Digital warfare tech at sea helping US foes evade sanctions

By JOSHUA GOODMAN
Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — A maritime intelligence company whose data is used by the U.S. government to investigate sanctions violations says that since January 2020 it has detected more than 200 vessels using technology to hide a ship location that was previously available only to militaries. The Windward company says the vessels were involved in over 300 incidents in which they appear to have electronically manipulated their GPS locations to appear somewhere they were not. One of the more egregious examples involves an oil tanker that could be tracked sailing to Iraq even as it was in reality loading crude in Iran, which is banned from selling its oil by U.S. sanctions.