Escalation is a synthetic process. Whereas tensions in the South China Sea may be evolving based on the actions of navies and foreign ministries, one cannot discount the rhetoric and nationalism that underpins the intensification and incorporates the public. We inhabit a unique age in which the institutionalization of cybersecurity and cybertechnology has not reached the point at which civilian actors are rendered insignificant. As a result the conflict in the South China Sea has a cyber-dimension that continues to evolve and escalate.

The most recent and prevailing conflict in the South China Sea has been between China and the Philippines, with differing claims over Scarborough Shoal/Huangyan Island intensifying in the last year. The Diplomat reported in May that Chinese hackers, egged on by bombastic official statements on both sides, attacked the University of the Philippines’ website, leading to retaliation from Filipino hackers in the form of vandalism on Chinese websites. Back and forth attacks continued through May 11 with bilateral calls for sensibility going unheeded. In the Philippines’ case, President Aquino’s deputy spokesperson Abigain Valte, The Philippines’ Department of Science Technology and Information, and the Communications Technology Office all condemned the attacks and called for their end.

As a chart created by Hackmageddon.com shows (below), Philippine hacker organizations such as “PrivateX” and “Anonymous #OccupyPhilippines” carried out attacks on Chinese government infrastructure, while Chinese hackers defaced Philippine newspapers, conducted DDOS attacks and stole and published passwords of Philippine government administrators.

Though one might make a case for China’s interest in this kind of back-and-forth, however for the Philippines, as their government’s position has evidenced, such “civil escalation” only compounds their existing problems. The Occupy movement within the United States and its associated cyber movement showed how domestic politics can be influenced by an elite few with esoteric knowledge. What then of the foreign policy dimension?

What is perhaps unique about this most recent show is that the Chinese government has been acting not as a duplicitous player profiting off the digital grey zone, but rather as an unrelated non-regulator that has allowed a patriotic domestic public to add heat to an already flaring situation. On the Philippine side relations have been soured by Shakespearean retribution-cycles that are exacerbated by the government’s inability to identify and intervene against these individuals.

What we must consider here is the shifting landscape. While it is conceivable that one day there might be a central infrastructure to regulate internet behavior, I should hope it would never come to that. The most important lesson one can learn in cybersecurity is how the digital domain can impact the “real world.” Insofar as the South China Sea is concerned, international relations are being impacted, if not dictated, by the actions of an elite few. The other side of the cyberwarfare coin is perhaps its most efficacious element – that an attack that can cripple businesses, foreign relations and government entities can be engineered by an individual at little-to-no capital cost. Fujitsu’s contract to develop a cyberweapon for the Japanese government was only $2.3 million, less than one third the cost of a single Apache helicopter, yet it could easily engineer or arrest an attack many times that value.

One counter-argument against alarmism could be that civil attacks will only raise civil tensions, while military encounters will raise military tensions. To some extent this is true, yet one must consider the effect of rhetoric on the berth given to naval vessels. Within their purview, a cultural hatred could manifest as provocative behavior that serves to ignite real conflict. Obviously conventional warfare between the Philippines and China would be a one-sided affair, so perhaps this cyber activity is but an outlet for the Philippines’ emasculation. This does not serve to explain the Chinese public’s aggression, however, and should not be interpreted as a psychological breakdown of a geostrategic problem.

At the end of the day it comes to the nature of the dialogue. As China’s CCTV makes a slip of the tongue claiming sovereignty over the Philippines, so too does it issue provocative statements and claims which put it in direct conflict with the Philippines. The Philippines is not absent blame for the escalation but one cannot help but to look at territorial conflicts from Gaza to Dokdo to see that they assume a personal dimension. As claims to an island or a shoal become a matter of national pride, as contests over them become an assault on the nation, and as the government uses increasingly provocative language to engage the nation, the public becomes agitated and the natural expression of these invoked emotions, in the technophile’s world, becomes a form of unlicensed cyberwarfare that may one day prove the spark to geopolitical tinder. Rather than trying to control the internet, states must look to the message they are sending to their public and understand that as public knowledge asymptotally approaches perfection, rhetoric won’t cut it anymore.