‘Russia's Pearl Harbor' Fuels Fears Over Chinese Cargo Ships at US Ports

Miami Herald

2 days ago

Sunday's Ukrainian drone ambush on a Russian airbase more than 3,000 miles from the front lines has intensified a growing debate among U.S. military analysts over the plausibility of a similar attack launched from Chinese merchant vessels docked at American ports.
The scenario has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and security analysts alike following confirmation that COSCO Shipping-China's state-owned shipping giant-operates across key U.S. ports, despite being designated by the Department of Defense as a Chinese military company. At issue is whether drones or cruise missiles could be hidden in shipping containers aboard these vessels, activated remotely or after offloading, and used in a preemptive strike.
"This is a very plausible form of attack in the U.S.," said Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former U.S. Navy officer. "But the attack would need to overcome several challenges," he told Newsweek.
"The drones need to get out of the container, and that's hard to control aboard a ship. A more feasible approach would be to deploy the drones from a container once it's offloaded and moved on a truck."
Retired Navy commander Thomas Shugart, now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, has voiced a more urgent warning.
"It is becoming borderline-insane that we routinely allow ships owned and operated by DoD-designated Chinese military companies to sit in our ports with thousands of containers onboard and under their control," Shugart said in a conversation with Newsweek.
Shugart said the concept isn't speculative-it mirrors Chinese military writings. "Their Science of Campaigns is full of references to 'sudden' and 'surprise' strikes," he said, referring to a core text that Chinese military officers are expected to study.
"They explicitly discuss hitting first, especially against what they call the 'powerful entity,' which is clearly a reference to the United States."
The concerns are not just theoretical. In January, members of the House Committee on Homeland Security asked the U.S. Coast Guard for a classified briefing, citing COSCO's access to "major U.S. ports" and warning of risks including "espionage, cyber intrusions, sabotage, and supply chain disruptions," according to a letter sent in January.
Zak Kallenborn, a researcher of drone and asymmetric warfare, acknowledged the technical possibility but questioned the timing. "A similar Chinese drone attack is definitely plausible and worth worrying about," he told Newsweek. "However, a Chinese attack is unlikely to come completely out of the blue. If China were to do this, we'd likely already be at war."
Still, the lessons from Ukraine's recent drone strike on Russian airfields linger heavily in the minds of U.S. analysts and war planners grappling with the warp-speed progress of battlefield technological advancements like drone warfare. The operation on Sunday exposed how even hardened military targets can be neutralized by low-cost drones-deep inside a nuclear-armed adversary's territory where an enemy's conventional air power would be difficult to penetrate.
For some of these experts, it raised uncomfortable parallels to U.S. vulnerabilities.
Shugart said the U.S. shouldn't assume distance offers safety. "We've hardened some overseas air bases," he said. "But we still park billion-dollar aircraft in the open on our own soil. That's a risk."
According to a March report from the Atlantic Council, China has developed and demonstrated containerized missile and drone platforms that can be covertly transported aboard commercial vessels. The report warned these systems could enable Beijing to establish "a covert way to establish anti-access/area denial nodes near major maritime choke points."
Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb demonstrated how swarms of inexpensive, off-the-shelf drones-slightly modified to carry explosives and smuggled in wooden containers to be deployed remotely-can inflict billions of dollars in damage on strategic military assets, including long-range bombers. The contrast has fueled criticism of more traditional defense approaches, such as President Donald Trump's proposed "Golden Dome" missile shield, which analysts say may be poorly matched to emerging low-cost threats.
The regulatory environment surrounding drones is also a major factor in the growing risk, experts say. "We don't have a drone transportation and logistics system," military theorist John Robb wrote on X. "The FAA strangled it in the crib a decade ago. If the FCC had regulated the internet the way we've handled drones, we'd still be using AOL."
Robb advocates for a national drone framework with built-in security measures: "Monitoring, kill switches, no-fly zones, hardware and software rules, maintenance requirements, and corporate certification."
In Congress, lawmakers continue to press the Coast Guard to ensure more stringent vetting of foreign vessels, crew members and cargo. "The vetting process must be consistent and comprehensive across all U.S. ports," the Homeland Security Committee wrote in its January request. The committee also raised concerns about Chinese political officers allegedly embedded aboard COSCO vessels, which it argued underscores direct Chinese Communist Party influence over ostensibly commercial operations.
For analysts like Clark, the technology is only part of the equation. The more pressing concern is readiness.
"If China believes it can use relatively small drones to cause major damage, and we've done nothing to detect or deter it, that's a vulnerability we can't afford to ignore," he said.
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