Retired US Air Force colonel ‘infiltrates’ Manila Times’ space
I WAS stunned to read the first of a two-part series bashing the Chinese Embassy here, written by one “Ray Powell” in this paper. While many excellent writers and academics have been bugging the editors — unsuccessfully — to publish their pieces in this prestigious paper, a professional propagandist on the payroll of the US Navy, succeeded in “infiltrating” this newspaper, getting it to publish a two-part piece of baseless trash demonizing not just China but the Chinese Embassy here.
Chinese Embassy spokesman Ji Lingpeng should demand that he be given space equal to that given to the de facto American spokesman to debunk his claims.
Or The Manila Times should demand that Powell or the US Embassy here pay for the space for his two-part piece, which is really the nature of paid “advertorials” of embassies to air their views or publicize their activities. Given his deviousness, it is not beyond Powell to lie to his superiors that he paid The Manila Times editors a lot of dollars to get his piece published, and demand reimbursement.
By publishing Powell’s piece, The Manila Times has, in effect, endorsed a US government view to Filipino readers as if it were just another column in our domestic discourse.
There is no use, though, to debunk Powell’s piece, which is so sophomoric it reveals Powell’s background as a military man. The piece merely imposes that “bad-cop-good-cop” cliché to explain the new Chinese ambassador Jing Quan’s efforts to normalize diplomatic relations with the Philippines, which, in fact, we direly need to do to get China to either provide us directly with oil or convince its close ally Iran to let our oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Powell has been dishonestly and deliberately concealing his background. He bylined his article as Ray Powell, the name he has been using for two years now in spreading disinformation in the country about the disputes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea.
He never uses his official name and title: Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Raymond M. Powell. That identification would have alerted readers what the real motive of this hack is, and even ignore it altogether. Who the heck is Raymond M. Powell? The article had the note: “Ray Powell is the executive director of the SeaLight Foundation, a non-profit maritime transparency initiative based in California.” Sealight is not a Foundation: Powell claims it is to portray as a benevolent outfit. Sealight is simply what its mother unit calls.
Disinformation
This is classic US-style disinformation that hides the real nature of its propaganda outlets, which apparently includes Stratbase and Rappler. In this case, Powell tries to portray SeaLight as simply a crusading academe-based outfit that is non-profit and advocating “transparency.” SeaLight is an opaque outfit; its crusade is for the US agenda to demonize China.
The career of Ray Powell follows a clear and consistent trajectory that is hidden when he is presented simply as a “security expert.” He spent roughly 35 years in the United States Air Force, entering service in the mid-1980s and rising to the rank of colonel. Throughout that career, his work centered on intelligence, strategic planning and regional security, particularly in the Indo-Pacific — areas that place an officer squarely within the core of US national security operations.
His assignments were not confined to desk analysis. Powell served in roles connected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, environments where intelligence and operational planning are tightly integrated into combat strategy. Powell also served as US defense attaché to Australia and air attaché to Vietnam, positions that sit at the intersection of diplomacy, military coordination, and information-gathering. Defense attachés operate within embassies, representing US strategic interests while maintaining close ties with host-nation armed forces. His career also included assignments in the Philippines, Japan, Germany and Qatar, reflecting sustained involvement in international security environments and a particular focus on Asia.
Toward the latter part of his service, Powell’s work increasingly intersected with policy and strategy at higher levels, contributing to US defense planning in the Indo-Pacific.
A few months after retiring from the Air Force in 2021, Powell moved to the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. Was the job opening merely coincidental, just as he retired, or was the setting up of Gordian Knot in 2022 part of his service as intelligence officer of the US military?
In a thank you note to Powell following their meeting, posted on his Facebook page, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said: “Part of our continued engagement with security experts, Col. Powell — now founder and director of a maritime transparency project at Stanford University’s Gordon Knot Center — specializes in Indo-Pacific naval security and gray zone activities. His insights on the West Philippine Sea and regional dynamics are valuable as we work to uphold peace and stability through international cooperation.”
