At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US military launched a secret campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation in the Philippines and several other countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, according to a June 14 Reuters investigation.
In 2020 – that is, in the early part of the US clandestine campaign – I released two reports on the pandemic and its international human and economic costs (here, here). The coronavirus epidemic hit particularly hard the Philippines, where I stayed and took the Sinovac shot twice. Some were frightened by the US campaign and didn’t. I don’t know if they survived.
Now the U.S. Defense Department has admitted, albeit indirectly and not fully in public, that it spread propaganda in the Philippines aimed at disparaging China’s Sinovac vaccine during the pandemic, according to a June 25 document.
Pentagon’s “missteps”
The U.S. response to the Philippines was recounted in a podcast by Harry Roque, ex- spokesman for former President Duterte. Reuters subsequently reviewed the document, which has not been publicly released by either government. Reuters was able to verify its contents.
“The [US Department of Defense] did message Philippines audiences questioning the safety and efficacy of Sinovac,” according to the document, which references information sent from the Pentagon to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of National Defense.
Strictly speaking, the Pentagon, despite the Reuters expose, did not officially even acknowledge the campaign. However, Lisa Lawrence, Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson, told Newsweek via email that the DoD “conducts a wide range of operations, including operations in the information environment (OIE), to counter adversary malign influence.”
Lawrence blamed China for blaming the US for spreading the virus, conveniently ignoring that at the time the Trump administration was pushing the Covid-19 lab-leak theory, with Trump himself raging about the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.” The net effect was a xenophobic wave of anti-Asian hate attacks in the US, some of which occurred against Filipinos.
The DoD only conceded it had “made some missteps in our COVID related messaging” but assured the Philippines that the military “has vastly improved oversight and accountability of information operations” since 2022.
The US clandestine campaign took place at the early chaotic period of Covid that caused a high number of casualties, resulting in quarantines. Eventually the virus paved the way to global depression. Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines was among those hit hardest. By 2024, COVID had killed almost 67,000 Filipinos, and the number of infections there had reached more than 4 million, according to the WHO.
Worse, the Pentagon’s official comments did not address the full damage of the U.S. campaign elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Furthermore, Pentagon spokesman Pete Nguyen said an initial review by the Defense Department last month “found that the U.S. military was not responsible for the troubling social media content related to the Philippines” cited in the Reuters report.
It was a distressing effort to evade responsibility for the campaign.
Holding back vaccines, begging, and VFA
In the Philippines, the Reuters investigation spurred a Senate investigation led by Senator Imee Marcos, head of the Foreign Relations committee. In the hearing, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said they had contacted the US and were told that the US is looking into the matter. There had been no subsequent US response.
Particularly interesting was the exchange between Senator Marcos and Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez in the US. Over a year ago, Romualdez acknowledged “Washington was holding back all their vaccines because President Biden back then wanted all Americans to get it first [before exporting US-made vaccines to other nations] but we had already paid for our Moderna vaccines and, to put it frankly, I basically begged the White House to give us [the vaccines].”
So, Romualdez turned to then-president Duterte saying that “we need to give VFA [Visiting Forces Agreement] a chance, because it will help us get our vaccines to our people.” Shortly after, [then Foreign] Secretary Locsin called me and said the president had decided that [due to our conversation] we will go ahead and restore the VFA. So that’s the story, that’s how it happened.”
Presumably, the restoration of the VFA was “conducive” to the delivery of US vaccines. After the cancellation of the VFA in February 2020, Duterte restored it after meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on July 30, 2021. That is, when the disinformation campaign again the Philippines was still fully operational by the Pentagon – led by Austin.
U.S. military told Filipino officials that operatives “ceased Covid-related messaging related to its origins and vaccines in August 2021”; right after the restoration of the VFA.
In turn, the VFA set the stage for the dramatic U-turn and the enhanced military cooperation with the US by President Marcos, Jr.
“Much worse than casualties of war”
A week before the hearings, Marcos said she was eyeing to invite former health and security officials. Yet, a day before the Senate hearing, Marcos admitted “we are having a hard time getting witnesses regarding the Pentagon black propaganda discovered by Reuters against vaccines such as Sinovac.”
A key role in the US disinformation campaign belonged to Facebook, X and Instagram posts, technical data and documents about a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. In effect, some were active for more than five years, according to Reuters. Obviously, Senator Marcos hoped to include their testimonies in the hearings. Yet, neither Facebook nor X (former Twitter) proved available. In one case, the hearing was provided an email address for an appropriate spokesperson. But when emails were sent, they bounced back in a truly Kafkaesque manner.
At the hearing on June 25, Marcos asked Department of Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire about the casualty count at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when the Pentagon plan was launched. According to Vergeire, the deaths soared drastically and the death toll was at its worst during the third quarter of 2021 because of the deadly Delta Covid-19 variant, with 1,117,896 illnesses and 21,424 deaths. “These are shocking numbers,” Marcos concluded. “Mortality and morbidity rates are terrible, and this is the period the Reuters article referred to.”
Marcos described the U.S. military campaign as “evil, wicked, dangerous, unethical.” She questioned whether it violated international law and looked for legal remedies under international law so that the Philippine national security and public health would never again be violated in such a manner.
Marcos thought the disinformation campaign against the more accessible vaccine at the time – Sinovac – discouraged the Filipinos from taking the Chinese jab and made them more vulnerable to the illness. “Disinformation had its malign effects. We’re talking about millions, hundreds of thousands. This is much worse than the body count and casualties of war.”
Dr. Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/
