Cuba to host secret Chinese spy base focusing on US
An eavesdropping facility in Cuba would allow China to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern US, where many military bases are located.
China is in talks with Cuba to build a spy station on the communist-led island, potentially allowing Beijing operatives to eavesdrop on electronic communications in the US, according to officials briefed on intelligence reports.
The multibillion-dollar facility, which has drawn comparisons with a listening post built by the Soviet Union on Cuba during the Cold War, would allow Chinese spies to tap into communications between military bases across the southeastern US, the officials told The Wall Street Journal.
Sources reportedly described the intelligence they had seen on the project as “convincing” and said an agreement to proceed had been made “in principle”. They said the base, if built, would enable China to conduct signal-gathering, including monitoring emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.
However, both the Pentagon and John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, described the Wall Street Journal report as “not accurate”, while declining to go into specifics.
Cuba, an ideological adversary of the US since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro, was the site of the Soviet Union’s largest overseas signals intelligence base – at Lourdes, just outside Havana. The mothballed building was believed to have hosted hundreds of Soviet intelligence officers.
China, according to some reports, already has a military presence and possible radar surveillance installation established in Cuba: in Bejucal, a town south of the capital.
“We have been concerned since day one of this administration about China’s influence activities around the world. Certainly in this hemisphere and in this region we are watching this very, very closely, and we have and we will continue to take steps to mitigate any potential threat that those activities might pose,” Mr Kirby told MSNBC.
US officials have not given any details about the proposed location of the listening station, news of which is understood to have been gathered from intelligence sources in just the past few weeks.
The Cuban government described the Journal’s report as “mendacious and unfounded”. In a statement its Foreign Ministry said it opposed the presence of all foreign military bases in the Latin American and Caribbean region, “especially” the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
Beijing has made no official comment. It often argues that the US is irresponsibly meddling in its own “backyard”, including by sailing naval ships through the Taiwan Strait or flying military surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea.
The claims come at a time when the Biden administration had been showing signs it was keen to improve relations with China, following hostile exchanges in January and February, when a Chinese spy balloon was spotted flying over the US. It was eventually shot down by a fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Beijing this month and may meet President Xi Jinping. Some Republican politicians are now urging him to cancel the trip.
Mike Waltz, a member of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, told the Politico website the visit was inappropriate. “The Chinese Communist Party is executing the Soviet Union’s playbook,” he said.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, wrote on Twitter: “Joe Biden needs to wake up to the real Chinese threats on our doorstep.”
Cuba is in the midst of its steepest economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a combination of factors including the aftermath of the pandemic, the chronic inefficiency of the state-run economy, American sanctions and a concurrent crisis in its leftist ally, Venezuela, have led to fuel shortages, blackouts, extreme inflation and a wave of migration from the island, most of it heading towards the US.
While the Biden administration has tentatively reversed some Trump-era hardening of its policies towards Cuba, such as loosening restrictions on travel to the island and restaffing the US embassy in Havana, the relationship between the two countries remains antagonistic, with both sides blaming each other for the impasse. Havana is increasingly leaning towards Russia and China for economic and diplomatic support. President Miguel Diaz-Canel held talks with Mr Xi in Beijing in November.
THE TIMES
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