More revealing of Powell’s agenda is that his mother unit Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation is headed by Joe Felter, a former US Army Special Forces officer who became deputy assistant secretary of defense overseeing South and Southeast Asia. As a Special Forces A-Team Leader and Company Commander, he conducted Foreign Internal Defense and Security Assistance missions throughout East and Southeast Asia. While a military attaché in the Philippines, Felter helped develop the counterterrorist capabilities of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Strangely, while Felter was assistant secretary of defense only until 2019, the website of the “US Department of War” currently has a section on him describing his background (https://ift.tt/a6cq0Zz)
The center itself was launched as a unit in Stanford University with funding from the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research and is explicitly designed to address national security problems defined in Washington. In such a setting, the movement of figures like Powell into “analytical” roles is not incidental but entirely consistent. The ecosystem from which his work emerged is not neutral ground; it is firmly rooted in the strategic machinery of a foreign power.
The Gordian Knot Center, the next year, set up a smaller unit, “Project Myoushu.” Alerted later that the name sounded so conspiratorial, it was renamed SeaLight — of which Powell is director — which produces data-driven narratives focused almost solely on Chinese actions in contested waters.
‘Skillful hand’
“Project Myoushu” — a Chinese term meaning “the skillful hand” — was obviously its organizers’ way of sending the signal that China was its target. That was, in many ways, the more honest label. It captured precisely what the project does: the expert handling of information, selecting incidents, arranging data, and shaping narratives into a coherent storyline that appears objective. The later rebranding to SeaLight softens that reality, recasting the same activity as benign illumination — as if the project were merely shining a neutral beam on events at sea. In presentation — from internal craft to public persuasion. The ecosystem is obvious here, from US military service to a defense-linked academic center, to a maritime monitoring platform shaping regional discourse.
Never has Powell written an article, much less an academic piece, on the South China Sea territorial and maritime disputes. The body of information he has is all from intelligence briefs, his statements from the “messaging memos” that professional PR men provide US officials.
There is no record of him publishing peer-reviewed journal articles, no body of scholarly work subjected to academic scrutiny, and no contribution to the theoretical literature on maritime disputes or international law. What he produces instead are policy testimonies, operational analyses, and media commentary — outputs typical of a security practitioner engaged in strategic communication, not a scholar engaged in dispassionate inquiry.
To understand Powell’s milieu, one has to look at the institutional history of Stanford University itself. Stanford did not become a global powerhouse in isolation. Its postwar rise was deeply intertwined with the expansion of the United States’ military and intelligence establishment. From the 1950s onward, the university deliberately positioned itself as a bridge between academia, the Pentagon, and private industry, channeling defense funding into research programs that would later give birth to Silicon Valley. Early technology firms linked to Stanford grew on the back of military contracts, and the university’s engineering and scientific work often aligned with national security priorities.
Beyond defense
These links extended beyond general defense research into areas with clear intelligence implications. The Stanford Research Institute — originally part of Stanford before being spun off amid student protests — conducted projects funded by agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Work in cryptography, communications and early computer networking brought Stanford researchers into direct interaction with institutions like the National Security Agency, especially during the Cold War, when the boundaries between academic inquiry and classified research were often blurred. Even the early foundations of the internet were laid through Pentagon-funded programs in which Stanford played a role.
This pattern has not disappeared; it has simply evolved. Today, Stanford remains embedded in what is described as defense innovation ecosystem, collaborating with agencies such as the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and hosting programs explicitly designed to link academic talent with military problem-solving. The point is not that Stanford is a covert arm of the intelligence community — it is not — but that it has long functioned as one of the most important civilian partners of the US national security apparatus. Within such an environment, the movement of retired military officers into academic or quasi-academic roles is not anomalous but entirely natural.
What makes this even more troubling is how the Philippine media treats Powell’s output as if it were neutral, almost judicial in authority. It is sheer propaganda at the highest levels by the US Defense Department, helped by an academic institution.
Is Powell paid by the US Navy? Through several layers, yes. Powell has never disclosed this important data. He is not a salaried academic anchored in a university department. SeaLight, which he heads however, is a unit of the Gordian Center for National Security Innovation, which is funded by the US Office of Naval Research. I don’t think he works for free.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
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Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com
The post Retired US Air Force colonel ‘infiltrates’ Manila Times’ space first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.
Retired US Air Force colonel ‘infiltrates’ Manila Times’ space
Source: Breaking News PH
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