There is a spectrum of information operations in Southeast Asia. At one end there are open and legitimate operations, which are generally acceptable to states, while at the other are hostile, deceptive and illegitimate operations by malign actors, which are generally considered as foreign interference that is not acceptable to the target states. For the purposes of this chapter, ‘malign actors’ refers to entities that carry out the latter operations, and ‘target states’ refers to states where such actions are taking place. These malign actors include both foreign and domestic entities, with different objectives in the target state:
To first examine foreign information operations, this research refers to the framework proposed in the 2022 S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) policy report, ‘Cases of Foreign Interference in Asia’.39 This framework is shown in Figure 1. In the figure, the actions encircled in green are generally acceptable to states, while those encircled in red are generally not acceptable to Southeast Asian states.
In the RSIS framework, ‘influence’ is the ability to shape the preferences of others using ‘information’ and/or ‘interference’. ‘Soft power’ is a well-accepted form of influence through appeal and attraction, which includes non-coercive means like culture, political values, foreign policies,40 public diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign aid, civic action, economic reconstruction and development, film, TV, books, and other media, economic ties, trade, business, and open ties with educational institutions and think tanks.
Information is another form of influence. Most Southeast Asian states accept information that spreads through open means, including media syndication (for example, foreign TV shows such as Game of Thrones are popular in Southeast Asia), media ownership (for example, foreign- owned TV channels such as CNN, Fox News, CCTV and CGTN are widely watched in Southeast Asia), open advertisement campaigns (for example, advertisements for foreign businesses like McDonalds are common in local Southeast Asian newspapers), op-eds where authorship is transparent (such as commentaries written by foreigners and published in local newspapers), and public statements (for example, by foreign diplomats or business leaders) with ‘hostile intent’ to disrupt their politics and policies deliberately, covertly and deceptively. For example, Singapore has described such actions as a ‘live and serious threat for Singapore’ and refers to them as ‘hostile information campaigns’ (HICs).41 This term is also used by some European scholars to describe Russian activities in hybrid warfare.42 There is no official or statutory definition in Singapore, but HICs usually describes covert or coordinated attempts by malign actors to penetrate different segments and levels of society to create and spread information that will manipulate public sentiment and harm national interests.43 This chapter uses the term ‘HICs’ to refer to information operations that are hostile actions.
In contrast, Southeast Asian states will not tolerate ‘information operations’ that are undertaken. Interference, as defined in the RSIS framework, is the other unacceptable means of influence exerted by malign actors, where the malign actor acts (with or without information operations) with hostile intent to disrupt the politics and policies of the target state deliberately, covertly and deceptively. These actions include covert funding (bribes) or coercion (blackmail) of politicians and political parties, government officials, influential people and business groups, NGOs and activists, academics, and educational institutions. Accusations of foreign interference in elections have been made in Malaysia and the Philippines, but lie beyond the scope of this chapter.44
These definitions, particularly the element of covert action to disrupt states, can be applied to several recent reports on China’s growing influence in Southeast Asian media, highlighting that China’s Xinhua News Agency has established content exchange deals with many Southeast Asian news services and that Chinese chambers of commerce have sponsored trips for journalists.45 These actions would not fall within the RSIS definition of HICs because they are public, not covert, and they seek to create a positive view of China, not to harm the target states. Southeast Asian states do not appear to be raising alarms over these actions and note that Western news agencies and businesses also do the same. However, if any malign actor were to carry out similar actions covertly, the response might be different.
HICs can obscure themselves by employing different media and channels to address different segments of society. Sometimes the target state may detect unusual activity during times of tension between states, which the target state then attributes to HICs.
For example, when Singapore and Malaysia were disputing maritime and airspace issues in 2018, Singapore noticed a ‘curious spike’ in online comments critical of Singapore on social media, using anonymous accounts, and instances where ‘avatar accounts’ (that is, accounts whose profile photos do not show the user’s face) accounted for about 40% of comments on the social media pages of alternative media.46 While Singapore described this as an HIC, it did not attribute the action to any state. However, the minister for home affairs noted in Parliament in 2019 that when states are in conflict, one can use an HIC to destabilise the other.47 For the purposes of this chapter, these actions appear to constitute an HIC because they are covert and coordinated actions (anonymous accounts) aimed at manipulating sentiment against the interests of the target state (turning Singaporean public sentiment against the country’s position on maritime and airspace rights).
