Fox News broadcaster Cheryl Casone recently noted that the U.S. has accused COSCO, the PRC shipping giant, “of using concealed equipment aboard commercial vessels to collect military intelligence on strategic maritime routes.”
That American officials are saying something about it right now is news. The conclusion is not new.
Reuters reported on September 1 that the U.S. believes that COSCO “has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing. The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia.” (China’s response: Who, us? “ ‘We oppose vilifying China by peddling the so-called “intelligence collection” narrative, which is totally baseless,’ embassy spokesperson Liu Chang told Reuters.” Dude, stop. Seriously.)
Fox’s Casone was leading into an interview with a frequent commentator on China, Gordon Chang of the Gatestone Institute.
Every point of contact
Chang: “We shouldn’t be surprised because China uses every point of contact to surveil the United States. And some of it is legal, but much of it is illegal. And these COSCO ships, which are really important….
“What we’ve got is an entity which is deeply embedded in our trade system [and] is spying on us…. Those port cranes that we’ve been buying from China: those included communication devices that were not part of the original specifications, and they were sending information back to China. So, yes, China is learning a lot about us, and that’s in preparation for attacks on the American homeland.”
Casone: “You believe that? I mean, because COSCO, just to be clear, it’s one of the world’s largest shipping companies. But you believe that this [i.e., preparation for an attack on the U.S.] is the reason that this is happening on these ships?”
Chang: “We know that they’ve been using other devices at ports to try to find and obtain information. So this is part of a comprehensive plan that we’ve known about for a very long time. Now, COSCO was added to the Pentagon’s blacklist only in January 2025. It should have been earlier. And the reason [that COSCO would be doing this], of course, is that…China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires every Chinese national and every Chinese entity to spy if demanded. Plus, also, in the Communist Party’s top-down system, no Chinese party can ever deny or ever reject a request from the Communist Party—their demands. So this is an all-comprehensive effort against the United States. We should be doing much more about it.”
Iran’s nuclear program
Casone asked about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent suggestion that China is pretty much on the side of the U.S. when it comes to Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
The Washington Post reported on September 1 that “Bessent said repeatedly this week [during the G-20 meeting of finance ministers] that the U.S. and China have more they agree on than disagree on with respect to Iran. He said they are aligned on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and resuming free trade in the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which more than 20 percent of the world’s liquid petroleum supply moved before the conflict. Bessent’s conversations with Chinese officials were ‘productive’ and intentionally ‘quiet,’ he said, but there was no specific agreement yet with China related to the strait.”
There’s that delusional “quiet diplomacy” again.
Chang: “Iran has the nuclear weapons program because of China. China directly and indirectly supplied the components, the equipment, the materials for Iran to build a bomb. So I think the United States needs to talk about this….
“The Chinese propaganda machine from the beginning of the war has been maliciously coming after us, saying we’ve been disrupting the international system. But we don’t hear the U.S. government come back and say: Look, the reason why there is a war is because Iran has this nuclear program and the reason it has a nuclear program is because of China. So when the Treasury secretary says that we have more in common with China over that program—that’s just wrong.”
Also see:
Fox Business: Video: “ ‘WRONG’: Gordon Chang calls out Bessent’s comment about China’s role in Iran” (September 3, 2026)
Homeland.house.gov: “Handling Our Cargo: How the People’s Republic of China Invests Strategically in the U.S. Maritime Industry”
“The investigation revealed that two PRC state-owned enterprises control portions of five U.S. ports and lead tens of billions in PRC overseas seaport investments…. The U.S. maritime sector is dangerously reliant on equipment and technology that has been produced, manufactured, assembled, or installed in the PRC.”
