U.S. officials pointed out that long-haul ships secretly gather military communications, focusing on China: security risks of state-owned global networks are questionable

Reuters on September 1.According to two senior U.S. government officials, COSCO SHIPPING, the Chinese state-owned shipping giant, has used hidden, advanced signal intelligence equipment on some ships to spy on military communications near the coastline of a target country including the U.S. Both officials have requested anonymity, so details about the deployment of equipment, specific vessels and data acquisition are currently under the charge of U.S. government officials and have not been independently confirmed by court documents or open technical evidence.

Reuters quoted Reuters as saying the same day.According to the U.S. assessment, long-distance shipping and Beijing’s years of intelligence-gathering cooperation enable commercial shipping networks to reach important shipping routes in Europe, North America and Asia.A U.S. official said the equipment was intended to gather information on military communications technology and encryption progress and help monitor strategic maritime routes for trade and military navigation.

According to Reuters, the Chinese embassy in the United States denied the allegations, saying the US side said the allegations were "unfounded" and said Chinese enterprises were conducting commercial activities in accordance with the law. The report also said that China's long-range shipping has not responded to specific intelligence collection allegations at the time of publication.Given the current core evidence from anonymous officials, China's focus on "boat equipment collection of military communications" as a formal security accusation rather than the fact that has been confirmed by the judiciary.

China’s largest state-owned shipping group, China’s commercial fleet and port network covers the world’s major routes. Large state-owned shipping companies have long-term and regular natural conditions for entering foreign ports and coastal waters; if the U.S. is accused of eventually obtaining technical evidence or official document support, its security implications will not only involve a single enterprise, but will touch on whether the commercial logistics infrastructure is exploited by the national intelligence system.

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Defense has continued to look at Chinese enterprises with "military and civil integration" as a national security risk framework.U.S. Department of Defense Public StatementChina's military-civil integration strategy aims to allow the Liberation Army to acquire advanced technology and professional skills from Chinese enterprises, universities and research projects, including subjects with surface civilian properties. The current U.S. Section 1260H system is precisely according to this to identify enterprises that are identified as linked to the Chinese military system and operate in the U.S. directly or indirectly.

Focus on Chinese comments

Since Xi Jinping's reign, the Communist Party has further strengthened the Party's centralized leadership over state-owned enterprises, key infrastructures and national security systems. For the outside world, the question is not whether the three words "state enterprises" are sufficient in themselves to prove intelligence activities, but in a party country system that lacks independent justice, news supervision and transparency of corporate governance, whether the commercial network is called by the national security agencies provides a system of facilitation.

This risk also reveals a fundamental contradiction in the “military-civil integration” model of Xi’s regime: Beijing wants Chinese state-owned enterprises to be viewed as ordinary business entities in the global market, while also demanding that national economic, technological and transportation resources serve the so-called overall national security and military modernization. In the absence of transparent borders, foreign governments will become increasingly difficult to distinguish which business activities are entirely market behavior, which facilities, data and people may be incorporated into the security or military system when the country needs it. This ambiguity will eventually hurt the international reputation of Chinese enterprises themselves and drive the cost of security review of ports, shipping, communications and supply chain cooperation.

If the U.S. accusation is supported by subsequent public evidence, it will be an important case to observe how the Xi Jinping regime uses national intelligence capabilities to serve global commercial infrastructure; if subsequent evidence is insufficient, it is also necessary to be cautious about the U.S. accusation. The real public value pursuit is not to replace the evidence with a political stance, but to continuously question: which ships installed what equipment, who purchased and operated the equipment, where the data flows, whether there are formal directives between corporate management and national security agencies, and whether foreign ports and regulatory agencies have the relevant technical records.

The most awaiting is whether the U.S. government will publish more specific technical evidence, whether it will involve ships or investigative documents, and whether long-distance shipping will respond directly.Before this information appears, it can be confirmed that the U.S. has raised serious national security accusations, the Chinese embassy has denied it, and the specific facts about the actual implementation of long-distance shipping intelligence collection still need further public evidence verification.