China ‘wiretapped Red Sea’ with spy hub 6 miles from US base: ex Pentagon official warns
Six miles from Camp Lemonnier. A 100-foot dish under a dome. One-sixth of sea trade under that dish.
Summary
- Fox News reports a Center for Strategic and International Studies review of China's Djibouti footprint, cited Sunday by former Pentagon official Morgan Murphy, found upgrades less than six miles from Camp Lemonnier, the $66 million-a-year U.S. counterterrorism hub in Africa.
- CSIS mapped a southeastern facility with a control building, three 30-meter dipole antennas for high-frequency communications, two smaller very- and ultra-high-frequency antennas, three mobile satellite dishes, four probable 5G towers, and a radome over an unidentified asset. CSIS said it could not confirm China was actively intercepting communications.
- The report also flagged two communications sites that appeared since 2024 and are likely part of a C4ISR architecture for intercepting signals, tracking naval movement, and talking to Beijing. Murphy said a 30-meter dish under a dome is eavesdropping, not logistics, and that the site sits over a choke point that moves roughly a sixth of global sea trade.
- Murphy noted the United States has 128 bases in more than 51 countries and China has one overseas base, and said the file lands before Xi Jinping's Sept. 24 White House visit. In 2018 the Pentagon complained after military-grade lasers were pointed at American pilots landing at Camp Lemonnier, causing minor injuries.
Commentary
A Navy dad still walks a pier and knows a $66 million hub is supposed to mean a safe landing, not a 100-foot dish under a dome six miles off his runway. He did not pay the levy so Beijing could rent the 50-yard line over the Red Sea.
Six miles. One dish. Three dipoles. Four 5G towers. Two new sites since 2024. One-sixth of sea trade. The linoleum in that Lemonnier tower still remembers the 2018 laser. The honest household already bought the overtime for the 128.
Look every working father who still fuels a destroyer after a night watch in the eye and answer this: if the dish already sits six miles off Camp Lemonnier, who still owns the next choke point a radome tries to read?
Comments
Six miles. $66 million a year. A 30-meter dish under a dome. Keep those three.
I stood a gate so a laser on a landing still meant a complaint. 2018 already wrote that file.
CSIS: C4ISR since 2024. Murphy: not a supply depot. Print both.
Allied runways still treat a radome over a sixth of sea trade as a breach.
128 U.S. bases. China: one. Xi on the 24th. File the three.
I still walk a pier at 2 a.m. I want the next dish named, not denied.
A dome over a 100-foot dish is not a vibe. It is a warning the street already paid.
A listening post on the Red Sea is a second border around every honest hull.
Fox printed six miles, the radome, and Murphy. Argue those nouns.
Name the dish. Ask Xi on the 24th. A radome is not a souvenir.
