Registered non-profit lighting up the maritime gray zone. Transparency & monitoring in the Indo-Pacific & beyond. Founder/Director: @gordianknotray
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SeaLight retweeted
NEW: Taiwanese national security and policy officials are reporting increased People’s Republic of China (PRC) influence operations using AI-generated content and cyberattacks to increase polarization, reduce public trust in the Taiwanese government, and reduce voter turnout. These influence operations will likely continue to increase in the lead-up to Taiwan’s November 28 local elections. (1/2)
Other Key Takeaway:
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) conducted live-fire combat training drills using four Type 071 Landing Platform Deck ships designed to support amphibious landing operations on October 14. PRC state media highlighted the use of these vessels in operations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. This unusual exercise formation and training activity was likely intended to intimidate the Philippines into reducing or stopping its maritime activities near disputed South China Sea features.
SeaLight retweeted
SeaLight Investigation: A Conspiracy Made in 🇨🇳#China
Whoever wrote the obviously fake 🇵🇭Teodoro letters thinks in Chinese official lingo, argues like China's foreign ministry and found his distributors among Beijing's friends.
Imagine the #Philippines' Harvard Law-trained defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro writing a formal, unclassified letter to an obscure 🇺🇸US Embassy officer -- on official letterhead and over his own signature -- to confess to everything his critics say about him.
That's what the "Teodoro letters" ask you to believe, but whoever made them forgot to cut off the "Made in China" tag.
The letters don't read like a Filipino official, or frankly anyone proficient in English. They read like Chinese bureaucratese translated word for word from Mandarin.
One sentence pairs "complete qualifications" with "good reputation," a stock formula Chinese agencies use when choosing contractors.
The May letter calls Washington "the US side", while the Armed Forces of the Philippines is inverted into the "Philippine Armed Forces" by its own Secretary; and what the China Coast Guard does in the West Philippine Sea is referred to as "law enforcement."
Oh, and the author has a real problem with the article, "the". Almost as if it was written by someone whose language doesn't have an equivalent.
In other words, someone used to reading Chinese accounts in the Chinese language.
The July letter even recasts Beijing's own talking points about the July 20 clash as a Teodoro confession. Because that's totally what a highly educated Filipino politician and attorney would do. 🙄
And the people who had the letters first? All friends of Beijing, without exception.
The Philippine Department of National Defense says the letters are fake. They clearly are, and they're bad fakes at that ... right down to the 100% identical signatures.
The more interesting question is who wrote them. SeaLight Director @GordianKnotRay lays out the evidence, and it points directly back to Beijing.
Full investigation at the link in the comments below. 👇
🤖 Made with AI
SeaLight retweeted
This is a truly exceptional analysis by @GordianKnotRay of the alleged Teodoro letters addressed to a member of the US diplomatic mission in Manila that debunks their authenticity from top to bottom. If the truth matters to you, this is well worth taking the time to read. Don't let communist China influence you with their lies. Thankfully, we have someone willing and able to shine a light on the truth- and that matters 🇺🇸 🤝🏽 🇵🇭
SeaLight Investigation: A Conspiracy Made in 🇨🇳#China
Whoever wrote the obviously fake 🇵🇭Teodoro letters thinks in Chinese official lingo, argues like China's foreign ministry and found his distributors among Beijing's friends.
Imagine the #Philippines' Harvard Law-trained defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro writing a formal, unclassified letter to an obscure 🇺🇸US Embassy officer -- on official letterhead and over his own signature -- to confess to everything his critics say about him.
That's what the "Teodoro letters" ask you to believe, but whoever made them forgot to cut off the "Made in China" tag.
The letters don't read like a Filipino official, or frankly anyone proficient in English. They read like Chinese bureaucratese translated word for word from Mandarin.
One sentence pairs "complete qualifications" with "good reputation," a stock formula Chinese agencies use when choosing contractors.
The May letter calls Washington "the US side", while the Armed Forces of the Philippines is inverted into the "Philippine Armed Forces" by its own Secretary; and what the China Coast Guard does in the West Philippine Sea is referred to as "law enforcement."
Oh, and the author has a real problem with the article, "the". Almost as if it was written by someone whose language doesn't have an equivalent.
In other words, someone used to reading Chinese accounts in the Chinese language.
The July letter even recasts Beijing's own talking points about the July 20 clash as a Teodoro confession. Because that's totally what a highly educated Filipino politician and attorney would do. 🙄
And the people who had the letters first? All friends of Beijing, without exception.
The Philippine Department of National Defense says the letters are fake. They clearly are, and they're bad fakes at that ... right down to the 100% identical signatures.
The more interesting question is who wrote them. SeaLight Director @GordianKnotRay lays out the evidence, and it points directly back to Beijing.
Full investigation at the link in the comments below. 👇
SeaLight Investigation: A Conspiracy Made in 🇨🇳#China
Whoever wrote the obviously fake 🇵🇭Teodoro letters thinks in Chinese official lingo, argues like China's foreign ministry and found his distributors among Beijing's friends.
