China moves in next door: Beijing is building an electronic eavesdropping facility on Cuba

Beijing is to build an electronic wiretapping facility in Cuba, just 100 miles off the Florida coast, that will be able to collect US military secrets.

Citing officials “with highly classified information,” The Wall Street Journal said China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement to establish the base.

The paper reported that its sources said Beijing had agreed to pay poor Havana several billion dollars to build the facility, and that an “agreement in principle” had been reached at this stage.

Such a facility would allow China to monitor the southern US, home to many military bases, and the region’s shipping traffic.

This poses a new geopolitical challenge for Washington as it grapples with China’s growing global influence.

Beijing is regarded by Washington as its main rival when it comes to both its military and its economy, and a Chinese base with military and espionage capabilities so close to the United States would pose an unprecedented threat. Left: Chinese President Xi Jinping. Right: President Joe Biden

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that while he was unable to speak on the specific report, he pointed to the many times US officials have reported China’s “attempts to invest in infrastructure around the world that may have military purposes.” , including in this hemisphere,” the WSJ reported.

“We are monitoring it closely, taking steps to mitigate it and are confident in our ability to meet all of our security commitments at home, in the region and around the world.”

The intelligence — described as “convincing” by anonymous U.S. officials cited in the report — has raised alarm within the Biden administration because of Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. mainland, the WSJ said.

Beijing is regarded by Washington as its main rival when it comes to both its military and its economy, and a Chinese base with military and espionage capabilities so close to the United States would pose an unprecedented threat.

Such a facility would allow Beijing to monitor a range of communications, including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions, the WSJ said.

The newspaper said officials did not go as far as giving the exact location of the base, or whether construction had begun. It was also not clear if there was anything Washington could do to stop the base from being completed.

Pictured: The southernmost point of the US, Key West, is shown on a map. It is less than 100 miles from the closest point in Cuba

In May, the Pentagon was reported to be increasingly concerned about China’s growing influence in Latin America.

From tens of billions of dollars in funding for key infrastructure projects across the region to its own secretive military-run space station in Argentina that could target US satellites, China’s presence has grown.

Some 21 countries in Latin America are affiliated with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a defining policy introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 that gains power and influence by funding global infrastructure projects.

Chinese state-owned banks have lent $136 billion to Latin American countries since 2005 on terms that US officials have called a “spiral trap.” The money has funded everything from major energy projects to roads, sports stadiums and covid vaccines.

Meanwhile, private Chinese firms control major ports on the Panama Canal that US officials say could be “quickly converted to military capabilities.”

China also supplies most of Mexico’s telecom equipment and mines vast quantities of crucial minerals on the continent.

And away from Latin America, the Pentagon admitted in March it was concerned about growing Chinese influence in Mauritius amid warnings that UK plans to return a chain of islands to the Indian Ocean nation would jeopardize the safety of the vital military base on Diego Garcia could undermine.

But an intelligence-gathering facility in Cuba would pose the most obvious threat to US security interests.

The United States has previously taken steps to prevent foreign superpowers from expanding into the Western Hemisphere, including Cuba.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union when Washington placed missiles in Italy and Turkey, which was matched by Moscow stationing ballistic missiles in Cuba.

From tens of billions of dollars in funding for key infrastructure projects across the region to its own secretive military-run space station in Argentina that could target US satellites, China’s presence in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown tremendously

The US Navy quarantined the island, while America and the USSR were on the brink of nuclear war – the closest the world has come to such a disaster.

Eventually, the Soviets backed down and removed the missiles from the island, while the US quietly did the same from Italy and Turkey a few months later.

A year earlier, the US had also supported a failed military landing operation in Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution. The invading forces were defeated within three days.

It also solidified Castro’s rule and pushed Cuba closer to the USSR – eventually leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis.