Word from a Surface Warfare Officer today who's been in this area is that it's definitely possible it was an accident.
From the IT side of things, if the Chinese have some cool cyber weapon to hack our ships' nav systems, they're not going to waste it on some individual ship during peacetime.
Perhaps, but that has nothing to do with seamanship - ship maneuvers to avoid hitting merchants that are in plain sight. In fact, the suggestion is rather silly, actually.