Series 27: Forever peace or forever wars?

I made a last minute change in my title – the second clause would have read “sends Chinese teachers out”, because that does not capture the dire consequences of President Marcos’ dangerous ambivalence against a millennial friend.  

If Helen of Troy’s face can launch a thousand ships, his defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro’s bad breath has sent our friends away!

Translated – while the tourism, trade, and investment, as well as agriculture, technology and migrant worker sectors of our government are wooing opportunities for food on the table for our people through increased foreign currencies, the defense secretary’s personal war has driven away Chinese ambassadors of goodwill out of the country.

And our president has not stopped his boorish behavior! There is an obvious deficit in our present foreign policy because of the incompetence of a chief executive pwho tolerates a divide-and-rule machine even if it has not worked for the past three and half years. 

About 150 Chinese volunteer and dispatched teachers assigned to Chinese-language schools nationwide are being withdrawn from the Philippines and returned to China.

The Chinese Commercial News reported that the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII) and the Philippine Chinese Education Research Center (PCERC) had decided to withdraw the teachers, with groups reportedly leaving for China this week.

The newspaper attributed the move to concerns raised by the teachers’ families following government scrutiny of Chinese-language educators and being depicted as “malign influencers” by Teodoro and his gringo handler and mentor – SeaLight director Raymond Powell.

The report said the families feared for the teachers’ safety and that the chambers, citing security considerations, agreed to arrange their immediate voluntary departure.

The Chinese newspaper precluded reports that the teachers had been expelled by the Philippine government or recalled by the Chinese government, clarifying the decision was made by the “inviting parties.”

This recall of the Chinese teachers is ominous because effective October 1, the defense policy of China has shifted from active defense to war footing, from peacetime to wartime mobilization.

I can only surmise that China is just eliminating the possibility of innocent Chinese teachers being indiscriminately arrested or taken hostage considering that we now have a rogue government that has turned against its very own people.

In a very real sense, the local Filipino-Chinese community has taken the initiative to protect Chinese nationals, in a genuine sign of amity and friendship.

Thomasites

In stark historical contrast, 600 American teachers arrived in the Philippines 125 years ago on August 21, 1901, to establish a new public school system.

On board US Army transport ship, Thomas, they were christened and popularly known as “Thomasites”.  

The first and largest contingent included around 357 male teachers and nearly 200 female teachers, alongside some family members, sailing from San Francisco, California.

The first thing the Thomasites implemented was introduced English as the primary medium of instruction, replacing Spanish, as they fanned out across the country, helped shape major learning centers, including what is now the Philippine Normal University and various provincial high schools.

Who else are malign influencers?

Alliance Française de Manille? Goethe-Institut Philippinen? Unmei Nihongo Center? Societa Dante Alighieri, Korean Language Culture Training Center? Instituto Cervantes?

American teachers disembark upon arrival                                                     of the USAT Thomas in Manila, 1901.

Doesn’t Teodoro find this incongruous, when he himself is an alumnus of Xavier School, which started as Kuang Chi established by Chinese Jesuit missionaries to China?

Kuang Chi became famous, not only because it is located inside Greenhills, Manila’s high-end village where the residents are mostly Chinese but because it is one of the few schools that offer Mandarin as a foreign language as early as elementary grades.

Read why Raymond Powell ought to be deported as an undesirable alien. https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/04/14/opinion/columns/who-is-really-infiltrating-and-dividing-the-philippines/2319268

Who? Not me, duh!

The reported teachers’ recall came days after Teodoro warned that educational and academic exchanges involving China could potentially be used to gather information and establish a foothold in the Philippines, following the propaganda line being peddled by American military operative Raymond Powell beyond his “maritime transparency initiative”.

The defense secretary appeared clueless of the deleterious effects of his verbal abuses attacking people-to-people exchanges and cultural interaction between China and the Philippines, beyond whatever conflicts we have in how the Marcos government has been behaving in the South China Sea.  

“We have seen, too, information regarding the use of these educational exchanges to gain a foothold in the Philippines for them to scope for information,” Teodoro was quoted earlier saying.

But now Teodoro is trying awkwardly to squeeze out of the consequences of his diarrhea of the mouth, giving the excuse that the “government” was referring to information about possible activities and not necessarily established evidence of wrongdoing.

Finally realizing the poison his untamed tongue has irrevocably released, he stepped back warning against allowing security concerns to fuel discrimination against Chinese people or Filipino-Chinese communities:

“We don’t want to create an atmosphere of xenophobia in this country. We don’t want to create bigotry in this country.”

But this is after he had already released the racist cat out of the bag, so to speak.

The Chinese Commercial News report characterized Teodoro and Powell scrutiny as attacks on Chinese-language education.

