On October 8, 2026, CSIS’s Futures Lab published “ China’s Weaponization of Dual-Use Research Vessels for Undersea Data Dominance, ” by Jose M. Macias III, Tao-Hung Chang, Nico Vacca, and Benjamin Jensen. Using automatic identification system tracks from January 1, 2020, through December 9, 2025, the lab compared more than 200 research vessels from 48 countries — China, the United States, Russia, and 45 others — against the known routes of subsea cables and pipelines.
Chinese-flagged ships spent a statistically larger share of their high-seas time near that infrastructure than the comparison fleets. In four of the five years covered, Chinese vessels ranked in the top fifth of ships active near critical infrastructure on the high seas. In 2024, the pattern sharpened: seven Chinese research ships ranked above the 80th percentile. For most vessels in the dataset, time near those cables and pipes was less than 1 percent of observed time in a year. U.S. ships also ranked above the 80th percentile in all five years, and Russian ships in two — a reminder that great powers all collect ocean data. The Chinese pattern is what stands out once location is examined: repeated grid surveys over cables the ships’ owners do not operate, outside zones with obvious mineral value.
CSIS says the tracks do not, by themselves, prove the intent of any single cruise. It also says the Chinese Communist Party treats the research fleet as a dual-use instrument, and that the data — bathymetry, temperature, salinity, currents — could support undersea intelligence, submarine operations, or future attacks on infrastructure. That is the polite version. A ship that mows the seabed in a lawnmower grid over someone else’s cable, then goes dark near a U.S. air station, is doing the work of an underwater spy whether or not it flies a science flag.
Xiang Yang Hong 06: Lawn-Mowing the Seabed off Guam
The clearest case is Xiang Yang Hong 06. Between February and May 2024 it made three trips to the high seas about 210 nautical miles off Guam and worked the bottom in a repeated back-and-forth grid. The survey covered the Apricot cable system — linking Guam, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan — and the Asia-America Gateway, which ties Brunei, Guam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam.
In July the same ship worked east of Guam across the Asia-America Gateway, the Southeast Asia–United States system, and the planned Asia Connect Cable-1 route. From August to October it widened the survey again. CSIS notes that the early tracks did not sit in zones of higher critical-mineral prospectivity, and that the cables were not owned or operated by mainland Chinese firms.
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