China consolidates facilities in Cuba to spy on its great rival from its 'backyard'.

report SRA 2025 / [ pdf version ].

√ Satellite imagery released by CSIS in July 2024 highlights a growing network of Chinese antennas.

√ The White House already confirmed a year earlier the Chinese regime's spy activity, at least since 2019, although some facilities could already date back to the previous decade.

√ The alleged eavesdropping infrastructures are in the Havana area , the part closest to Florida, and in the southeastern region where the Guantanamo base is located.

China has continued to consolidate its facilities in Cuba aimed at spying on U.S. signals. Satellite images released in mid-2024 confirmed an extension of the listening infrastructures that the Asian power has been setting up in the largest of the Antilles, increasing the Degree threat to which the new head of the U.S. Southern Command has just referred. In his first appearance before congress in Washington, Admiral Alvin Holsey indicated last February that Beijing uses Cuba as a "location close to [the US] for intelligence collection" and warned that Southcom "prioritizes the monitoring and assessment of malign activities" carried out only 110 kilometers from US soil. Communications related to the security of transit through the Panama Canal could also be put at risk from Cuba.

China's spying activity on the United States was already in the news at the beginning of 2023 with the sighting of a Chinese balloon flying over U.S. territory, later shot down at sea. But the denunciation of an effort by Beijing to intercept US strategic communications signals became more serious with a report published on June 8, 2023 by the 'Wall Street Journal', according to which China and Cuba had reached an agreement for the construction of a spy base on the island. In exchange, the Chinese regime had committed to pay several billions of dollars, at a time of particular economic hardship for Cuba. The WSJ stated that the agreement allegedly also included the creation of a joint military training base.

The scoop was confirmed two days later, in general terms (it spoke of "inaccurate"), by the White House, which, faced with some accusations about an apparent weakness of the Biden Administration, wanted to specify that there were already Chinese spying facilities in Cuba at least since 2019 (therefore, during the Trump Administration).

Satellite images

There were no further details on the matter until July 1, 2024 when the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of Washington's leading think-tanks, released a report with satellite images that revealed the existence of up to four sites of Chinese spy facilities in Cuba for the collection of signals intelligence (SIGINT), several of them particularly sophisticated.

agreement to this report, three of the sites located are in the vicinity of Havana (Bejucal, Wajay and Calabazar), while the other is near El Salao, about 100 kilometers from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. Some of the facilities, compared to previous photos, were under construction, and in both Bejumal and El Salao the design of a configuration of parabolic antennas known as Circulary Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA) was visible: circularly arranged antennas that, in their communication, are highly effective in determining the origin and direction of detected high frequency signals.

According to the images provided, the most developed site was that of Bejumal, about which, in its progressive construction, it was already mentioned in information published in 2017 and 2018, in addition to the fact that the current U.S. Secretary of State, framework Rubio, vaguely referred to it in some statements made in 2016 as a senator particularly attentive to Cuban current affairs. It is the place that was the epicenter of the 1962 missile crisis, since nuclear weapons that the USSR had secretly taken to the island had been stored there.

It is possible, as the CSIS report suggests, that several of these facilities began to be built at the beginning of the century, although greater operability would not have been achieved until the aforementioned years. In the case of El Salao, the qualitative leap would have been made in 2021.

In the arms of China

Reports linking China to SIGINT facilities in Cuba have been rejected by Chinese officials. For its part, the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel, on the basis of an agreement of CELAC of 2014 declaring Latin America and the Caribbean as a 'zone of peace', denies the existence of a military pact with China.

U.S. intelligence has no doubt that this technology is operated by China. Cuba does not have its own satellites to take advantage of the installed systems. On the other hand, in the face of a Russia with less financial strength, China is willing to pay generously for espionage capabilities in the closest possible proximity to the United States, which are important to it in its rivalry with Washington. For the CCP government, this presence in Cuba could represent a way of counteracting US pressure in the South China Sea: the Caribbean is the southern sea of the United States and the 'interference' of that country in Taiwan is replicated by that of Beijing in Cuba.

The serious economic difficulties suffered by the Caribbean island have pushed the Castro regime to seek a new external lifeline. If the fall of the USSR placed Cuba in a 'special period' of great misery, the end of the substantial financial aid provided by Venezuela and the frustration of the benefactor agreement with the Obama Administration have exacerbated the deficiencies of the Cuban economic system, throwing Cubans into a new special period. Faced with this critical status , which in reality would merit serious reforms, the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel is digging in, advocating a return to Cold War strategies internship

Southcom on alert

The magazine 'Diálogo', the Southern Command's informative publication, insisted on the issue of the Chinese antennas in September 2024, assuring that China "expands" its espionage network in Cuba, although without new specific information with respect to that provided months earlier by the CSIS. The publication mentions the 'Annual Threatassessment ' report, from the office of the US director National Intelligence, published in February last year, which warns about the plans of the Chinese People's Liberation Army to establish military instructions abroad, including in Cuba.

The tone of China's threat to the U.S. in the region was heightened in the Southcom chief's appearance before congress (this time before the Senate) on February 13, 2025. Admiral Alvin Hosley indicated that Latin America and the Caribbean "is on the front lines of a decisive and urgent contest to define the future of our world." "China is attacking U.S. interests from every direction, in every domain, and increasingly in the Caribbean archipelago, a potentially offensive island chain," he added. According to him, "while the United States is looking to the Far East, China is plowing fertile ground in our south"; so if it fails to "compete adequately here and now", the region will come under the influence of "America's main authoritarian rivals".

In any case, the tone and manner used by the new Trump Administration in its relationship with its Latin American neighbors does not mark a willingness to compete "properly" to gain positive influence in the region.