Lol, I'm always late to the party. (Time zones, whatcha gonna do?). Damn. I missed that. My bad.

One reason why I wish that comments where the OP posts sauce could be stickied. More often than not, they get buried under the larger volume of comments when the order is by upvote.

But just to follow up on this, I'm wondering why Hegseth spoke about this in relation to CCP China. All indications are that it's a South Korean consortium who are doing this. (See below). I suppose it's possible that Panama might have been funding this under the CCCP Belt & Road initiative, but so far I can't see evidence for that.

Edit: Digging

https://www.bnamericas.com/en/features/panama-confirms-metro-tunnel-design-contract-for-s-korean-consortium

https://www.autodesk.com/design-make/articles/panama-metro

https://tunnelbuilder.com/Archive/Projects/Panama.aspx

The two articles above have no mention of China, but the third one does:

The South Korean HPH Joint Venture, composed of Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co, POSCO and Hyundai Engineering Co have granted to China Railway Tunnel Group (CRTG) the excavation by TBM of the 5.3 km underwater section between the Panama Pacífico and Albrook stations of the Metro Line 3 in Panama.

https://www-elmetrodepanama-com.translate.goog/consorcio-coreano-es-el-responsable-de-la-construccion-del-tramo-soterrado-de-la-linea-3-del-metro/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

HPH JV is responsible for selecting any subcontractor, and MPSA is responsible for ensuring that the company meets the minimum requirements of experience and financial capacity for the assigned tasks.

So it looks like the S-Korean consortium chose the China Railway Tunnel Group to dig the tunnel part of the larger project.

Of course, if a CCP company is involved on any level, they are going to be doing dodgy stuff (spying, surveillance, infiltration, etc), so in that sense, Hegseth's comment is relevant, even though the tunnel itself is part of a larger project which appears to have no direct CCP involvement.

We can speculate that possibly behind the scenes, CCP China used leverage to get the S-Korean consortium to subcontract to a Chinese company for the tunnel, but without direct evidence, it's speculation.

Aside: I don't mean it as a slur on your posting, but the fact still remains that the comment section is full of reactions (how many even listened to the Hegseth interview? which, yes, he mentions a tunnel, in one small sentence, but zero details) all of which gets lots of upvotes, why the actual verification, digging and investigation gets almost none.

Personally, this is why I think that copy/paste, shoot-from-the-hip posting has a generally deleterious affect on the board.