Global experts warn: Gray zone tactics and emerging tech escalate security risks in Europe, Indo-Pacific
By: Stratbase | Published: September 19, 2025
Reading Time: 4 minutes
These urgent warnings were raised at the high-level forum, “Navigating Asymmetric Threats: Cross-Regional Strategies for Europe and the Indo-Pacific,” convened by the Stratbase Institute in partnership with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) at The Conservatory, The Peninsula Manila on September 18, 2025.
The full-day gathering underscored how Europe and the Indo-Pacific have become strategic flashpoints for asymmetric threats.
Rear Admiral Guillaume Pinget, Commander of the French Armed Forces in the Pacific, described how these challenges “have become a strategic tool.”
He warned that “the use of force in state disputes is now uninhibited.”
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“A technological race is taking place in parallel. AI, drone, space, information, cyber, and electronic spectrum adds new areas of confrontation, while we still have to keep our confrontational core… It is a threat to our economic, democratic, political model, individual freedom, freedom of our nations and people,” he explained.
Stratbase Institute President Prof. Victor Andres “Dindo” Manhit emphasized the urgency of coordinated action, pointing out how interlinked the two regions have become.
“The nations and the people of Europe and the Indo-Pacific share more things than one might imagine. We may be halfway across the world from each other but changing times have narrowed the gaps and have intertwined our present and our future. Security and prosperity are our common goals, and both regions are equally driven to achieve this for their people,” he said.
Manhit added that with geopolitical opportunities at risk, the Institute will continue to champion cooperation with partners from government, the private sector, and the diplomatic community.
National Security Adviser and National Security Council Director General Eduardo Año highlighted the areas where cooperation must be strengthened, including energy, security, critical infrastructure, and advanced technologies.
“Shared stakes and closer coordination in freedom of navigation and stability especially across the troubled and turbulent waters of the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the West Philippine Sea and East China Sea should be our main armors in conflict prevention and diplomacy. Let us put in mind that no ASEAN member states seek conflict, but all face the risk of consequences of escalation,” he said.
Año called for alternatives that build resilience among partners: “Exploring other diplomatic alternatives such as developing assistance, education, infrastructure and health, which offer partners choices beyond dependence on a single country such as China, is something we can work on together.” He also underscored the importance of “ASEAN-centric mechanisms” for dialogue and escalation management, stressing that “sustained engagement and long-term cooperation between Europe and the Indo-Pacific… ensure our momentum.”
Looking ahead, Año noted the potential of innovation and technology in strengthening defense.
“The way ahead for us should be about innovation strategy and harnessing new technologies as tools for collective security. Despite unprecedented risks, I am optimistic that our regions have the resources, the capacities and willpower to shape the future,” he stressed.
For ECFR Distinguished Visiting Fellow James Crabtree, the shared experience of like-minded states is essential to addressing new threats.
“Those of us who live in Europe have been watching with rising alarm at the events on our eastern frontier with Russian drones in Poland, Russian helicopters in Estonia… Here in the Philippines, we saw only yesterday another example of the grey zone activity that your military and your Navy and your Coast Guard have to cope with on a regular basis, not to mention rising incidents of the threats to cable infrastructure and other examples in Taiwan and elsewhere around the region,” he said.
Across four in-depth panels, experts explored the ripple effects of U.S. security policy shifts under the Trump administration, the rise of lawfare as a coercive weapon, the fragility of undersea cables as lifelines of global communication, and the disruptive double edge of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), drones, and satellites.
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