China’s Cuba Spy Base A Slap In The Face At Biden’s Friendly Overtures

ANALYSIS – In what appears to be a breaking new development, China is reportedly establishing new infrastructure in Cuba to spy on the United States, with China paying Cuba “several billion dollars” for the privilege.

This, according to U.S. intelligence, as reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

If accurate, this would be a slap in the face to Joe Biden as he feverishly attempts to reestablish more friendly relations with the communist superpower.

It would also be a major national security setback for the United States. The collection of foreign communications is undertaken by China's Ministry of State Security and the Strategic Support Force, a branch of the military that supports the country's nuclear rocket force.

China has been pushing hard militarily against the U.S. under Biden, with repeated provocative air and sea maneuvers in close proximity to U.S. warships and aircraft in the South China Sea.

The White House downplayed the news of a Chinese signals intelligence (SIGINT) base in Cuba:

“We have seen the report. It's not accurate,” said John Kirby, Biden's National Security Council (NSC) spokesman, but he did not specify what he thought was incorrect.

He added, however, that said the U.S. had “real concerns” about China's relationship with Cuba and was closely monitoring it.

Cuba and CHina both rebuffed the claims as well:

As I wrote about at the time, relations with China were stopped cold following a Chinese spy balloon's eleven-day flight over the entire U.S. earlier this year. As a sign of protest, a planned trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing was canceled by the White House.

Since then, despite the egregious nature of China's violation of U.S. airspace by the high-altitude surveillance airship, Biden has been on a tear to repair relations with Beijing.

Last month, I noted that Biden sent CIA Director William Burns on a secret trip to Beijing while National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with a top Chinese official in Vienna.

Blinken had been expected to belatedly travel to Beijing later this month and possibly meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. But Biden may have to cancel that trip also if this story gains traction.

And even key Democrats are fuming.

Senator Bob Menendez, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the story is confirmed, it would be “a direct assault upon the United States.”

“So I hope the administration will think about how they'll react if it's true,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, the WSJ reported that:

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.”

A spy facility across the southeastern U.S. would give the People's Liberation Army (PLA) a clearer picture of targets to strike in a conflict. Carl Schuster, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer told the WSJ that, until now: “One challenge China has is not having access to operational communications inside the U.S.,” he said.

“You need this for strategic targeting.”

The planned Cuban intelligence base and the suspected surveillance balloon have also highlighted China's ability to put sophisticated spying capabilities close to the U.S.

The Cuba base could allow China to monitor a wide range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.

The Soviets built a SIGINT facility on the island at Lourdes, just south of Havana, in the mid-1960s, with parabolic antennas aimed at the U.S., but that listening outpost was closed in the early 2000s.

Later it was reported that China had signed an agreement with the Cuban government to share use of the facility for its own intelligence purposes, but not much has been heard about that since.

In 2014 there were news reports that Russia might reopen Lourdes, but that too appears to have fizzled. It isn't known yet if this purported new agreement will involve using the old Soviet facility.

Until now, China's only declared foreign military base is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. But it has embarked on a global effort to create a network of military ports and intelligence bases around the world.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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