Obviously running out of narrative and with tail between his legs,  Powell is now rationalizing to hide his true motives by defending to no avail, advising state scrutiny of Chinese-linked institutions while now backstepping to distinguishing such concerns from the Filipino-Chinese community, saying Chinese-Filipinos are “loyal and patriotic Filipinos” who have the right to take pride in their heritage.

Effectively, not Marcos or Teodoro, but Powell has emerged as the architect of Philippine foreign policy, with echo-mechanics like PCG Jay Tarriela and PN Roy Vincent Trinidad as his megaphone for alleged “malign influences”.

New dictionary

Speaking about malign influences, Powell has been instrumental since his arrival in-country in propagating new vocabularies to fuel his SeaLight word war.

To the uninitiated, intelligence operatives refer to malign influences asstate-directed, subversive efforts to undermine democratic institutions or alliances.

Let us review some of these poison lexicons he has popularized within our defense community and in his public statements.

These terms are intentionally designed to categorize US-coined actions that blur the lines between peacetime diplomacy and overt warfare, specifically to intrigue state behavior in regions like the South China Sea.

• Salami Slicing Tactics: Originally rooted in mid-20th-century political slang, this was heavily adapted by modern U.S. military analysts to describe how a nation uses small, incremental provocations to alter the status quo. The core idea is that no single “slice” is large enough to trigger an actual war, but over time, the cumulative effect results in a massive strategic shift.
• Fait Accompli Strategy: A term frequently used in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command briefs. It refers to a strategy where an actor rapidly moves to seize a disputed feature or establish control before their opponents can react, leaving the rival with a finished deal that would require starting a war to overturn.
• Lawfare: A blend of “law” and “warfare.” Coined primarily in U.S. military circles in the early 2000s, it describes using (or abusing) domestic and international legal systems—such as passing domestic laws that make claims over international waters—to claim legitimacy, tie up adversaries in legal red tape, and justify aggressive postures.
• White Hulls: U.S. military planners use this to differentiate between traditional navy ships (“gray hulls”) and civilian-appearing Coast Guard vessels. By deploying “white hulls” to ram or block other countries’ ships, an actor uses the optics of law enforcement rather than military aggression.
• Maritime Militia (or PAFMM): The term People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia was codified in U.S. defense reports. It refers to state-subsidized commercial fishing fleets that are weaponized to act as paramilitary forces. They swarm disputed reefs, block resupply lines, and act as a buffer while maintaining plausible deniability as civilian fishers.
• Coercive Diplomacy: Popularized by U.S. political scientist Alexander George and deeply embedded in U.S. State Department lexicon, this refers to using threats of force or economic isolation to make an adversary stop an ongoing action or give up territory.
• Intrusive Patrolling: Used by U.S. maritime intelligence agencies to describe the practice of mapping energy-rich sea beds or constantly sailing law-enforcement vessels inside the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of neighboring countries to slowly normalize their presence.
• Swarming and Rafting: Terms cataloged by U.S.-funded tracking initiatives such as Stanford’s SeaLight project. Swarming is surrounding a rival vessel with dozens of boats to intimidate them; rafting is the practice of lashing multiple militia ships together to anchor them to a reef permanently, establishing a de facto physical outpost.
• Going Dark (AIS Spoofing): A technical term popularized by U.S. maritime security watchdogs to highlight ships that intentionally shut off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders or manipulate their digital GPS coordinates to disguise aggressive troop movements or illegal positioning.
• Grayzone Tactics: Hostile acts designed to remain below the threshold of an armed military response.
• Rules-Based International Order: US preferred legal frameworks over international law to govern global commons, overpowering the UN Charter.

SeaLight brownout?

A YouTube video featured SeaLight Executive Director Ray Powell and Philippine Coast Guard Commodore Jay Tarriela on the podcast discussing diplomatic tensions.

Tarriela brings up online rumors that Ray Powell leads a $500 million project funded by the United States to target China.

Powell dismisses the allegations as fake news. “My wife is still waiting for that money. She’s very frustrated that we haven’t seen a cent of it yet.”

For the past two years, however,  it is plainly noticeable that he has gradually edited funding sources linked with SeaLight away from its connection with Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation onto crowdfunding campaigns, such as the “Lighthouse Challenge” matching grants supported by individual donors.

He has also carefully modified the work he is doing as a “cadre (that) operates largely on a volunteer basis without hidden intelligence or defense windfalls”.

USAspending.gov, however, shows an initial grant to The Leland Stanford Junior University for establishing the Gordian Knot Center was backed by the Office of Naval Research (part of the U.S. Department of Defense) with a total recorded award value of approximately $5.94 million ($5,942,485), with earlier reports noting a seed funding phase of roughly $1.28 million.

