CSP Senior Fellow Grant Newsham quoted: Chinese firms running OSINT for Iran against US in semi-covert state action
A member of the Iranian security forces stands guard next to a banner honouring Iran’s slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on March 31, 2026. US and Israeli strikes hit military facilities in central Iran, damaged a major religious site in the northwest and provoked power cuts on March 31, after the US president threatened to blow up the country’s oil and energy plants.
Officially, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is keeping its distance from the war in the Middle East; however, its private firms, including those with ties to its military establishment, are busy marketing U.S. wartime data to Iran.
According to a report by The Washington Post, these Chinese companies integrate AI and open-source intelligence (OSINT) to provide information allegedly about the movement of U.S. troops in the Iran war. There is a significant amount of open-source data available, as noted in the report, such as “flight trackers, satellite imagery, and shipping data.” When this is paired with increasingly powerful AI tools used by Chinese companies, it generates accurate intelligence on American military assets.
Experts have told Vision Times that such operations are disguised efforts by the PRC to back Iran against U.S. military operations.
“This is a semi-covert action by the Chinese government—but only in the sense that so-called private Chinese companies are reportedly doing the intelligence collection,” Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine and author of the book When China Attacks: A Warning to America, wrote in an email.
“Thus, the Chinese can claim they have nothing to do with it. But since these companies could not operate without CCP/government approval, the Chinese government has, at best, implausible deniability.”
The Washington Post highlights one such Chinese company, MizarVision, which is based in Hangzhou and was established five years ago. The company, which describes itself as a “Geo-Intelligence AI” firm on its website, is reportedly providing information about the position and number of U.S. aircraft and missile defense systems operational in the war.
Retired Air Marshal Anil Khosla, a former Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force, described such private Chinese firms — minting U.S. war intelligence by integrating OSINT and AI — as China’s commercial proxies.
“More accurately, it is grey-zone warfare conducted through commercial proxies,” he told Vision Times when asked whether such operations by Chinese private firms constitute covert warfare.
“They sell it openly while advancing Chinese state interests under the guise of plausible deniability. It surpasses traditional covert warfare in scale, persistence, and reach.”
A Washington, D.C.-based risk advisory company, Basha Report, founded by Mohammed al-Basha, provides OSINT and geopolitical risk analysis on countries in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. Basha Report shared details about MizarVision’s activities on X even before the start of Operation Epic Fury by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
Khosla said that such companies continuously monitor commercial data streams, and their operations are validated whenever a conflict begins.
“The military buildups generate a distinctive data signature that AI systems are specifically designed to detect and interpret as a pattern of escalation,” he said.
Information released by MizarVision prior to the start of the Iran war did not, by itself, indicate a likelihood of conflict, as a military buildup could also signify “strategic coercion or political signaling,” Khosla believes.
**‘Strategic enablement’**
Such Chinese intelligence operations, powered by the combination of OSINT and AI, are effectively a calculated form of support for Iran, according to experts.
Sahar Tahvili, a Europe-based author and expert in industrial AI systems, said that Iran does not possess such advanced AI technology, and that Chinese firms are effectively enabling capabilities it otherwise lacks.
“Since the Islamic Republic lacks direct access to advanced AI infrastructure—constrained by isolation and its adversarial stance toward Western technology ecosystems—China and Russia are stepping in to fill that gap. This is calculated strategic enablement,” Tahvili told Vision Times in an email.
“They are effectively outsourcing AI power into a sanctioned state, allowing it to project intelligence capabilities it could never build alone,” she wrote.
Bibhu Prasad Routray, a former Deputy Director of India’s National Security Council Secretariat and current director of the Mantraya Institute for Strategic Studies (MISS), an Indian think tank, told Vision Times that China and Iran share a strategic alliance, and that it is highly unlikely China would remain passive while observing the war from a distance.
“China and Russia’s declarations of non-involvement in the war are primarily for public consumption. Both countries have a deep interest in Iran and maintain a strategic alliance with it,” Routray said.
He added that it was always anticipated that, while maintaining plausible deniability, China would assist Iran in various ways, with intelligence-sharing being the safest option.
“Sharing intelligence is likely the safest option for them. This situation serves as a lesson for China’s adversaries,” Routray said, adding that the world will witness increasing indirect involvement by Beijing in conflicts in regions where its interests are at stake.
**What China gets by providing Iran OSINT**
Strategically aiding Iran is not China’s only objective behind its private firms’ operations — Beijing is also gaining significantly from AI-integrated OSINT activities.
“For China, this is about expanding geopolitical reach, securing energy dependencies, and stress-testing AI systems in live conflict environments without direct exposure,” Tahvili said. “Iran becomes a battlefield laboratory, generating real-world data that no simulation can replicate.”
Khosla, the retired Indian air force officer, said that battlefields have permanently expanded into the data layer, meaning that in today’s AI-driven intelligence operations, the strategic battleground is defined by the infrastructure that collects, processes, stores, and analyzes data. Dominance in this domain depends on the speed and cognitive power of the technology and its tools.
“Military superiority no longer guarantees information superiority. The distinction between war and peace, state and commercial activity, and espionage and business has been dissolved,” he said, adding that the Chinese are testing their capabilities in the data layer.
Tahvili said such support is increasingly traceable and politically exposes China, potentially leading to escalating reputational and economic risks.
“Dependency creates fragility for Iran, while exposure creates liability for its backers. At the same time, AI-driven intelligence fusion compresses decision cycles, increasing the risk of rapid escalation and miscalculation,” she said.
Originally published by Vision Times
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Grant Newsham
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