THE Philippines is no longer confronting aggression solely in the West Philippine Sea, but is now facing a coordinated and sustained offensive in cyberspace, according to Stratbase Institute.
Stratbase Institute president Victor Andres Manhit warned at a cybersecurity conference on Thursday and Friday that the country is engaged in an “unseen war” fought through information dominance, psychological operations and digital manipulation.
The forum, organized with the Embassy of Canada, convened senior government officials and diplomats to address hybrid threats linked to geopolitical tensions.
Manhit said the conflict is no longer measured by hardware, but by who controls the narrative space, distorts public perception and weakens institutional trust.
Manhit specifically referenced Beijing’s “three warfares” doctrine—comprising psychological, legal and public opinion warfare—as a framework already visible in operations targeting Philippine sovereignty.
He said the Philippines is seeing coordinated amplification of pro-China narratives and influence operations designed to fracture domestic consensus.
The think tank warned that election interference for 2028 has already begun through the shaping of digital ecosystems and the conditioning of public sentiment.
Data from a Stratbase-commissioned Pulse Asia survey indicated that seven in 10 Filipinos express deep concern about misinformation, which analysts view as a critical vulnerability.
“What begins as ‘fake news’ rarely stays online,” Manhit said.
“It migrates into community discourse, policy debates and eventually national decision-making,” he said.
Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Rhoel Aguda reinforced the warning, saying that the most exploitable weakness is not infrastructure but public trust.
Aguda called for rapid incident response, interagency coordination and a whole-of-society cyber awareness to protect the nation.
Manhit said that foreign interference thrives in silence and fragmentation, requiring strategic clarity and institutional cohesion to counter.
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