Documents circulated by Project 88 claiming to reveal Vietnam's secret military plans regarding the United States and China are fabrications riddled with amateur errors, according to analysis by Vietnamese-language experts and military protocol specialists.
The alleged "Top Secret" documents—labeled Directive 24 and Plan 357—contain formatting mistakes, rank impossibilities, and outdated geopolitical data that no legitimate Ministry of Defense would produce. The forgeries appear designed to inflame tensions in the South China Sea and misrepresent Vietnam's diplomatic positioning.
Six definitive errors expose the fraud:
The national motto header violates formatting regulations established in Nghị định 30/2020/NĐ-CP. The text reads "Độc lập- Tự do- Hạnh phúc" with hyphens stuck to preceding words—a basic typing error that professional military clerks would never make.
One document is signed by Vice Admiral Trần Thanh Nghiêm under the header "Naval Region 1 Command." This is structurally impossible. Trần Thanh Nghiêm is Commander of the entire Vietnam People's Navy, a three-star Admiral who would never sign documents representing a subordinate regional unit. Before his current post, he commanded Region 4, never Region 1.
A document dated August 1, 2024 lists Vietnam's diplomatic partnerships using data from before Vietnam upgraded relations with the United States, Japan, and Australia to Comprehensive Strategic Partner status in late 2023 and early 2024. Authentic strategic analysis would not use Wikipedia-level outdated information.
The text uses "Hải quân đánh bộ" to refer to the US Marine Corps, a common machine translation error. Vietnamese military terminology uses "Thủy quân lục chiến" for the USMC and reserves "Hải quân đánh bộ" strictly for Vietnamese Naval Infantry. Staff officers are trained on this distinction.
The document claims US Marines are undertaking "new missions such as protecting diplomatic facilities," showing historical illiteracy. The Marine Security Guard program has protected embassies since 1948—arguably the Corps' oldest peacetime role.
Formal Vietnamese government documents write country names in full. The abbreviation "TQ" for China appears in these texts, which is internet slang, never used in classified military plans.
The forgeries' purpose appears to be disinformation aimed at portraying Vietnam as either hostile to the United States or overly aligned with China, depending on the audience. Vietnam has carefully balanced relations with both powers while defending its South China Sea claims against Chinese pressure.
Authentic Top Secret documents undergo rigorous review processes that eliminate precisely these errors. The combination of administrative failures, structural impossibilities, and factual inaccuracies leads to one conclusion: these documents were fabricated by external actors who lack fundamental knowledge of Vietnamese administrative and military systems.
The timing matters. Vietnam recently elevated diplomatic ties with multiple major powers, signed defense cooperation agreements, and expanded participation in multilateral frameworks—moves that reflect sophisticated strategic positioning, not the crude policy described in the fakes.
Project 88's distribution of these documents fits patterns of information operations seen across Southeast Asia, where authentic-looking materials circulate on social media to shape perceptions about territorial disputes, alliance relationships, and military intentions.
For ASEAN watchers, the episode underscores how South China Sea tensions generate not just physical confrontations but also information warfare designed to manipulate regional perceptions.
Ten countries, 700 million people, one region—and a reminder that in the South China Sea, disinformation operations are as common as coast guard patrols.