Singapore considers HICs such a ‘live and serious threat’ that it convened a Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods in 2018, with public oral representations from 65 individuals and organisations. This event culminated in a 176-page report which found that Singapore ‘has been and will continue to be a target of hostile information campaigns’ which attack the country’s national security, racial harmony, democratic processes, social cohesion and trust in public institutions.48 Singapore has since passed legislation against deliberate online falsehoods (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act) and foreign interference (FICA).
While various Southeast Asian states have detected, or at least strongly suspected, cases of HICs, there is no published research measuring the impact of these campaigns. There are no published datasets that contain data which is observable, replicable and verifiable. These criteria would be necessary for measuring impact, for example using a model like the Breakout Scale from Brookings, which measures impact based on whether information remains on one platform or travels across multiple platforms, and whether it remains in one community or is spread through many communities.49 However, this requires data-gathering and analytics capabilities that are either lacking in Southeast Asian states or are only available to state intelligence services and are kept classified.
This is a global issue, as empirical research on the impacts of such operations, such as altering beliefs, changing voting behaviour or inspiring political violence, is still limited and is focused on Western countries and their platforms.50 However, since some of the known studies show that targeted information operations can lead to increased political violence in settings of conflict or civil unrest, the threat posed by such operations cannot be dismissed.51 Further research is needed, especially in Southeast Asian states, to measure the impact of these operations. This will require funding, access to data, cross-disciplinary cooperation and, above all, the political will to drive these factors.
Leading up to the introduction of legislation against HICs, Singapore has highlighted several instances of information operations conducted by foreign malign actors. Some of these are decades old, and they do not involve China, Russia, Iran or North Korea, but, importantly, they do illustrate that Singapore does not welcome foreign interference from either east or west.
In 1964, a Singaporean businessman received a substantial loan from high-ranking officials of a communist intelligence service based in Hong Kong to establish the Eastern Sun, an English-language daily newspaper in Singapore, giving these officials access to the press in Singapore.52 The businessman confessed and the paper closed with the resignation of the editorial staff.53 This fits the definition of an HIC because it was a covert action (the loan was private) to manipulate sentiment against the target state’s interests (Singapore was fighting communism at the time).
In 1971, Singapore revoked the licence of the Singapore Herald for spreading misinformation to work up feelings against Singapore’s compulsory military service policy, and expelled three foreign journalists working for the newspaper.54 One of the paper’s primary investors was Donald Stephens, then Malaysian high commissioner to Australia. This also fits the definition of an HIC because it was a coordinated action to manipulate sentiment against the target state’s interests (Singapore was building its defence force at the time).
A Hoover Institution report, China’s Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance, has observed that in 2016, when Singapore became ASEAN country coordinator, Chinese diplomats called on Singapore to manage ASEAN’s discussion on South China Sea issues, while messages began to appear on social media that appeared to ‘instil a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitability and desirability of a Chinese identity for multiracial Singapore and to get Singaporeans—and not just Chinese Singaporeans—to pressure the government to align Singapore’s national interests with China’s interests’.55 These messages have not been attributed to any actor, but the report notes that they ‘resemble arguments made in the Chinese media, in particular the Global Times’.
Already mentioned is the more recent 2018 spike in social media comments critical of Singapore at a time when neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore were in the midst of maritime and airspace disputes. The comments covered not only maritime and airspace, but also traffic jams at land checkpoints.56
Malaysia has also alleged HICs without using the same terminology, but the circumstances are murky. This section draws on the work of Gulizar Haciyakupoglu to analyse the allegations.57 In 2018, the government urged foreign press to stop circulating ‘fake news’ that might damage then prime minister Najib Razak’s campaign for the 14th general election.58 The news reports alleged that millions of US dollars misappropriated from deposits in 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a government-owned investment fund, had gone into Najib’s personal account.59 However, a subsequent post-election criminal investigation of Najib has shown that the reports may have been accurate, and not an HIC. In any event, this does not exactly fit the definition of an HIC because the news stories were public and not covert or coordinated.
