Michel Andre P. del Rosario
Executive Director, Center for Information Resilience and Integrity Studies (CIRIS)
In the Philippines today, the front line of national security is no longer just at sea or on our borders. It is in our information space—on our screens, in our group chats, and in the stories we choose to believe about ourselves and one another. Cognitive warfare, once a niche concept, is now a lived reality for many Filipinos.
This new battlespace is shaped by coordinated disinformation campaigns, foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), and domestic political manipulation. These efforts not only distort facts; they seek to weaken something deeper: trust. At the Center for Information Resilience and Integrity Studies (CIRIS), we call this the “trinity of trust”—trust in society, trust in authority, and trust in democratic institutions. When these three are eroded together, a nation becomes easier to divide, deceive, and destabilize.
Recent research underscores that Filipinos feel this shift. The 2024 Philippine Trust Study describes an emerging “accountability revolution”: people are more cautious with trust and expect institutions to be transparent, competent, and consistent before believing them. Trust is no longer given automatically; it must be earned and re-earned.
That is healthy—but it also means that when FIMI and disinformation strike, they are attacking a landscape where trust is already under strain.
Trust in society: Turning kapwa into collateral damage
Trust in society is the confidence we have in our fellow Filipinos—that we are, broadly, acting in good faith even when we disagree. Filipino psychology captures this in the concept of kapwa, the shared self that underpins bayanihan and community solidarity.
Foreign and domestic manipulators work hard to break this. Campaigns that label journalists as “bayaran,” critics as “dilawan” or “loyalista,” or West Philippine Sea advocates as “war-mongers,” are designed to push us into hardened camps. Studies on the Philippine infodemic describe how content farms deliberately inject polarizing frames to keep people in a state of outrage and suspicion.
When we no longer trust one another, fact-checking alone cannot fix the problem. A debunked lie still leaves behind resentment—exactly the environment where hostile actors can most easily turn Filipinos against Filipinos.
Trust in authority: From ‘trust us’ to ‘prove it’
Trust in authority is our confidence that those in power are trying to act competently and in the national interest. The 2024 Trust Study describes a shift toward “proof before trust”: Filipinos want leaders to be visible, accountable, and consistent.
FIMI operations target this by amplifying every misstep to paint a picture of incompetence or capture. Narratives around the West Philippine Sea frame our leaders as either reckless warmongers or secret puppets. In an age of information warfare, legitimacy must be demonstrated, not demanded. When government communicates with evidence and admits uncertainties—what the study calls being ‘known, good, and consistent’—foreign narratives become harder to sustain.
Trust in democratic institutions: Faith in the rules of the game
Trust in democratic institutions is about faith in the rules and bodies that structure our public life—elections, courts, and a free press. When people believe the system gives them a meaningful say, they are more likely to stick with reforms rather than abandon democracy.
Disinformation campaigns systematically attack this layer. Every election is framed as rigged. Courts are dismissed as bought. Media outlets are smeared as foreign agents. Once that belief takes hold, people become open to anti-democratic shortcuts—the ultimate victory for malign actors.
The ARM-framework: Awareness, Resilience, Motivation
At CIRIS, we use the ARM-framework to organize our response: Awareness, Resilience, and Motivation.
Awareness: Seeing the manipulation clearly
Awareness means helping people see how they are being targeted. This is where investigative journalism, fact-checking, and transparent government briefings are crucial. The 2024 Trust Study says Filipinos want institutions that are visible and willing to show their work. Awareness strengthens trust by revealing the real architects of manipulation.
Resilience: Building capacity to withstand attacks
Resilience is about building capacity—media literacy, critical thinking, strengthening election bodies, and supporting independent fact-checking. Institutions that respond in a predictable, rules-based way are more likely to sustain trust even amid attacks.
Motivation: From awareness to action
Motivation is turning awareness into action. It means recognizing ‘information first responders’—teachers, journalists, fact-checkers, community leaders who choose integrity over virality. When people see others taking principled action, they are more likely to believe that trust is still possible.
Lessons from democratic frontlines: Taiwan and Canada
The Philippines is not alone in this fight. Taiwan and Canada have faced sustained FIMI and developed responses that map onto the trinity of trust and ARM-framework.
Taiwan: Whole-of-society resilience
Taiwan faces the world’s most intense disinformation environment—over 45,000 inauthentic accounts and 2.3 million pieces of disinformation in 2025 alone. Yet Taiwan has built ‘whole-of-society resilience’ through systematic ARM application.
Awareness: Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs coordinates rapid clarifications. Civil society groups like IORG, Doublethink Lab, and Taiwan FactCheck Center train ordinary citizens to recognize manipulation—a ‘citizen-as-tech’ approach building distributed awareness networks.
Resilience: Taiwan amended electoral laws with strict penalties for deepfakes, embedded media literacy in schools, and created gov civic tech communities. Crucially, Taiwan rejected government-led content moderation, empowering citizens with transparency and tools instead.
Motivation: As Minister Audrey Tang emphasized, “We recovered from the trust crisis not by asking people to trust the government, but by encouraging public services to trust the people.” This trust-citizens-first approach has proven deeply motivating.
Canada: Wrestling with transparency
Canada’s 2024-2025 Foreign Interference Commission concluded that “disinformation is the single biggest risk to Canadian democracy.” Canada’s Citizen Lab at University of Toronto conducts world-class independent research—analogous to Taiwan’s IORG.
However, Canada struggled with information-sharing. Officials often withheld warnings for fear of creating “discord and distrust.” The Commission warned that excessive secrecy can backfire—when citizens feel kept in the dark ‘for their own good,’ it feeds the very distrust that FIMI seeks to exploit.
Bill C-70 (2024) created comprehensive foreign interference registration requirements, but gaps remain in public mobilization and diaspora engagement—challenges the Philippines shares with its 10+ million overseas Filipinos.
Common threads: Citizen empowerment, not state control
All three democracies converge on a core insight: protecting trust requires empowering citizens, not expanding state censorship. Whether through IORG’s citizen-tech model, Citizen Lab’s independent research, or the Philippines’ own fact-checking networks (Rappler, VERA Files, Tsek.ph), the most effective defenses distribute awareness and agency.
The 2024 Philippine Trust Study reinforces this: Filipinos demand institutions that are “known, good, and consistent”—not opaque or inconsistent. Taiwan’s and Canada’s experiences show that meeting this demand requires sustained investment in civic capacity, independent research, transparent communication, and precise legal frameworks that target covert coercion without criminalizing dissent.
What this means for all of us
Defending the trinity of trust is not just the government’s job. It is about everyday choices: When we share something online, are we reinforcing trust in society or feeding contempt? When we criticize those in power, are we demanding accountability or encouraging cynicism? When we talk about institutions, are we helping improve them or convincing ourselves that nothing works?
The 2024 Philippine Trust Study sends a clear message: Filipinos are demanding proof, not promises. Cognitive defense is not about propaganda. It is about resilience—citizens who think critically, media that verify responsibly, institutions that communicate truthfully, and communities that stand together.
In the end, protecting the Filipino mind is about protecting our capacity to trust wisely—in each other, in accountable authority, and in democratic institutions. Taiwan and Canada show this is achievable. If we strengthen it through Awareness, Resilience, and Motivation, the Philippines will remain worth defending and capable of defending itself.
Michel Andre P. del Rosario is executive director of the Center for Information Resilience and Integrity Studies (CIRIS), which focuses on campaigns supporting and strengthening information integrity and societal resilience against foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) or foreign disinformation, misinformation, and malign influence (DMMI) in the Philippines and the Indo-Pacific.
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