Is the Philippines now a gray zone state?

By Katrina Moore

(Part 3 of 3)

THE NEXT phase of geopolitical competition in Asia is unfolding inside information ecosystems, business relationships, and civic networks.

And the Philippines is the frontline.

Modern geopolitical competition increasingly operates below the threshold of armed conflict. This is the domain of gray-zone warfare. Gray-zone operations are designed to achieve strategic objectives without triggering formal military escalation, relying on ambiguity, deniability, and psychological conditioning.

The strategic advantage lies not in defeating an adversary militarily, but in gradually reshaping the environment in which political decisions are made.

China’s United Front Works (UFW) system represents a component of that strategy.

Its effectiveness stems from its ability to blur distinctions that democratic societies traditionally depend upon: public versus private interests, cultural engagement versus political influence, journalism versus strategic messaging, and civic participation versus political mobilization.

This ambiguity is not accidental. It is operational design.

One of the most consequential dimensions of gray-zone strategy is narrative control. States are engaged in increasing control over how societies interpret events, which can become as important as controlling events themselves. Information operations exploit this complexity.

Investigative reporting and policy studies have identified the growing use of local media ecosystems, civic organizations, and online proxies to amplify narratives favorable to Beijing’s strategic interests. These narratives often avoid overt propaganda. Sophisticated influence campaigns rarely rely on crude messaging. Instead, they focus on selective framing.

The objective is not necessarily to convince the entire population. It is to fragment consensus.

A divided democracy struggles to sustain strategic clarity. This becomes especially dangerous when influence operations intersect with education and historical memory. One of the more controversial episodes discussed by analysts involved reports of Filipino children participating in anti-Japan-themed commemorative campaigns linked to Chinese historical narratives. Redirecting public hostility toward a major Philippine security partner while minimizing scrutiny of Beijing’s contemporary regional behavior.

This reflects a broader reality about 21^st century influence operations: memory itself has become contested terrain.

Trust in institutions remains inconsistent. Political patronage networks continue to shape media and regulatory environments. Digital literacy gaps remain substantial. Social media consumption dominates political discourse that create conditions and fertile ground for manipulation, polarization, uncertainty, and distrust.

As geopolitical tension in the Indo-Pacific region intensifies, the Philippines is increasingly positioned not merely as an observer, but as an operational actor, wherein competing powers test influence capabilities.

That reality carries serious implications for Philippine sovereignty.

Sovereignty today is no longer defined solely by territorial control. A state may formally retain its democratic institutions while gradually losing informational autonomy, strategic coherence, and elite independence through sustained external influence pressure.

This is how modern coercion increasingly works. Not through occupation, but through dependency.
Not through censorship alone, but through information saturation.

The Philippines retains significant democratic advantages that authoritarian influence systems struggle to replicate: a vibrant civil society, independent investigative journalism, an internationally connected diaspora, competitive elections, and a politically engaged public sphere. These remain powerful defensive assets if properly strengthened.

The challenge is institutional adaptation.

Philippine policymakers should prioritize a comprehensive national resilience framework that integrates cybersecurity, counter-disinformation capability, foreign influence transparency, educational reform, and democratic institution-building into a unified strategic approach.

Universities, media institutions, local governments, civic organizations, and the private sector now form part of the national security architecture whether they recognize it or not.

The solution therefore cannot be purely securitized.

Overreaction risks damaging democratic openness itself. Reckless accusations against diasporic communities would fracture social cohesion and undermine precisely the resilience the Philippines needs.

In the Philippines, the true battle for sovereignty is no longer being fought just on our physical borders, but within our fractured information ecosystem and compromised institutions, by treating Beijing’s gray-zone tactics as isolated incidents rather than a coordinated, long-term assault on our democracy. Manila must adapt its institutional defenses at breakneck speed, because if we fail to build resilience against this convergence of economic coercion and cyber-propaganda, we will wake up to find our sovereignty completely eroded long before a single foreign soldier ever steps foot on our shores. But the Philippines still has agency in determining which path it takes.

The gray-zone contest in the Philippine waters is a race against time where democratic hesitation equals strategic defeat, as foreign adversaries weaponize public apathy to turn calculated influence operations into permanent political reality. To prevent this, democratic institutions must quickly evolve from recognizing the threat to actively resisting the normalization of this gray-zone warfare.

Read Part 1 of this series here: <https://tinyurl.com/2kkw5w53> and Part 2 here: <https://tinyurl.com/d3jk2w42>

Katrina Moore is a Non-Resident Fellow at the International Development Security Cooperation (IDSC), a Manila-based Indo-Pacific security and development think tank, specializing in Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, corporate espionage, and threat intelligence.