China's State Shipping Giant COSCO Accused of Running a Floating Spy Network Against the US

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A Hidden Intelligence Operation at Sea

Two senior officials in the Trump administration told reporters that COSCO, China's state-controlled shipping conglomerate, has built a long-running intelligence partnership with the Chinese government. According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, concealed equipment aboard COSCO vessels is capable of intercepting signals from ships and aircraft across Europe, North America and Asia.

One official said the equipment is designed to help Beijing study "military communications technologies and encryption developments." The same official said the program also enables China to monitor vital shipping lanes used for both trade and military movement.

COSCO did not respond when asked for comment. China's embassy in Washington rejected the claims outright, insisting that Beijing never compels companies to gather intelligence abroad in violation of local laws.

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Beijing Pushes Back — but Suspicion Runs Deep

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy accused Washington of spreading a baseless narrative meant to damage China's reputation. This is a familiar pattern: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) routinely denies accusations of state-directed espionage, even as independent research consistently points to close, mandatory ties between Chinese companies and the country's military and intelligence services.

Under Chinese law, companies are legally required to cooperate with government intelligence work when asked. That legal reality alone raises questions about how independent any major Chinese state enterprise, including COSCO, can truly claim to be.

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Not the First Warning Sign

This is far from the first time COSCO has drawn scrutiny from Washington. The Pentagon placed the company on its official list of firms linked to the Chinese military in January 2025. That designation does not trigger direct sanctions, but it bars COSCO from U.S. government contracts and damages the company's standing with partners who want to avoid legal or reputational risk.

Members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security raised similar alarms earlier that same month. In a formal letter to the U.S. Coast Guard, lawmakers warned that COSCO's deep presence in American ports created openings for espionage, cyberattacks, sabotage and disruptions to critical supply chains. They specifically pointed to reports that CCP political officers are often embedded within the crews of Chinese state-owned merchant ships — a detail that underscores how closely Beijing keeps watch over its own commercial fleet.

Separately, a report from the U.S. Naval War College concluded in 2025 that China's military very likely uses the country's commercial and fishing fleets to support intelligence-gathering operations. Taken together, these independent assessments paint a picture of a shipping industry that functions as more than a business — it appears to double as an extension of Chinese state power.

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A Company Too Big to Simply Cut Off

Despite the mounting concerns, COSCO remains one of the largest shipping operators calling at U.S. ports, with multiple joint ventures running container terminals across the country. Isaac Kardon, a scholar of Chinese maritime strategy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, noted that removing COSCO from American supply chains would carry serious economic consequences given how deeply the company is embedded in U.S. trade networks.

That dependency helps explain why the Trump administration's earlier plan to impose steep port fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels, including COSCO's ships, was paused rather than implemented outright. The fees were designed to help rebuild America's long-neglected shipbuilding industry and reduce reliance on Chinese-controlled maritime infrastructure — a goal consistent with the administration's broader push to counter Beijing's economic leverage.

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What Comes Next

The timing of these new espionage claims is notable. President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are due to meet in Washington later this month for a high-level summit covering trade and security matters. A separate trade agreement reached last October, which paused the escalating tariff dispute between the two countries, is set to expire in November.

Whether the fresh intelligence allegations affect the tone of the upcoming talks remains to be seen. But they add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that Washington's concerns about Chinese state enterprises operating on American soil — and along American coastlines — are not going away anytime soon.

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Sources

1. Reuters – "Chinese shipper COSCO collects intel for Beijing with concealed equipment, US officials say" – https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-shipper-cosco-collects-intel-beijing-with-concealed-equipment-us-2026-09-01/
2. U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security – Official press release and letter to U.S. Coast Guard on COSCO national security risks – https://homeland.house.gov/?p=6380
3. Select Committee on the CCP – Full text of the January 2025 letter to the U.S. Coast Guard – https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025.01.22-Letter-to-USCG-re-COSCO-Shipping-Threats.pdf
4. The Maritime Executive – "China's COSCO Shipping Listed by U.S. for Links to Chinese Military" – https://maritime-executive.com/article/china-s-cosco-shipping-listed-by-u-s-for-links-to-chinese-military

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