Throughout the 2018 election campaign, leading politicians accused rival party members of inviting foreign interference or receiving foreign funding or support. Without substantiation or evidence, these appear to have been attempts at discrediting rivals and deflecting from real issues, rather than actual instances of foreign interference or HICs.60
This is not to say that there is no real threat of foreign HICs in Malaysia. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) found that in the same election, Twitter bots (automated inauthentic accounts used to artificially inflate numbers of engagements online and manipulate public opinion) with Cyrillic names were responsible for two hashtag campaigns, #SayNOtoPH and #KalahkanPakatan (Defeat Pakatan). DFRLab suggested that the bots were generated by Russian-speaking ‘bot herders’ on behalf of the then-ruling National Front (Barisan Nasional) party or its supporters,61 so it remains in question whether the malign actors ultimately responsible for the campaign were foreign or domestic. In any event, this action could fit the definition of an HIC because it was a covert action (by artificial accounts) to manipulate public sentiment, arguably against the interests of the target state (to keep an allegedly corrupt government in power).
In 2020, Facebook announced that it had removed two networks for violating its policy against ‘foreign or government interference’ that consists of ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ (multiple fake accounts sharing similar information to manipulate public opinion). One of these networks originated from individuals in Fujian, China, and the other from the Philippines.
The first network, with 155 accounts, 11 pages, nine groups and six Instagram accounts, originated in China and focused on the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It supported Chinese naval activity in the South China Sea, then-president Rodrigo Duterte, and the potential run of Duterte’s daughter for the 2022 presidential election, and criticised Rappler, a media outlet that is a vocal opponent of the president.62 Graphika Labs analysed the dataset and noted that its other content reflected Chinese messaging on issues such as the Hong Kong protests, Taiwan’s independence and the Covid-19 pandemic.63
This campaign is interesting because it only spent $60 on advertising, it could not be conclusively attributed to a state actor and, importantly, it supported the ruling government and criticised its opponents. The target state would not be inclined to label this as an HIC because the action, although covert and coordinated (inauthentic accounts), was arguably not against the interests of the target state (nor the ruling government).
The second network of coordinated inauthentic behaviour originated in the Philippines and focused on domestic political issues for domestic audiences.64
The Malaysian and Philippines examples illustrate an inconvenient reality of information operations in Southeast Asia: domestic malign actors account for most of the reported cases, and in some cases governments are accused of being the sources of domestic disinformation.
Allegations of foreign interference or foreign information operations are used as election tactics to discredit rivals, or to suppress criticism of government policies and politicians, or to dismiss opposing views of any sort.
In Indonesia, observers have reported on ‘cyber troops’ (groups tasked with manipulating public opinion online on behalf of political parties or the government) that overlap with ideologically motivated groups and social media influencers supporting the same causes.65 The cyber troops’ activities include micro-targeting messages and ‘trolling’ (harassing) opponents and journalists.66 Both major opposing parties in the recent elections are reported to have employed ‘buzzers’ and ‘micro-celebrities’ to run multiple fake accounts to share political narratives for their respective parties.67 One information campaign in 2016 targeted the then governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as Ahok), and resulted in hundreds of thousands protesting on the streets of Jakarta.68
In the 2020 Myanmar elections, politicians and the military are alleged to have spread rumours, misinformation and disinformation through social media, print media and word of mouth to target political opponents and minority groups. The extremist Ma Ba Tha movement is alleged to have used disinformation campaigns targeting the then-ruling National League for Democracy party, then-state counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi, and Rohingya/Muslims.69
This came after the tragic inter-ethnic conflict in Myanmar in 2017, where the UN recognised that elements of the Myanmar army had committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya minority, fuelled in large part by hate speech and disinformation that had been spreading from at least 2014 to 2017 on Facebook, often through accounts and pages controlled by the Myanmar army.70
The Indonesia and Myanmar cases could be described as HICs because they were covert actions (fake accounts) or coordinated actions (pages controlled by the Myanmar army) aimed at manipulating sentiment against the interests of the target state (inciting unrest or violence against certain groups), even though the malign actor may have been the ruling government.
Southeast Asian states also face information operations from malign actors who are loosely organised but share a common ideology or belief that can be dangerous when it morphs into extremism. This includes Hindu extremists, Muslim extremists and Buddhist extremists, who spread hate speech through social media, leading to lynching and other forms of violence.71 It also includes ‘anti-vaxxers’ spreading Covid-19 misinformation during the pandemic, which is seriously undermining public health efforts in Southeast Asian states.72 The prominent anti-vaxxer groups in Southeast Asia appear to be domestic and not controlled by foreign malign actors, although they draw much of their material from foreign sources.73 Are these groups malign actors, victims of deception, ‘useful idiots’ or some combination thereof? Did they seek out the foreign information, or was it pushed to them? If a foreign state is responsible for creating or promoting Covid-19 misinformation in the first place (as Russia and China have both been accused of74), does this make the foreign state ultimately responsible as the malign actor, even if the affected state was not a direct target? All these questions merit investigation and further research.
