there is out there a suggestion that the USS Fitzgerald was subjected to an EMP attack by the container ship. - There was one rumor that...the RUssians did it. That said, there was a recent event, only a couple months ago, where an American ship patrolling in the Black Sea was hit by an EMP-style attack by a Russian jet.
The main contention is that the one hour lag in reporting the collision was due to loss of power from the attack. You decide.
Be wary of fringe websites and purveyors of conspiracy theories. The sea remains a dangerous place and it only takes a small combination of human errors to create a cluster fuck. Everything I’m hearing, from sane and reasonably informed sources are saying that this was an accident, albeit one that should not have happened. When you have a 40,000 ton container ship running on auto pilot in one of the busier shipping lanes, the odds of that ending well just on that basis alone, are not good.
Those systems aboard the destroyer are hardened against a real Nuclear or EMP strike. I doubt an EMP from a Russian or Chinese weapon system could take down comms.
looks like the Fitz was dead in the water at the time of the collision.