Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S. - WSJ
By: Warren P. Strobel and Gordon Lubold (WSJ)
What in the hell is wrong with this country?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
WASHINGTON—China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, in a brash new geopolitical challenge by Beijing to the U.S., according to U.S. officials familiar with highly classified intelligence.
An eavesdropping facility in Cuba , roughly 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic.
The revelation about the planned site has sparked alarm within the Biden administration because of Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. mainland. Washington regards Beijing as its most significant economic and military rival . A Chinese base with advanced military and intelligence capabilities in the U.S.’s backyard could be an unprecedented new threat.
“While I cannot speak to this specific report, we are well aware of—and have spoken many times to—the People’s Republic of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes, including in this hemisphere,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said. “We monitor it closely, take steps to counter it, and remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home, in the region, and around the world.”
U.S. officials described the intelligence on the planned Cuba site, apparently gathered in recent weeks, as convincing. They said the base would enable China to conduct signals intelligence, known in the espionage world as sigint, which could include the monitoring of a range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington had no comment. Cuba’s Embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Officials declined to provide more details about the proposed location of the listening station or whether construction had begun. It couldn’t be determined what, if anything, the Biden administration could do to stop completion of the facility.
The revelation about the agreement drew Republican criticism of the administration’s stance on China and Cuba.
“Joe Biden needs to wake up to the real Chinese threats on our doorstep,” Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador and current Republican presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter.
“The threat to America from Cuba isn’t just real, it is far worse than this,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).
The U.S. has intervened before to stop foreign powers from extending their influence in the Western Hemisphere, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . The U.S. and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviets deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba, prompting a U.S. Navy quarantine of the island.
The Soviets backed down and removed the missiles. A few months later, the U.S. quietly removed intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Turkey that the Soviets had complained about.
The intelligence on the new base comes in the midst of the Biden administration’s efforts to improve U.S.-China relations after months of acrimony that followed a Chinese spy balloon’s flight over the U.S. earlier this year.
Last month President Biden sent Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns on a secret trip to Beijing , and national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with a top Chinese official in Vienna. It couldn’t be determined whether the planned Chinese eavesdropping station figured in those exchanges.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Beijing later this month and possibly meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Biden said in May that he believed there would be a thaw in U.S.-China relations despite recent public tensions.
Beijing is likely to argue that the base in Cuba is justified because of U.S. military and intelligence activities close to China, analysts said. U.S. military aircraft fly over the South China Sea, engaging in electronic surveillance. The U.S. sells arms to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, deploys a small number of troops there to train its military, and sails Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait.
An eavesdropping facility in Cuba would make clear “China is prepared to do the same in America’s backyard,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national-security think tank in Washington.
“Establishing this facility signals a new, escalatory phase in China’s broader defense strategy. It’s a bit of a game changer,” Singleton said. “The selection of Cuba is also intentionally provocative.”
The U.S. also maintains a military base in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay, where a prison was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to house alleged foreign terrorists captured overseas. The U.S. has used the base as a signals intelligence station in the past.
China’s only declared foreign military base is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. It has embarked on a global port-development campaign in places including Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. officials say that effort is aimed at creating a network of military ports and intelligence bases to project Chinese power around the globe.
Security relations between Washington and Beijing have grown tense in recent weeks after close encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships in the Taiwan Strait and between the two nations’ military aircraft over the South China Sea.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, traded barbs at a conference in Singapore last weekend, though the two shook hands in a widely publicized gesture. Austin complained about Beijing’s lack of communication on military matters and Li’s refusal to meet with him. China has said it won’t agree to such a meeting until Washington lifts sanctions it placed on Li in 2018.
The Biden administration has attempted to pull closer to Havana, reversing some Trump-era policies by loosening restrictions on travel to and from Cuba and re-establishing a family-reunification program . The administration has also expanded consular services to allow more Cubans to visit the U.S. and has restored some diplomatic personnel who were removed after a series of mysterious health incidents affecting U.S. personnel in Havana .
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. since it became a Communist dictatorship after the 1959 revolution. The late dictator Fidel Castro, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, sent a cable to his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, asking him to consider a nuclear strike on the U.S.
