A Chinese spy ship spent three weeks off the coast of Australia in August and September collecting sensitive electronic data coming from some of the nation’s most important military facilities according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.

Federal Political Editor Daily Telegraph James Morrow said what’s really interesting is it came down when there were no military exercises being run.

“This ship is equipped with incredibly sensitive technology, antennas, all sorts of equipment for basically scooping up electronic communications, figuring out what’s going on,” he said on 6PR Breakfast.

“You can only think that this was coming down to probe the electronic side of our civilian and military capability … so that in a future conflict they would have an advantage over us, in both the interception of intelligence but also cyber warfare and being able to take our systems offline.”

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