The Stanford Gordian Knot Center website publicly identifies itself as “sponsored by the Office of Naval Research” with the US Navy more explicit that when it was launched in November 2021, the ONR said it sponsored the creation of the center.

But GKC funding may be different from its programs. For example, Hacking for Defense (H4D) is closely associated with GKC but is not synonymous with GKC.

H4D is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, Common Mission Project, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) and corporate partners like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, BMNT Inc., Shield Capital, Naval X and Engine No.1, an investment firm engaged with Exxon-Mobil.

While GKC ‘s institutional funding is to be distinguished from its core operations, program and projects, and event sponsorships, its founding leadership is itself deeply imbedded in the U.S. national-security establishment.

Its founders include Joe Felter, Steve Blank and Raj Shah, while Stanford identifies Michael McFaul and Riitta Katila as principal investigators and supporting faculty.

For one, Felter previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia and Oceania, which is particularly relevant if the connection of Powell and Tarriela were to be investigated.

GKC’s own materials explicitly frame its work not only around national security innovation but great-power competition.

This why I do not buy the dismissiveness Powell showed when Tarriela confronted him with a Chinese embassy allegation, that he was leading a $500 million project for the US government, to say bad things against China.

The retired airman instead knocked off the Chinese spokesman: “His name is Gou Wei, right? Or did I pronounce it wrong?” is an ad hominem using twisted humor, that avoids the transparency that Powell wants himself known for.

Having worked in Washington DC as a diplomat myself, I know that I could access the US Department of Justice records under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to investigate SeaLight’s own incorporation documents, Form 990s, grants, contracts and donor disclosures separately from GKC, but why the heck will I waste my time when as a Gordian Knot Center project, the US government and Deep State funding is all over beyond its doormat?

During his katzenjammer conversation with Tarriela, he admitted working for two embassies. A quick Google check show that indeed he served in US diplomatic posts Vietnam and Australia.

It  also revealed that as an US Air Force officer, his other assignments have included Northern California, Japan, Germany, two tours in Qatar and three tours in the Pentagon with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Raymond Powell is perfect fit for a US spy, and as his track record here shows, a saboteur of Philippine-China relations.

Teodoro, a collaborator?

As I was smoking out the air of Powell’s vocab, the Department of National Defense explicitly warned the public last September 29 against a circulating two-page letter, which bore what appeared to be Teodoro’s signature, purportedly claimed that the defense chief had approved an operation at Ayungin (Second Thomas) on July 20 intended to expose Chinese actions ahead of the 59th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.

The leak also claimed about Philippine domestic politics and the country’s alliance with the United States, including a purported commitment by Teodoro to maintain support for the alliance regardless of changes in the domestic political climate, implying a state-sponsored coup’ d état for a regime change, assumably in Marcos or his favor.

The defense department both the document and its contents addressed to Peter Enzminger, has been referred to the National Bureau of Investigation. But will NBI investigate Teodoro?

Read all about US Central Intelligence Agency Peter Robin Enzminger, his diplomatic cover as Regional Affairs Officer and the plush home US Embassy provided him in Makati City, Manila’s financial district. Secretary Teodoro was also mentioned in the article.

https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/public-records-suggest-name-and-residence

What floored me, however, was Rear Admiral Roy Trinidad who shamelessly faced a presser and slapped the audience with his fallacious quote of the month:

“I don’t have the letter itself. I have not seen any official report establishing who produced and circulated it…(but) indicators points to moves by the Chinese Communist Party or its proxies.”

I am so happy this standup comedian has retired.

Can you imagine our uniformed personnel being led by an irrational paranoiac like this spokesman. With Trinidad in command, his men do not just stand to lose a thumb or to get a bump in the head defending a derelict wreck, but their lives.

Wanting to appear cutesy, Trinidad said the military looks at indicators in making security assessments, distinguishing this from the evidentiary standard required in law enforcement investigations.

That is tantamount to a soldier pulling the trigger, without first ascertaining whether the subject challenged is friend or foe, human or whatever.

Ominous sign

Anna Malindog-Uy, a Filipina scholar completing her PhD in Economics in Beijing, expresses her disgust:

“When geopolitics invades the classroom, education stops being a bridge between peoples and risks becoming another battlefield of suspicion and bigotry.

“When teachers, scholars, and students are viewed primarily through a national security lens rather than on the basis of evidence, knowledge itself can become collateral damage.

“When suspicion begins substituting for evidence, the danger is that national security ceases to protect the classroom and instead allows geopolitics to colonize it.

“Institutional connections may warrant scrutiny; they are not, by themselves, proof of espionage, subversion, or disloyalty.

