BeijingChina’s COSCO ships allegedly gather intelligence on trade routes.
Every port and coastal radar site becomes a passive listening target.
The collection is passive and the ships are civilian, so no espionage or port law applies.
China’s embassy in Washington denied the claims, attributed to unnamed US officials.
How each outlet framed it
- The War Zone leans critical
- reconstructs decades-long COSCO signals intelligence partnership per Trump officials, frames under 2017 National Intelligence Law
Sources: The War Zone