White House Says China Has Had a Spy Base in Cuba

Chinese military ships moored at the port of Havana on Nov. 10, 2015. Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images

The White House has confirmed the existence of a Chinese spy base in Cuba that isn’t new and predates the current administration, officials said.

“As we’ve communicated over the weekend, this is not a new development that China’s been trying to achieve some intelligence gathering capabilities in Cuba and, frankly, elsewhere in the hemisphere, and that from day one, when we came in, we took this issue seriously,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on June 12.

“We’ve taken some steps to try to mitigate the vulnerability of those activities,” he added.

Meanwhile, a U.S. lawmaker over the weekend renewed calls for a boycott of Chinese goods following a Wall Street Journal report that claimed that China had struck a deal to build a spy base in Cuba.

Previously, both the White House and the Pentagon both had denied that claim.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters on June 8 the Defense Department was “not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of spy stations separately” but that it would continue monitoring the countries’ relations.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the State Department didn’t address the report’s allegations directly but told The Epoch Times that the department is monitoring and working to counter Beijing’s efforts to develop military infrastructure in the Western Hemisphere.

“We 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,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Due to the sensitivity of the information, Kirby stated that the White House would be unable to provide extensive details about its counterintelligence efforts.

“The fact that we came out a couple of days later and provided some clarifying information does not mean and should not be taken, as I’ve seen in some of the press reporting, as some kind of walk back,” Kirby said.

‘A New Cold War’

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said the allegation signals that the Chinese regime is in “a new cold war” with the United States.

“They’re [China is] using every element of national power, diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and espionage to replace us as a global leader, as the world leader, which is their stated aim—just take it from Xi’s speech to the 20th party Congress—and that’s why this matters,” Waltz said in a June 11 interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) speaks before Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) take the stage during a rally at the Cheyenne Saloon in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 7, 2022. Octavio Jones/Getty Images

He raised the concern that the spy facility in Cuba—90 miles from the United States—enables China to garner sensitive information from many crucial U.S. military bases.

“We have some of our most sensitive military bases, actually, in Florida. Our Special Operations Command, our Central Command, responsible for the Middle East, our Southern Command, responsible for all of Central America, and a long-range missile test range that is in the Gulf of Mexico, where we test some of our most sensitive missiles. All of that can be collected by this base in Cuba,” Waltz said.

The lawmaker called for decoupling from China to push back against the regime’s growing aggression.

“We’re going to mobilize the American people to say, ‘When you see “Made in China,” put it down’—to pull our supply chains back, to arm our allies, and to fully fund our military. We can’t keep describing the world we want to live in,” he said.

Other lawmakers echoed Waltz’s concern.

Senate Intelligence Committee members Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a joint statement on June 8: “The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security. We must be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles of Florida and the United States, in an area also populated with key military installations and extensive maritime traffic.

“We urge the Biden administration to take steps to prevent this serious threat to our national security and sovereignty.”

Journal Report

The Journal report cited unnamed officials who said that Beijing had agreed to pay Cuba billions of dollars for the opportunity to build the spy base in the United States’ backyard.

The move is a direct challenge to U.S. security and reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. At that time, the Soviet Union deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba. The United States responded by quarantining the island nation.

That crisis was widely seen as the closest the two powers ever came to nuclear war. The two nations eventually backed down, however, as the Soviets removed the missiles from Cuba and the United States removed its missiles from Turkey.

The United States didn’t reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, first severed in 1961, until the Obama administration removed the nation from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 2015.

Aldgra Fredly and Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report.