Chinese Spy Bases: the Latest Chapter in U.S. "Fake News" about Cuba
In 2023, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story with the headline: “China Plans Spy Base in Cuba.”
The article stated that Cuba and China had “reached a secret agreement” for China to set up an eavesdropping facility on the island in exchange for several billion dollars.
The only apparent sources were anonymous U.S. officials.
The article sparked a flurry of news coverage and bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill. But with little evidence to support the claim, the story soon petered out.
Last year, it was revived when the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major D.C. think tank, released a report entitled “Secret Signals: Decoding China’s Intelligence Activities in Cuba.” The report, which relied on publicly available satellite images, identified four facilities in Cuba that it concluded were sites likely supporting Chinese intelligence operations targeting the U.S.
Earlier this month, the story resurfaced once again in Congress at a Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security hearing about the “growing threat” of alleged Chinese spy bases in Cuba.
WATCH our latest video about the hearing and the paper-thin claims made there.
Inspired by Guantanamo
The hearing was organized by Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who has spearheaded a host of Cold War-era initiatives aimed at Cuba in recent months, apparently inspired by his visit to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay.
Giménez told Fox News the visit to the base and detention camp – which he called "the only free spot on the entire island" – had him “amped up” to bring freedom to the island.
Since the Guantanamo trip, Giménez has called for a complete ban on travel and remittances to Cuba, gone after Cuba’s medical missions and demanded the deportation of supposed “Castro regime agents.”
His latest move has been to denounce the presence of a foreign military base on the island. No, not Guantanamo.
“If reports of rising Chinese activity in Cuba are accurate, then it is no longer just a diplomatic issue. It is a direct security risk to the American people,” Giménez said at the hearing.
Rumors and old speculation
Speculation about Chinese spy bases in Cuba goes back a quarter of a century. El Nuevo Herald – the Spanish-language version of The Miami Herald – published unsubstantiated claims about a China spy base in Cuba in 2000, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned them during his failed bid in the 2016 Republican primary.
The hearing earlier this month was largely based on the report published in 2024 by CSIS.
“The report is an interesting compilation of rumors [and] old speculation,” former CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong told us after its release. “[It] didn't present new information, and some of the information that it had presented was really incongruous with reality.”
Last year, we visited three of the four locations cited in the CSIS report – Bejucal, Wajay and Calabazar – which are on the outskirts of Havana
All three seemed to be Cuban military facilities. Nearby residents say they have heard or seen nothing to indicate the bases were Chinese. At one of the sites, antennas draped in ivy and a dirt-covered satellite dish can be seen from nearby streets.
“That’s laughably old technology,” said Armstrong after viewing video footage of the Wajay and Calabazar facilities. “It's sort of an insult to the Chinese if you're going to say that this is the future of their intel collection against the United States.”
One of the four locations cited in the CSIS report.
"Chinese base" overgrown with grass
The original CSIS report claimed that images of an alleged Chinese spy base at El Salao, near Santiago de Cuba, showed the recent construction of a circularly disposed antenna array (CDAA), which it explained are “highly effective at determining the origin and direction of incoming high-frequency signals.”
This sounds significant — except CDAAs have become largely obsolete. The report itself acknowledged that Russia and the United States have abandoned most of their CDAAs.
“The report looks at old Cold War technology and makes it seem like it’s cutting edge,” said Armstrong. “Nowadays SIGINT is not that dependent on geography. It’s all about fiber optics and satellites. You don't need these great big antenna farms.”
During the hearing earlier this month, Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at CSIS, informed the subcommittee that the El Salao “base” appeared to have been abandoned, less than a year after the CSIS report claimed it was a “significant” new intel collection site.
“After the publication of our initial reports, construction progress at El Salao, the site by Santiago de Cuba, seems to have ceased…as evidenced by hitherto well-trimmed and graded areas being taken over by grass,” said Berg.
Berg’s admission has been ignored by the media outlets that were so quick to trumpet the unsubstantiated claims a year ago.
No proof, plenty of fearmongering
When pressed by members of Congress, Berg was unable to provide any proof China has spy bases in Cuba.
Nor were the other two experts brought to speak before the subcommittee, although that did not stop them from engaging in fearmongering about China.
Andres Martinez-Hernandez, a national security analyst from the Heritage Foundation, told the members of Congress that the CSIS report “unmasked the malign nature of the Beijing-Havana nexus.”
Leland Lazarus, who works on China-Latin America relations for Florida International University's Jack D. Gordon Institute of Public Policy, added: “Cuba is not just an outpost of Chinese influence. It's a strategic beachhead."
According to Armstrong, the Chinese spy base story is being seized “to build another case against Cuba [and] China and to build up these aggressive policies that we have in place against these two countries.”
You can read our article about the spy base from last year HERE.