The countermeasures that governments in Southeast Asia have taken against information operations include:
Under POFMA, the government can issue ‘correction directions’ that require social media platforms to display correction notices to their users in Singapore, next to the information or post that is labelled as an online falsehood. Since the start of the global pandemic, Singapore has issued several correction directions under POFMA against Facebook, Twitter and media company SPH magazines over false claims about Covid-19.81 These corrections were generally welcomed by the public.
However, during the 2020 general election, the authorities issued correction directions about certain comments made by opposition politicians, some of which were critical of the government. This raised fears that POFMA was being used to silence criticism of the government.82 One scholar suggests that POFMA could diminish public trust in this way, citing the ruling government’s diminished performance in the 2020 general election as an indication of a fall in public trust.83
Singapore also passed FICA in 2021, to prevent foreign entities from using HICs and local proxies (called ‘politically significant persons’ in the Act) to interfere in Singapore’s politics, including acts of foreign interference ‘by covert means using electronic communications’. The minister for law clarified in Parliament that FICA did not apply to Singaporeans acting of their own accord, foreigners who made open, attributable comments, or foreign political observers and commentators.84 Rather, it would cover instances where a foreign state (or its proxies) covertly offers a local politician or journalist incentives to influence what they say in public.
It has been suggested that some other Southeast Asian governments are less likely to use legislation against disinformation campaigns since Malaysia repealed its Anti-Fake News Act in 2018 and the Philippines did not pass its proposed law against fake news.85
However, laws against disinformation or fake news are clearly being used by other Southeast Asian governments, such as Vietnam’s Cyber Security Law (which covers false information on social media) and Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Act. Prosecutions have been made in Thailand and Indonesia for allegedly spreading false information about Covid-19, and even in Malaysia, a journalist has been arrested for her social media posts on the subject. The speed of these actions and gaps in government accountability have raised fears from local critics and Western observers that Southeast Asian governments might use the pandemic as an excuse to suppress unfavourable content.86
Governments in Southeast Asia have a special dilemma in responding to information operations, because they are often accused of being perpetrators in the first place, as discussed above. Existing legislation is seen as already infringing on freedom of expression, and government actions are seen as another way to suppress dissent.87
In this environment, the burden has fallen on non-governmental fact-checking efforts instead, such as the Thai News Agency’s Sure and Share Center and Indonesia’s Fakta atau Hoax (Fact or Hoax) and Mafindo projects.88 In Myanmar, civil society organisations such Panzagar, Myanmar ICT for Development Organisation, the Myanmar Tech Accountability Network and Phandeeyar work to mitigate social media risks, running anti-hate speech campaigns and fact-checking propaganda emails.89 In the Philippines, the Rappler media organisation reports on the spread of government propaganda on social media, as well as misogyny, human rights violations, and corruption in government. In response, the government has accused Rappler and its editor, Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa, of spreading disinformation and has levied criminal charges, including a conviction for cyber libel.90
From this brief survey of information operations in Southeast Asia, it can be seen that hostile actions can be carried out by domestic entities, including political parties and even the ruling government, with no discernible support from overseas. While the impact on the public is no less negative—polarisation, mutual distrust, spread of dangerous false information—the domestic source makes countermeasures difficult, especially where the government is suspected of using such measures to stifle legitimate free speech, or where trust in government is already low.
A comprehensive set of countermeasures must then come from a whole-of-society effort, since Southeast Asian governments cannot provide them alone. Journalists, fact-checkers, NGOs, educators, governments, social media platforms, influential persons and ordinary citizens all have different parts to play. At the same time, however, these entities may be contesting each other for the information space or may have opposing ideas of what information is acceptable or not. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to put aside their differences and cooperate enough to counter the hostile information operations coming from malign actors.
Benjamin Ang is Senior Fellow and Deputy Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS) at RSIS in Singapore, where he leads CENS’s Cyber and Homeland Defence Programme, which explores policy issues around international cyber norms, cyber threats, strategic communications and disinformation, law enforcement technology and cybercrime, smart city cyber issues, and national security issues in disruptive technology. Benjamin graduated from NUS Law School and has an MBA and MS-MIS from Boston University. He also serves on the executive committee of the Internet Society Singapore Chapter.
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