Philippine marines living aboard a rusting World War II ship grounded at Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea have been eating fish from waters laced with cyanide, and their spokesman says an October 2025 incident may have gone further, with Chinese “fishermen” potentially attempting to introduce the toxin directly into the ship’s desalination system. In this episode, hosts Ray Powell and James Carouso sit down with Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Philippine Navy’s spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, to examine one of the most alarming accusations yet in the South China Sea dispute between the Philippines and China.

Trinidad explains how the Armed Forces of the Philippines seized bottles from Chinese fishermen on four separate occasions between February 2025 and March 2026, and how recently concluded forensic testing has confirmed that the contents had contained cyanide. Was it a matter of destructive fishing techniques or something more sinister?

He also discusses the July 2024 “provisional arrangement” on resupply missions to BRP Sierra Madre and why its ambiguity may be both a stabilizing asset and a long-term vulnerability for Philippine maritime security. He also walks through China’s massive military buildup at Second Thomas Shoal after the embarrassing Chinese ship-on-ship collision at Scarborough Shoal, and how Manila’s transparency strategy helped force a partial de-escalation.

The conversation then turns to information warfare. Trinidad explains why he pointedly refers not to “China” but to the “Chinese Communist Party”, in order to distinguish between the people of the Middle Kingdom and its government in Beijing. He also shares why being personally targeted by the Chinese Embassy in Manila - and being recently caricatured in a state-run Global Times political cartoon - is, in his view, a badge of honor for standing up to Beijing’s narrative campaigns.

Admiral Trinidad then talks about espionage, revealing how Chinese intelligence handlers recruited young Filipino defense workers via social media to gather information specifically about troops at Second Thomas Shoal and the resupply missions, and why he is urging Congress to replace the Philippines’ 1941-era anti-espionage law and pass new legislation on foreign malign influence.

Trinidad closes with a message to Chinese officials he says he knows will be listening: their reaction to Philippine transparency shows exactly where their vulnerabilities lie. He finally announces that he is now days away from retirement from his active duty service in the Philippine Navy - but intends to keep speaking out about the West Philippine Sea.

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At the start of 2025, Antelope Reef was little more than a sandbar in the Paracel Islands. Months later, it's on track to become China's largest artificial island in the South China Sea. In this episode, we sit down with Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program and the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at CSIS and author of On Dangerous Ground: America's Century in the South China Sea, to unpack what China is building, why it's building it now, and what it means for the region – and especially Vietnam.

Greg walks us through the latest satellite imagery, explains why the scale and speed of construction caught even seasoned analysts off guard, and lays out the military implications of a potential new airstrip in the western Paracels – the first in an area where Vietnamese fishermen have operated for generations.

We explore why both China and Vietnam claim the Paracel Islands, how Vietnam’s own massive island-building campaign in the Spratly Islands complicates the narrative, and why Hanoi’s response to Antelope Reef has been surprisingly restrained. The conversation turns to the broader geopolitical landscape: Vietnam’s strategic rebalancing between Washington and Beijing, the Philippines’ recalibration during its ASEAN chairmanship, and whether a South China Sea Code of Conduct can ever be more than symbolic.

With the 10th anniversary of the landmark 2016 Hague arbitral ruling approaching in July, we assess whether it has been a net positive or negative for the Philippines and the rules-based order. We also discuss middle-power alignment, the expanding Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, and what countries like the United States, Japan, and Australia should and shouldn’t do in response.

Whether you follow South China Sea tensions closely or are just trying to understand why a reef you’ve never heard of will soon be ready to receive combat aircraft and navy destroyers, this episode connects the dots between island-building, international law, great power competition and the future of the Indo-Pacific.

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The U.S. military just pulled off one of the most dramatic combat search and rescue missions in history, sending forces deep into Iran to recover the crew of a downed F‑15E Strike Eagle fighter. Aircraft were lost, firefights erupted, and both airmen came home alive. The last time America attempted something this ambitious inside Iran was Operation Eagle Claw in 1980 - and that ended in disaster.

In this episode, hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso sit down with two retired special operations colonels: Ioannis Koskinas (Air Force Special Operations, CEO of The Hoplite Group, former senior advisor to Generals McChrystal and Schwartz) and Joe Felter (Army Special Forces, Director of Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense).

As Felter puts it: no other country could have pulled this off, and no other country would have tried.

The conversation starts with the rescue: how it was planned in under 48 hours, how and why aircraft were lost at a forward staging site deep in Iran, and what separates this outcome from the 1980 failure. It then pivots to the broader war: where the conflict with Iran is headed, the risk of Gulf state escalation, and why both guests, drawing on painful experience from Afghanistan’s collapse, warn against assuming tactical brilliance equals strategic victory.

The episode closes with the Indo‑Pacific: what allies are thinking as American attention and resources once again pour into the Middle East, and whether the U.S. can fight in the Gulf without undermining its ability to deter China.

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👉 Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific