Forget Hormuz. The Shadow Fleet Is The Next Maritime Crisis.

While the Strait of Hormuz briefly reopened, a broader maritime threat to commerce and data is escalating: the “shadow fleet.” The article says aging, opaque tankers and cargo ships are increasingly used to break U.S. sanctions and to sabotage subsea cables, while disrupting global trade and cross-border data flows with plausible deniability. It argues Russia and China exploit gaps in international law that limit countermeasures by the U.S. and allies. The shadow fleet is described as often falsely flagged, frequently using AIS blackouts, false position broadcasts, and reflagging or renaming, with ship-to-ship transfers used to move goods. Examples cited include incidents tied to the Newnew Polar Bear (Oct. 2023), Yi Peng 3 (Nov. 2024), and multiple cases near Taiwan in 2025. The piece notes France has seized at least five Russian vessels, but prosecutions face legal hurdles.