By Angelo Giuliano
The Philippines is being loaded as the next Ukraine. Washington writes the script. Manila supplies the boats, the cameras, and the political cover. Ordinary Filipinos stand in the water while the people who designed the provocations sit in California and Washington.
This is not organic maritime policy. It is a proxy formula already tested elsewhere: encourage a smaller state to take the first contact, publicize every clash, wrap the result in the language of international law and democracy, and keep American forces at a safe distance. In the South China Sea, the information side of that formula has a name, a director, and a paper trail.
SeaLight and the Stanford script
SeaLight, once called Project Myoushu, sits at the center. It operates under the academic mantle of Stanford's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. The center was established in 2021 with sponsorship from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and funding from the Department of Defense. Public records put the related funding at roughly $12.8 million. Its director, Ray Powell, spent 35 years in the U.S. Air Force, including postings in the Philippines. In 2022, he launched Project Myoushu. It became SeaLight in 2023.
The method is industrial. Philippine Coast Guard and navy vessels move into contested waters. Contact occurs. Every angle is filmed. The footage travels with ready-made victim framing. Western outlets and selected accounts amplify it. The product is a steady drip of "China bullying the little guy" content that costs Beijing reputation while Washington risks nothing. It was in 2023, spurred on by Powell and Project Myoushu, that the Philippines began systematically publicizing maritime incidents. Powell has produced thousands of posts. Philippine officials have repeated lines that track the project's framing, sometimes within days of a SeaLight release. He has said SeaLight itself is volunteer-run and separately unfunded. The center's Office of Naval Research and Defense Department sponsorship is not in dispute. The distinction matters less to the crews in the boats than it does to the press releases.
When the temperature rises, the United States describes itself as merely supporting an ally. When it gets hot, the Philippines is the one whose ships and sailors are in the water. That is the division of labor.
They call themselves purely civilian
The next layer presents itself as purely civilian. Atin Ito, "This Is Ours," describes itself as an independent coalition of fisherfolk, activists, artists, and NGOs. It runs supply missions, plants flags and buoys, holds sea concerts, and raises donations. The branding is deliberate: ordinary Filipinos, not the state, asserting a presence at sea.
Project Myoushu was framed, in a U.S. Naval Institute article by Air Force Captain Benjamin Goirigolzarri, as an independent, civil-society-led initiative that supports U.S. goals to expose and deter China's gray-zone activities while maintaining separation from perceptions of government bias. The concept was presented in Manila in early 2023 at a conference hosted by Stratbase, a national-security think tank with close ties to Philippine officials. Philippine writers at Asian Century Journal asked the operational question the civic label does not answer: a marine convoy requires logistics, fuel, boats, and money. Who funds it, and why does it proceed even when caution has been urged inside government?
The groups keep the purely civilian claim. The funding web is still visible if you look. Akbayan, a key convenor, connects through the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking to National Endowment for Democracy grants for youth and democracy programs, plus money from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the European Union, and Oxfam. The Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement sits inside networks that include Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Freedom House, and Nordic government donors. Its roots trace to earlier U.S. Information Agency and Rockefeller support. Agrarian groups receiving Dutch and Oxfam funds help mobilize people for the missions. USAID fishery programs have boosted presence at sea. After clashes, the same circle supplies the victim story.
NED is the CIA with a nicer letterhead. The habit is the same one used elsewhere: pay local groups, create a scene, then sell the video. Asian Century Journal writers have called the missions a use of poor fisherfolk for propaganda, even while the organizers insist the voyages are purely civilian. The first Atin Ito convoy toward Ayungin turned back under Chinese shadowing. Later trips to Scarborough and Sandy Cay were built for cameras. Fishermen become the face. The strategic purpose sits offshore.
The clash pattern and what China is refusing
After incidents at Ayungin, also called Second Thomas Shoal, and at Scarborough and Sabina, the sequence repeats. Philippine accounts describe a humanitarian resupply or a fuel-aid trip by purely civilian or coast guard crews. Chinese footage and statements describe initiation of contact, blocking, or dangerous maneuvers by the Philippine side. Western reports often run Manila's line first. Atin Ito and aligned voices fill in the narrative of aggression and victimhood. The same pattern has appeared in the air: small Philippine aircraft over Huangyan tracked and warned, then described abroad as Chinese aggression.
The larger geometry is the first island chain. Japan sits at the top. Taiwan is the lock. The Philippines is the southern hinge. EDCA access sites, joint drills, missile talk for Luzon and Batanes, and a 1951 mutual-defense treaty now invoked for every small clash at sea turn Manila into a forward position. Reporting has tracked the hardware side: U.S. Task Force Ayungin, coast-guard patrols near disputed features, and plans for fast-boat facilities and maintenance sites on Palawan. These are not secret. They are the military counterpart to the information operation.
Manila Standard and Asian Century Journal pieces from 2023 and 2024 already flagged the retired U.S. Air Force colonel and the migration of "assertive transparency" language into Philippine Coast Guard and defense statements. Herman Tiu Laurel has called publicly for an investigation of the American proxies and of Project Myoushu. A Philippine lawmaker has asked whether Powell's activities amount to foreign information manipulation. The reply, in substance, was that accuracy matters more than the source. That is a political choice, not an answer to the funding question.
China is not trying to swallow the Philippines. It refuses to let that chain close into a noose around its sea lanes and industrial coast. The 2016 arbitral award is treated in Manila and Washington as settled law and in Beijing as a proceeding it rejected and that exceeded the tribunal's jurisdiction. Resupply to a ship deliberately grounded in 1999 is framed as routine humanitarian aid on one side and as an attempt to consolidate a military outpost on the other. Both framings can be argued in public. What is harder to argue is that the publicity machinery, the timing, and the missions that call themselves purely civilian appeared spontaneously in 2023 without the Stanford project, the Office of Naval Research link, and the grant ecosystem.
Beijing runs its own information efforts aimed at Philippine opinion. That does not erase the American side of the ledger. Two influence campaigns can run at once. Only one of them is currently tying a mutual-defense treaty to rusty outposts and civilian convoys while expanding base access on Philippine soil.
Ukraine shows the finished form: weapons, money, and intelligence in one direction; graves and ruined infrastructure in the other. The people who urged Kyiv to stand firm and promised the West had its back did not live with the result. The Philippines is smaller, more exposed, and more dependent on the sea lanes that run past its islands. Trade with China remains large. A clash that serves American strategy in the Western Pacific can devastate Filipino livelihoods long before it threatens the continental United States.
Every amplified incident raises the political price for China and the physical risk for Filipino crews, including those sent out under a purely civilian banner. The scriptwriters remain offshore. Distance is the American advantage. Frontline states take the first blow. Industry sells the ships, missiles, and sensors. Intelligence and narrative stay centralized. The demand is wrapped in democracy, order, and security. The opposing view is that the same system has used divide-and-rule for decades.
Watch the camera before you trust the press release. The project names are public. The funding is documented in grants, conference records, and defense-sponsorship disclosures. The proxy logic is the same one applied elsewhere. Ordinary Filipinos will be the ones who pay if the temperature is allowed to keep rising. The people who designed the plot will still be in California
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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