must decide how to address these multidimensional existential threats by adopting a national strategy. The Philippines can either take advantage of this turmoil or adopt a strategic forbearance. Moreover, by working closely with its staunch allies like the United States, Japan, Australia and South Korea in fighting digital disinformation, the country can sustain its counter-narratives for the long term.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of STRAT.O.SPHERE CONSULTING PTE LTD.

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• TAGS:
• Maritime
• South China Sea
• Philippines