COSCO Denies Reuters Report Alleging Its Cargo Ships Spy for Beijing

China's state-owned shipping giant COSCO says it did nothing wrong, and so far nobody has produced proof otherwise. Reuters reported on Tuesday, September 1, citing two senior Trump administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity, that COSCO's commercial vessels carry concealed signals-intelligence equipment capable of intercepting military communications near coastlines in the United States, Europe and Asia. The officials described a "decades-long intelligence-collection partnership" between COSCO and the Chinese state, allegedly aimed at studying foreign military communications technology and encryption, and giving Beijing real-time visibility into shipping lanes and naval movements. COSCO fired back through a statement carried by Reuters on Friday, September 4. "Totally unfounded" and "false," the company called the allegations. "All communication, navigation, safety and operational equipment installed on our vessels is used solely for legitimate commercial purposes, including navigation safety, ship-to-shore communications and emergency response," COSCO said, adding it reserves the right to pursue legal action to protect its reputation.

What's actually confirmed versus what's alleged

Neither of the two U.S. officials named a specific vessel, described what the alleged equipment looks like, or offered technical evidence, according to Reuters, marineinsight, Splash247 and breakbulk.news, all of which carried the same original Reuters reporting rather than independent confirmation. The claim that COSCO specifically operates hidden SIGINT hardware, as opposed to Chinese shipping broadly, remains unverified in the public record. The Pentagon added COSCO to its Section 1260H list of companies linked to the Chinese military in January 2025, a designation that triggers U.S. government procurement restrictions and reputational damage but not formal sanctions. A U.S. Naval War College report from April 2025 concluded it was likely that China's military draws on the country's commercial and fishing fleets broadly for intelligence and surveillance purposes, but that was an industry-wide assessment, not one specific to COSCO. China's national security law legally obligates domestic companies to cooperate with state intelligence requests when asked, a documented legal fact separate from any specific spying allegation against this company. COSCO has been down this road before. Congress raised security concerns over a proposed COSCO lease at the former Long Beach Naval Station in the late 1990s, though the Clinton administration cleared the project. Two decades later, U.S. authorities forced COSCO to sell the Long Beach Container Terminal after it acquired Hong Kong's OOIL, a $1.78 billion divestment completed in 2019 under a national security agreement. That same year, Washington sanctioned two COSCO tanker units over Iranian oil trades, a move that briefly spiked global crude-tanker rates before being partly lifted.

Days before

COSCO, a separate Chinese hacking campaign U.S. officials on Wednesday, September 2, disclosed a separate alleged Chinese hacking campaign that CNN reported had compromised or targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Departments of Justice and Energy, the U.S. Senate, hospitals, power companies and defense contractors. An FBI affidavit supporting Justice Department domain seizures said the intrusions ran from 2018 through 2026 and used a Chinese tech company to cover the hackers' tracks. China's embassy in Washington told CNN it "firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks" and accused the U.S. of using cybersecurity to "smear or discredit China." The hacking allegations and the COSCO shipping allegations are distinct claims from different U.S. sources with no reported link between them. They simply landed in the same news cycle, both aimed at China, both denied by Beijing.

The fair skeptical read, and what's next

Skeptics of the COSCO claim have a real point: anonymous officials making a technical, specific allegation, without naming a ship, a device or a data trail, is a much weaker evidentiary showing than a documented sanctions case or a Naval War College structural assessment. The Pentagon's 1260H listing and the Naval War College's industry-wide finding are real and documented. The timing is not incidental. Xi Jinping is expected to visit Washington September 24 for talks with President Trump, and the U.S. Trade Representative's Chinese shipbuilding port fees, paused earlier this year, could return this fall according to breakbulk.news and marineinsight. Whether Washington releases any technical evidence, names a vessel, or lets the allegation stand on anonymous assertion alone will determine whether this becomes a documented national-security case or another unresolved accusation ahead of a high-stakes summit.