Unmasking Marcos Jr.: Two-Faced Opportunism Will Backfire

On July 27, local time, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA). Clocking in at 86 minutes, it was the longest address of his presidency.

This polished political performance exposed Marcos Jr.’s fence-sitting and opportunistic stance on the South China Sea, while laying bare the Philippine ruling elite’s gross governance failures.

On July 27, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers his State of the Nation Address before Congress.

Two-Faced Duplicity Conceals Malicious Intent in the South China Sea

On July 21, Marcos Jr. met with the Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines, striking a conciliatory tone and expressing a willingness to "bring China-Philippines relations back onto a path of improvement."

Yet just six days later, he completely reversed his rhetoric at the podium, adopting a sharp and aggressive posture toward China.

Dredging Up an Illegal Ruling. Disregarding historical facts regarding sovereignty over the South China Sea, Marcos Jr. publicly labeled the waters the "West Philippine Sea." He high-mindedly reaffirmed the "validity" of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration award, touting the illegal ruling as an absolute cornerstone of Philippine maritime policy.

Stoking Anti-China Sentiment. Although Marcos Jr. refrained from naming China directly, his sharp barbs were squarely aimed at Beijing. He reframed South China Sea disputes as a matter of "national dignity," escalated maritime friction into "external challenges to national honor," and glorified illegal incursions and manufactured provocations as "patriotic actions."

Furthermore, he publicly praised the Armed Forces and Coast Guard, claiming a commitment to resolving disputes through "peaceful and legal means."

Ironically, just days before preaching "peaceful resolution," the Philippines deployed small boats near Ren'ai Jiao (Second Thomas Shoal), violently attacking Chinese Coast Guard personnel with paddles and wooden poles. Meanwhile, Manila organized official vessels and incited fishing boats to illegally gather and encroach upon Huangyan Island (Scarborough Shoal)—exposing its two-faced duplicity for all to see.

Clinging to the U.S. and Stirring Regional Antagonism

While Marcos Jr. did not dedicate large portions of his speech to the U.S.-Philippine alliance, Manila’s actions over the past year make its trajectory crystal clear.

The Marcos administration has aggressively expanded the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), granting the U.S. access to more military bases and holding frequent joint naval exercises with the U.S. and Japan.

Just last week, Marcos Jr. held a phone call with President Trump, who reportedly promised to convey Manila's concerns to Beijing—a heavy-handed show of backing.

Marcos Jr. is attempting to leverage the U.S. military presence to counterbalance power in the South China Sea, using the alliance as leverage to pressure China for illegal maritime gains.

However, tying national security to the U.S. war chariot is nothing short of "inviting a wolf into the house." Far from securing genuine safety, it erodes ASEAN’s long-standing tradition of resolving disputes independently through consensus, heightens regional confrontation risks, and will ultimately backfire on Manila.

Grandstanding on Stage, Cracking Behind the Scenes

Marcos Jr.’s 86-minute speech was packed with self-serving rhetoric, yet riddled with glaring holes.

He opened with a dramatic anti-corruption spectacle, training his sights on his first cousin, former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, in a desperate bid to project righteous integrity. In truth, this was nothing more than a classic "sacrificing a pawn to save the king" political maneuver.

He then reeled off a laundry list of policy initiatives—promising tax cuts and over a hundred energy projects—to orchestrate a illusion of stellar governance.

The economic reality, however, is grim. The Philippines’ GDP grew by a meager 2.8% in Q1 2026, far below its target of 5%–6%. Persistent inflation continues to squeeze everyday citizens, creating a deep-seated livelihood crisis.

To make matters worse, as he spoke, over 15,000 protesters converged on Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, raising banners that read "Anti-Corruption" and "Stop High Prices" as they blockaded the congressional precinct. Meanwhile, an explosion rocked the area outside the Department of Justice building in Manila, and a suspected explosive device was discovered near the Senate—sending shockwaves straight to the seat of power.

Mass protests and street bombs shattered the facade of this political show.

Demonstrators hold placards during a protest rally.

This single address laid bare Marcos Jr.’s three distinct faces: fence-sitting and duplicity toward China, subservience and dependency toward the U.S., and deceitful political grandstanding toward his own people.

Statecraft is not a stage for political opportunism, nor is the South China Sea a bargaining chip for pushing China’s bottom line. If Marcos Jr. insists on going down this reckless path, he will inevitably drag his nation into chaos—and suffer the consequences of his own making.