“Genuine security concerns deserve investigation, but wisdom and responsible statecraft require distinguishing what is established from what is merely suspected.”

I think what Ms. Uy is saying briefly is that today’s Armed Forces of the Philippines may no longer be the protector of the people and the State, but could have deteriorated into Governor-General Carlos María de la Torre y Navacerrada’s Guardia Civil de Filipinas.

Dr. Jose Rizal referred to them  a symbol of Spanish tyranny and corruption, depicting them in his novels Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo as brutal and undisciplined oppressors, tormenting innocent locals, stealing property, and acting above the law.

Guardia Civil’s Abuses during Rizal’s Time (Scribd)

Red tagging

Expect stringent scenarios involving China while Teodoro remains in office and Powell is not deported.

Their McCarthyism or “red scare” of sorts started traction in April 2024 when Philippine lawmakers who called themselves Quadcom and later Tricom, including Joseph Lara, a congressman from Cagayan, raised “noises” over an alleged “creeping invasion” of thousands of Chinese nationals enrolled in private universities in Tuguegarao, Cagayan.

Egged concerns were heightened due to the province’s proximity to Taiwan and local Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) military sites.

Immigration and military investigations were launched to verify if these enrollments posed an espionage risk. No reports have been made public, which commonsensically show that the “red scare” was a deliberate false alarm most logically originating from the Americans in the EDCA bases in Cagayan province.

The number of Chinese student tourists in the Philippines has declined significantly, leaving only 300 to 400 Chinese students remaining in the country.

The drastic decline represents a massive contraction considering that 16,190 Chinese student visas had been issued in the period leading up to the tighter restrictions.

Schools and universities in Cagayan lost a lot of enrollees that  could have factored a lot of revenues for the educational institutions to improve their facilities and upgrade their teacher’s payroll.

Another domino fell following the 2024 national security clampdown and inquiries on education, involving the Department of National Defense (DND), the National Security Council (NSC), and the Bureau of Immigration (BI).

That year also registered a negative effect on the Department of Tourism’s actual Chinese visitors for tourism and leisure, logging only 313,856 which was tremendously short of initial government projections. That figure was only roughly 18% of pre-pandemic (2019) arrival levels.

FDI freefall

The same pattern manifested  a blow to foreign direct investments. In pre-pandemic 2019, China drove about $1.4 trillion in approved investments, making it the second-largest foreign investor in the Philippines that year representing over 12% of total foreign direct investment inflows.

The 2024 FDI from China only posted $8.93 billion. Not even 1% of 2019 figures.

The next major scandal was when Teodoro himself led a raid of the Sanjia Steel Factory at Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental, pushing the Armed Forces to supersede civilian law enforcement agencies and state regulators in closing the plant and arresting 69 Chinese workers, who after being shipped out to Manila by a military plane and crammed in uninhabitable detention facility, were ordered released by the National Prosecution Service for lack of evidence.

Teodoro’s forehead must have blushed when it turned out the Chinese workers were well and validly documented and permitted to work in-country.

But it was only after two more raids of steel mills, one at Davao City and another at Pampanga province, with no more military in tow, were it exposed by the Philippine Daily Tribune, that Teodoro was protecting the interest of his batchmate at Xavier School, a certain Benjamin Yao. Chairman and CEO of Steel Asia, that espoused a competing steel making technology. The broadsheet suggested that Yao was attempting to establish a cartel.

                   The freefall started last year.

Today,actual foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows from China fell sharply to a tiny fraction of that peak—accounting for around 1% or less of total inflows in recent years, with continued year-on-year contractions.

Teodoro, Tarriela and Trinidad, under the mentoring of Powell, are having a tremendously dark accomplishment in driving opportunities away from the Philippines, a syndrome that has metastasized to other countries.

Last July, the total foreign direct investments dropped by 91% compared to July of last year.

Conclusion

For the first two quarters of this year, our growth in gross domestic product grew only by 2.3% which means that we may not even make the 3% goal that the World Bank has utterly adjusted for this year.

Ibon Foundation marked 75% of our people considered themselves poor, with SWS polling only 1 out of 3 or 34% trusting Bongbong Marcos.

Teodoro’s biggest achievement is distracting the people, in addition to the Senate impeachment of the Vice-President, from the Marcos’ economic neglect of the peoples’ needs and the monumental plunder of the country’s resources.

The security sector has fixed “warring” with China at sea or mainstream media, as its single priority that should merit our attention, when Pulse Asia polled only 3% of the population consider protection of our territory as a most urgent national concern.

Now, we are even losing our friends.

Nobody could have framed it any more accurately than his aunt Gretchen Cojuangco:

“Anybody but Gibo!”

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