This is in connection with the news item, “‘Recipe for disaster’: Intel official warns vs. China-backed telco in PH,” (Inquirer.net, 9/17/19).
The report included a photo showing three military officers standing beside President Duterte’s friend, Dennis Uy, owner of Dito Telecommunity Corp., after signing a memorandum of agreement allowing the installation of telecommunications infrastructure within military camps. It was a stomach-churning sight!
What made me puke even more was an earlier report stating that Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana did not know about the agreement, which at least three of his officers were party to.
How could these military men, whose job is to defend and secure this country against threats, do such a thing behind the back of their superior, the secretary of defense at that?
Wars are won or lost depending on the knowledge of what opponents think and do. Intelligence-gathering is essential in preventing wars and keeping the peace, or win if it cannot be prevented.
The job of officials and agents in the community is to gather information through the employment of human assets or human intelligence (humint) and through signals culled from transmitters and listening posts called sigint (signals intelligence).
It may also be possible that some of those Chinese workers and tourists coming to the country are intelligence agents.
Mr. Duterte’s closeness to China, as evidenced by his many statements, his frequent visits there and his elbow-rubbing with his Davao City-based Chinese friends, make many of us suspect that he may be sleeping with the enemy.
It makes us shiver in fear over the realization that we are not only seeing the enemy at the gates, that we are not only surrounded by them, but that the enemy has already penetrated deeply in our midst.
RAMON MAYUGA,
ramon.mayuga49@gmail.com