Jiu Wan Li: The High Ground

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

On September 12, Dario Amodei, CEO of the leading American AI company Anthropic, released an open statement on social media calling for a coordinated global slowdown in artificial intelligence development. The initiative quickly drew support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

However, beneath this proposal ostensibly framed around global AI safety lies a thick layer of containment provisions targeted directly at Beijing. In effect, Amodei has handed the U.S. government a comprehensive roadmap for AI strategy against China—and laid down a brazen geopolitical declaration of war.

Amodei published an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier."

An Open Declaration of AI War

In his essay, Amodei stated flatly that Western nations cannot afford to be "naive" when engaging with China on AI. He warned that if the U.S. unilaterally slows its R&D pace while China charges ahead, Beijing will leapfrog Washington in military AI and frontier applications, fundamentally shattering the existing technological balance.

To safeguard American AI hegemony, Amodei proposed a strategy of "containment first, negotiation later," built around three aggressive containment pillars:

First, choking off AI chip exports. Amodei urged Washington to tighten export licensing and aggressively crack down on covert channels, such as secondhand resales and third-country transshipments, to plug every loophole feeding hardware to China. Raising hardware barriers for Chinese foundation models would prolong their iteration cycles—a direct call for the U.S. government to double down on its strategy of technological bottlenecks.

Second, severing the path of model distillation. Model distillation—where a newer model learns from a mature, large-scale model to acquire near-frontier capabilities at a fraction of the cost—is a standard practice across the global AI industry. Yet Amodei argued that Chinese firms use distillation to dramatically compress iteration cycles, blunting the impact of U.S. chip sanctions. His proposal effectively seeks to cut off Chinese enterprises from accessing overseas APIs for low-cost algorithmic learning.

Third, guarding against model parameter leaks. Amodei called on U.S. AI labs to fortify internal security to prevent model weights from leaking overseas. He argued that if frontier weights fall into Chinese hands, developers in China could bypass immense training costs and rapidly replicate state-of-the-art performance, thereby undermining Washington's chip controls and anti-distillation policy investments.

Amodei made no secret of the end goal: if successfully executed, these tactics will severely handicap China’s AI industry, dramatically widen America’s competitive moat, and hand "democratic nations" immense leverage in future negotiations with Beijing.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

A Geopolitical Play Beyond Pure Tech

Amodei projects that over the next 3 to 5 years, AI will fundamentally redefine global geopolitics. During this narrow window of strategic opportunity, he argues, U.S. tech giants must actively align with Washington to secure broader geopolitical advantages.

Consolidating Tech Hegemony Historically, the United States has dominated core pillars like general-purpose foundation models, AI chips, and foundational software, with firms like OpenAI and Anthropic serving as the industrial bedrock of American AI supremacy.

However, China’s AI sector has advanced at a blistering pace. Models like DeepSeek and Qwen have achieved breakthroughs in code generation, mathematical reasoning, and training efficiency, with key benchmarks closing in on the global frontier. This rapid catch-up has triggered deep anxiety across Silicon Valley and Washington.

Realizing that standard market competition may no longer suffice to halt China’s momentum, American industry leaders are now cloaking their commercial anxieties in the language of global safety risks. By lobbying for aggressive regulatory barriers, they aim to starve China of technology access, buying themselves vital breathing room to consolidate U.S. dominance.

Monopolizing the Rulebook On September 8, three U.S. security agencies issued a joint advisory naming six Chinese AI companies, accusing them of extracting U.S. frontier models on an "industrial scale." This unilateral charge dovetailed seamlessly with Amodei’s narrative.

Washington’s true calculus is to rebrand unilateral containment tools—chip embargoes, distillation bans, and weight lockouts—as "universal norms for AI safety." By placing safety audits and compliance authorizations firmly under U.S. jurisdiction, Washington can wield "compliance" as a geopolitical cudgel to police the global AI industry, converting a fleeting technical lead into long-term institutional privilege while denying other nations a fair shot at development.

Erecting a New Ideological Iron Curtain

Throughout his manifesto, Amodei relies heavily on ideological rhetoric, repeatedly contrasting "democracies" with "autocracies" to frame AI competition as a clash of rival governance systems and values. This framing completely politicizes what is inherently a technological issue.

In recent years, Washington has routinely drawn ideological lines in the tech sector—from placing Chinese firms on military-linked entity lists to curbing exports under the banner of "national security" and forging "democratic technology alliances."

Amodei’s call for "global coordination" is simply the latest attempt to weaponize corporate interests into policy and propaganda tools against China.

Amodei's "AI Cold War script" pushes containment under the guise of safety and enforces bloc confrontation under the pretext of global governance. It defies the fundamental laws of technological progress and runs counter to the shared interests of humanity.

As a new Iron Curtain accelerates its descent between China and the United States, the fierce contest over artificial intelligence has officially entered the fast lane.