The country’s Ambassador to the United States, Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez, on Tuesday warned that many Philippine “institutions are severely compromised” by hackers.
He said hackers can now get into various systems to spread false information as well as control people.
Romualdez said US experts are coming to Manila to assess the country’s cybersecurity risks amid reports that cyberspace is being used to sow division.
He said the US would send some of its experts to “first assess the situation” and “give us a complete picture of exactly how far this is becoming.”
“What’s more important is that we are going to be given or we will have to decide on the solutions that are going to be offered to us,” Romualdez in an interview with ANC.
“That is really very important for us to do — to try to minimize any kind of penetration coming from other sources,” he added.
According to Romualdez, he was warned by the intelligence community not only in Washington but also in Manila that plans are in place to conduct “some operations” against several personalities, including himself.
He said the plans were hatched following President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s successful visit to the US and the announcement of new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the Philippines that would deter various threats in the Indo-Pacific.
The Filipino diplomat cited the demonstration—an apparently staged one—that happened in Manila to call out Vietnam’s supposed militarization in the South China Sea, which coincided with Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo’s visit to Hanoi.
The demonstration happened at about the same time Manalo would be meeting his counterpart in Vietnam, which Romualdez said proved that “precisely, they were able to hack our system, they were able to get enough information in advance that this was going to happen.”
“That’s precisely trying to make it look like there’s a discord between our allies and friends,” he said
The Filipino diplomat also cited a case where a certain “Mario” reached out to media outlets and claimed that Romualdez was being recalled as ambassador due to supposed bribery and corrupt practices.
Mario even sent a purported memorandum of the said recall order, Romualdez said.
According to him, the smear campaign started “about two or three months ago.”
“We didn’t expect it to be a full-blown smear campaign,” Romualdez said.
“What is really very disturbing here is the fact that they can use cyberspace to do all of this. They can actually manipulate memorandum for instance,” he added.