Imagine the #Philippines' Harvard Law-trained defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro writing a formal, unclassified letter to an obscure 🇺🇸US Embassy officer -- on official letterhead and over his own signature -- to confess to everything his critics say about him.
That's what the "Teodoro letters" ask you to believe, but whoever made them forgot to cut off the "Made in China" tag.
The letters don't read like a Filipino official, or frankly anyone proficient in English. They read like Chinese bureaucratese translated word for word from Mandarin.
One sentence pairs "complete qualifications" with "good reputation," a stock formula Chinese agencies use when choosing contractors.
The May letter calls Washington "the US side", while the Armed Forces of the Philippines is inverted into the "Philippine Armed Forces" by its own Secretary; and what the China Coast Guard does in the West Philippine Sea is referred to as "law enforcement."
Oh, and the author has a real problem with the article, "the". Almost as if it was written by someone whose language doesn't have an equivalent.
In other words, someone used to reading Chinese accounts in the Chinese language.
The July letter even recasts Beijing's own talking points about the July 20 clash as a Teodoro confession. Because that's totally what a highly educated Filipino politician and attorney would do. 🙄
And the people who had the letters first? All friends of Beijing, without exception.
The Philippine Department of National Defense says the letters are fake. They clearly are, and they're bad fakes at that ... right down to the 100% identical signatures.
The more interesting question is who wrote them. SeaLight Director @GordianKnotRay lays out the evidence, and it points directly back to Beijing.
Full investigation at the link in the comments below. 👇
🤖 Made with AI
Read SeaLight Investigation: A Conspiracy Made in China at sealight.live/posts/sea-ligh…
SeaLight retweeted
Reuters: The Philippines said on Wednesday that it is exploring deeper cooperation with Taiwan to protect undersea cables and address so-called gray-zone activities, despite its one-China policy. What’s China’s response? Does Beijing consider such cooperation a violation of the one-China principle?
Mao Ning: There is no gray zone on the Taiwan question. The Philippine side should abide by the one-China principle with concrete actions. External interactions of China’s Taiwan region should be handled in strict accordance with the one-China principle.
How China Leverages and Bends UNCLOS in the South China Sea
Last November 2025, Isaac Kardon (@IBKardon), Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order," joined SeaLight Executive Director @GordianKnotRay and the @IndoPacPodcast to discuss how China uses domestic law, coast guard operations, and strategic ambiguity to reshape international maritime norms - especially in the South and East China Seas and the Yellow Sea.
In this clip, Isaac breaks down China's complex approach to the South China Sea. Beijing utilizes ambiguous claims, local enforcement, and selective engagement to circumvent the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to dominate the South China Sea.
SeaLight retweeted
@SeaLightFound NEPTUNE is one of several 25+ year old FoC "zombie vessels" that loiter outside critical Taiwanese airbases and LNG facilities in the south of Taiwan. It was covered in a @taiwanplusnews investigation earlier this year. If I guess your next questions: 1) Is the loitering area within Taiwan's prohibited zone? Yes. 2) What's the due diligence process TW Port Authority goes through before permission is given for port entry? Unclear
NEPTUNE'a operating behavior is unusual. We confirm that NEPTUNE has changed its flag of convenience several times as you note. We also concur that the ship does encounter PRC or Taiwan originated vessels, but does not call on a single port outside Taiwan.
It loiters in areas where there is a confluence of critical infrastructure including submarine cables - most recently October 1, 2026.
The ship is listed as registered in London on Dec 22, 2017. However, SHUN LI SHIPPING CO. LTD was then dissolved in May 28, 2019. This ship also has multiple identities.
This appears to be a high-risk vessel in a major Taiwan port that is adjacent to Taiwan warships. Agreed, this is unusual.
1/ SUSPICIOUS VESSEL IN KEELUNG HARBOR, 🇹🇼#TAIWAN.
SeaLight has been tracking the cargo ship NEPTUNE for months based on its weird behavior: a flag-switching cargo ship that seldom visits ports but frequently encounters other suspicious ships off the coast.
It is now tied up in 🇹🇼Keelung Harbor, where its port paperwork says it just came from 🇭🇰#HongKong, even though its own Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder's tracking signal says it was never there.
Tracking from @StarboardIntel shows NEPTUNE has spent the past 14 months just loitering around Taiwan's coasts: drifting offshore for weeks at a time, occasionally encountering other vessels & not calling at a single port outside Taiwan.
The closest it came to Hong Kong in that time was about 490 km. In fact, its entire AIS history shows zero visits to Hong Kong.
It currently flies the flag of Comoros, a registry the European Maritime Safety Agency rates "very high risk." It has already switched flags from Tanzania, not long after Taiwan itself announced it was scrutinizing that country's registered ships.
So what has this ship actually been doing? [🧵1/5]
(Attached: Current location of the NEPTUNE in Keelung Harbor from @StarboardIntel, plus last known photo of the same ship from July 2022, when it was NEPTUNE1)
1/ SUSPICIOUS VESSEL IN KEELUNG HARBOR, 🇹🇼#TAIWAN.
