DIGITAL WARFARE TECH AT SEA HELPING US FOES EVADE SANCTIONS

Technology to hide a ship’s location previously available only to the world’s militaries is spreading fast through the global maritime industry as governments from Iran to Venezuela — and the rogue shipping companies they depend on to move their petroleum products — look for stealthier ways to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

Windward, a maritime intelligence company whose data is used by the U.S. government to investigate sanctions violations, said that since January 2020 it has detected more than 200 vessels involved in over 350 incidents in which they appear to have electronically manipulated their GPS location.

“This is out of hand right now,” Matan Peled, cofounder of Windward and a former Israeli naval officer, said in an interview. “It’s not driven by countries or superpowers. It’s ordinary companies using this technique. The scale is astonishing.”

Peled said U.S. authorities have been slow to catch on to the spread of technology that has been part of the electronic warfare arsenal for decades but is only now cropping up in commercial shipping, with serious national security, environmental and maritime safety implications.

Windward was able to identify suspect ships using technology that detects digital tracks that don’t correspond to actual movements, such as hairpin turns at breakneck speed or drifting in the form of perfect crop circles.

William Fallon, a retired four-star admiral and former head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said U.S. authorities have been aware for some time of the threat from electronic manipulation, one of a growing number of so-called “gray zone” national security challenges that cut across traditional military, commercial and economic lines.