Since Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, CX has been requesting landing rights to the US authorities for their US-HK flights with various stopovers in Asia (notably TPE, TYO etc.). It doesn't mean CX is actively seeking 5th freedom rights and it isn't something new. It's just merely a "Plan B" in case they can't overfly Russia for whatever reasons. I suspect the writer of this article misinterpreted these requests as CX's intention to fly JFK-LHR.