SeaLight has been tracking the cargo ship NEPTUNE for months based on its weird behavior: a flag-switching cargo ship that seldom visits ports but frequently encounters other suspicious ships off the coast.
It is now tied up in 🇹🇼Keelung Harbor, where its port paperwork says it just came from 🇭🇰#HongKong, even though its own Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder's tracking signal says it was never there.
Tracking from @StarboardIntel shows NEPTUNE has spent the past 14 months just loitering around Taiwan's coasts: drifting offshore for weeks at a time, occasionally encountering other vessels & not calling at a single port outside Taiwan.
The closest it came to Hong Kong in that time was about 490 km. In fact, its entire AIS history shows zero visits to Hong Kong.
It currently flies the flag of Comoros, a registry the European Maritime Safety Agency rates "very high risk." It has already switched flags from Tanzania, not long after Taiwan itself announced it was scrutinizing that country's registered ships.
So what has this ship actually been doing? [🧵1/5]
(Attached: Current location of the NEPTUNE in Keelung Harbor from @StarboardIntel, plus last known photo of the same ship from July 2022, when it was NEPTUNE1)
4/ One more thing about this ship's paperwork.
Until August 2025, the NEPTUNE was registered in Tanzania. In January 2025, Taiwan singled out Tanzania-flagged ships (+4 other countries) for closer monitoring. Seven months later (1 Aug 25), NEPTUNE re-registered in Comoros, which is conveniently not on that list.
Of course, Comoros is still considered a "flag-of-convenience", and not one with a good record with either of the major international safety compliance networks--both the Paris & Tokyo MOUs give it their "Black Flag" designation.
We can't know for sure why the owner switched, but we do know the ship went from a sketchy flag Taiwan has singled out to a sketchy flag not on its list. [🧵4/5]
5/ Finally, we should note that something like this has happened before.
In 2014, a ship arriving at a Taiwanese port reported Hong Kong as its previous stop. An inspector went aboard, read the voyage log & found it had come from waters off northern Taiwan. The owner was fined NT$100,000. (Source: motcmpb.gov.tw/ServerFile/Ge…)
The last inspection record we can find for NEPTUNE is from Japan in June 2022. It listed 8 deficiencies, including life-saving and fire-fighting equipment. That was over 4 years ago. Since then we have no international record of any inspections (which happens when a ship stays out of international ports).
There are questions the ship's own records could answer: Where did NEPTUNE really come from? What is it carrying and where did it load it?
Our question: has anyone been aboard to ask? [🧵5/5]
SeaLight retweeted
NEW: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly targeting the family members of those it deems Taiwan “separatists” to coerce them to halt activities that the PRC views as promoting “Taiwanese independence.” The PRC appears to be intensifying its coercion against Taiwanese politician Puma Shen, in particular, possibly to impact his Taipei mayoral campaign. (1/2)
Other Key Takeaway:
The PRC appears to be intensifying its rhetorical and maritime coercion against the Philippines to reduce the Philippine presence in the South China Sea. The PRC likely seeks to support its own territorial claims and ensure that PRC maritime forces can operate freely in the South China Sea and nearby waters.
A major 🇨🇳#PRC maritime militia rotation has begun in the #SouthChinaSea, with 24 of the large Qiong Sansha Yu ships leaving 3 ports on Hainan Island headed SW toward the Spratly Islands & Scarborough Shoal.
Meanwhile, 8 militia ships have left Scarborough toward Hainan. It is likely that we'll see similar departures begin from the Spratlys once the ships headed that way get closer.
SeaLight retweeted
Let's see if this escalates to a "double-dog dare", which could result in the dreaded "I'm rubber, you're glue, bounces off me and sticks to you" demarche.
The diplomatic row between the Philippines and China over recent remarks by Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan has spread beyond the executive branch as the Chinese Embassy challenged lawmakers to declare him “persona non grata” and accused journalists and politicians of exaggerating tensions between the two countries.
READ MORE: inqnews.net/ChinaDaresPH
ALT The diplomatic row between the Philippines and China over recent remarks by Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan has spread beyond the executive branch as the Chinese Embassy challenged lawmakers to declare him “persona non grata”.
Taiwan's Growing Challenges to Combat China's Influence Operations
@kwangliu, deputy managing editor of CommonWealth Magazine in Taipei and host of Taiwanology, joins SeaLight Executive Director @GordianKnotRay and the @IndoPacPodcast to discuss "Broken Chain," her newsroom's investigation drawing on 1.8 billion vessel-tracking records.
In this clip, she revealed a meeting with some members of Taiwan's National Security Council about a growing wave of fake accounts and bots posting about Taiwanese leaders, with many traced back to Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia. The objective is simple: use coordinated attacks to sow doubt in the public's mind and erode trust in Taiwan's government and political system.
SeaLight retweeted
😬 Is there ANY precedent for an Embassy publicly daring a host country to PNG its own ambassador? Asking for a friend...