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Michael Punongbayan - The Philippine Star
March 11, 2026 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — China is spying on the world and not only on the Philippines, according to a Philippine Navy spokesman, following the discovery of Filipino soldiers and civilian personnel involved in espionage activities for Beijing.
“Again, I mentioned earlier that this is a global trend by the Chinese Communist Party, to get information from discreet or surreptitious means,” Philippine Navy spokesman for the West Philippine Sea (WPS), Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, said yesterday.
Trinidad, at a press briefing, said such spying operations are not being done through open sources or established channels of information sharing.
“This will allow the Chinese Communist Party number one to be able to prepare their capabilities to be able to advance their capabilities beyond their beyond other countries,” he explained.
“Secondly, it would give them an advantage knowing what the plans are of their adversaries,” he said, when asked what China’s end goal could be in carrying out espionage activities.
Trinidad said one of the “handlers” of “Danny” of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), who is among the three Filipinos recruited to become spies that were all later flagged by the Insider Threat Program (ITP), is a Chinese national.
“What was mentioned is he came here, call sign ‘Peter,’ went to meet with Danny upon the insistence of Danny that he would like to meet his handler. And he came to the country and as you have mentioned, we have a copy of his passport from the People’s Republic of China,” he said.
Trinidad assured that the ITP, initiated under the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept (CADC), is doing its work effectively, which is why the recruitment and spying operations were uncovered.
“Three of them have been approached and they cooperated. They are now under the control of the AFP. The fourth one, a Philippine Navy officer, refused the offer given to him. I would like to highlight number one, the ITP, the internal threat program is working as manifested by these accomplishments. Number two, it is continually being evaluated and enhanced. Number three, there is a need for legislation to give us the right tools to be able to address threats like this,” he said.
Asked if the recruited Filipinos are under detention and would be charged, he said they are under military custody and that other operational matters cannot be revealed for the time being.
“Any subsequent operations arising out of this accomplishment that are still considered active cases, we will not divulge considering that they are still they are operational matters,” he said.
Trinidad however disclosed that among the leaked information were classified data covering operational details as well as plans of the Philippine Navy for modernization and strategic basing.
“Yes, these are classified considering the positions of the concerned personnel at the lower level of the plantilla hierarchy, their access to information is limited to those only classified. We have classifications for our information classified, confidential, secret and top secret. Their access level was to classified information,” he said.
Trinidad added that information being extracted did include the identities of military personnel manning the grounded BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal, but none was divulged by “Danny.”
“I don’t want to speculate on the motive on why certain information was required from these three. What is important here is that we were able to identify and to stop the effort to surreptitiously gather information about the DND and the AFP activities, not only the West Philippine Sea but in the overall posture of DND and the AFP,” he said.
“There are different uses for the information that they would like to derive from our people. These actions could be detrimental. This could put the lives of our men and women at risk, especially those conducting the RORE (Rotation and Resupply). And we don’t want this to happen,” he added.
Trinidad said the recruited Filipinos, who were in their 20s, were contacted after they posted their resumes online and were told they were being employed as analysts or researchers with four-digit to six-digit compensation.
In the coastal waters of Burgos, Pangasinan, meanwhile, the Philippine Army held live-fire exercises simulating military operations against an enemy attack.
The littoral defense activity forms part of the ongoing third-iteration of the large-scale Combined Arms Training Exercise “Katihan” 2026.
A total of 4,222 Army troops were involved in the unilateral exercise with drills being held at various training areas in Pangasinan and Ilocos Norte.
