Great-power friction escalates across multiple fronts: the US moves to reinforce the Gulf after destroying three Iranian oil tankers (Brent near $96), while Russia leans on both incremental mobilization and hybrid cyber pressure against Germany and UK-Ukraine defense networks. In parallel, US-China decoupling widens from chips into COSCO maritime telemetry, and AI's legal reckoning pushes labs like Anthropic toward licensed data supply chains.

I verified the trigger: Reuters' exclusive reporting that 'COSCO uses concealed equipment on board its ships to spy on military communications' is real and attributed to two senior US officials. This kind of public espionage allegation reliably triggers formal US institutional response in the current China-hawk climate. The resolution bar is deliberately broad — a hearing OR an advisory OR a procurement/restriction action satisfies it — and a Congressional hearing alone is very likely given the appetite for China maritime-security scrutiny (echoing prior Chinese ship-to-shore crane and LOGINK actions). The China/Indo-Pacific chain's dominant 'Economic Pressure Shift' interpretation (40%) supports continued decoupling momentum. The Skeptic rightly flags the leap from one intelligence signal to broad federal action, but the low, disjunctive resolution bar mitigates this. Technology is a strong sector for me (Brier 0.15), so I trust this direction and set 0.66, slightly above the Skeptic's 0.62.