man 8 sshd: > After this, the client either requests an interactive shell or execution or a non-interactive command, which sshd will execute via the user's she

man 8 sshd: > After this, the client either requests an interactive shell or execution or a non-interactive command, which sshd will execute via the user's shell using its -c option Its not sshd doing the argument splitting, its the shell on the server side.