In the decades that followed, the island fomented destabilizing and violent revolutionary movements across Latin America in an attempt to spread Communism and anti-U.S. ideology. Its behavior moderated after the end of the Cold War, but it remains the lone Communist dictatorship in the Americas.
For the Cuban regime, the agreement with China would bring badly needed cash but risks angering the U.S. and provoking further isolation diplomatically and economically. Cuba relied on generous subsidies from the Soviet Union until the U.S.S.R. collapsed, plunging the island into economic depression. In the 2000s, it began to rely on Venezuela for aid until that country’s economic implosion in recent years. Analysts say Cuba’s military-backed regime might now be hoping China can be a new lifeline.
Beijing has been building closer diplomatic and economic ties to the island. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with Xi in Beijing in November.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated its largest overseas signals intelligence site at Lourdes, just outside Havana. The site, which closed down after 2001, reportedly hosted hundreds of Soviet, Cuban and other Eastern Bloc intelligence officers.
There were reports in 2014 that Russia would reopen the Lourdes station, but that doesn’t appear to have happened, and its current status couldn’t be determined.
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Just what the holy hell is A. Blinken doing?
Trump is off topic. So is anything associated with Trump, his supporters, campaign and anything else I deem as OT.
If China is paying Cuba billions to build a facility to spy on the US, then how about we build a facility on Gitmo to spy on the Chinese spying on the US from Cuba. Sounds fair to me.
So, what else is new?
Pentagon, White House deny reports that China plans to …
Web Jun 9, 2023 · The Pentagon and the White House on Thursday denied reports that China is planning to build a listening post in Cuba that would allow the communist power to …
So much for yet ANOTHER example of the American intention of demonizing and containing China.
Or China could in fact be planning to do this, but Biden and his minions are afraid of the American public knowing this and further antagonizing the CCP. I don't trust what I hear coming out of Biden's mouth or the adminstration in general as it is.
Or the moon could really be made of green cheese, eh Ed?
I don't see how this is a big deal considering what 5 Eyes and a host of other nations are doing to China and doing it 'OT'. Keep your knickers on.
What are they doing?
Xi’s grip on power, there modern and vast electronic surveillance systems, the crackdown in Hong Kong, and the 3 year Covid lockdown have made intelligence gathering exceedingly difficult.
Also there was a huge setback following an unmasking and execution of a network of intelligence informants inside China.
Previously, power in China’s collective leadership was more diffused among factions and individuals, providing more offered possible intelligence targets - no more.
Listening.
Oh my!
[✘]
What with America's continuous provoking China by organizing groups to oppose and/or contain it (5 Eyes, Quad, Aukus, etc), ignoring its "adherence" to the joint communiques concerning the One China Principle by arming and visiting Taiwan, and close encountering China in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, I'm quite surprised China has had the restraint from placing an aircraft carrier or nuclear sub in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
Their balloons have all gone kaput so they need something to use so they can spy on us...
Considering the level of technology we have, isn't establishing a listening post something like 20th Century tech?
Another win for Biden!
China is bailing out Cuba in return with billions. Was Biden supposed to be the one to fulfill Cuba’s need for financial help? I can just imagine what your comments would be if that happened. You can help yourself but to blindly attack Biden 24/7.
According to the poster of this seed Trump is off topic, but then by omission it's open season on Biden.
Doesn't matter, it will be hard for the Republicans' hero to be heard from a prison cell anyways.
Anyone who pushes himself into the limelight as much as Trump does, and is cheered by such a large percentage of Americans, is going to obtain the attention he craves. Past presidents refrained from such behaviour.
I did not make Trump a topic as to this seed, and confirmed it, by merely pointing out the unfairness of making Biden one.
Better start digging holes in the backyard again. The Biden administration has successfully revived Cold War geopolitics but it's less likely the United States can win this one.
I'm gonna have to. I'm too old and fat to fit under my school desk anymore....
Never too old to moon the Russkies. Although nowadays you'll end up on Google Earth. Smile for the birdie!
Biden is digging so many holes, we're gonna end up in China anyway.
OMG!!! China has an offshore military base, says the nation with about 750 military bases around the world.
What I find interesting about the seed is that it is total conjecture, conclusions without one iota of proof - a typical media method. Of course it serves its purpose - as all can see from the comments here.