China’s state-owned shipping giant COSCO has secretly equipped commercial vessels with sophisticated technology to collect military communications near the United States and other countries, according to senior Trump administration officials.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters that COSCO has maintained a decades-long intelligence relationship with Beijing, allowing China to collect communications signals from ships and aircraft operating across North America, Europe and Asia.
The equipment aboard COSCO vessels consists of “sophisticated signals intelligence collection” systems rather than ordinary communications hardware, the officials said.
