China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for Beijing to install an infrastructure of electronic espionage on the island destined to capture communications from the entire southern United States, according to what Washington officials have revealed in exclusive to the economic newspaper The Wall Street Journal. The outlet claims that the facility can provide access to the many military bases in that area and monitor US maritime traffic.
“Although I cannot speak on this specific report, we are very aware of China’s efforts to invest in infrastructure for military purposes around the world, including in this hemisphere, and we have spoken about it many times,” he told the wsj National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
The official added that Washington is monitoring this situation and has measures to counteract it. “We are confident that we can meet all of our security commitments within the nation, in the region and around the world.”
According to media sources, “highly classified” intelligence officials, China has offered Cuba billions of dollars in exchange for authorization to build the spy base and the Havana regime, badly in need of funds, would have accessed. The proximity of this location constitutes an alarm signal for Washington, and the newspaper does not hesitate to describe the situation as an “unprecedented threat”, although it recalls the Lourdes base installed on the island by the USSR last century and dismantled in 2001.
The officials claim to have information – although they refused to disclose it – about the location of the base, which would allow China to perform an intelligence technique known as ‘sigint’.
The officials claim to have information – though they declined to disclose it – about the location of the base, which would allow China to perform an intelligence technique known as next (signal intelligence), which consists of the collection of information about an objective, both for defense and attack tasks, which include the supervision of communications, including emails, telephone calls and satellite transmissions.
For their part, the embassies of the countries involved avoided making comments and even that of Cuba did not respond to the request.
He wsj He assures that his sources did not want to clarify whether construction has begun or is just a plan, while admitting that it is difficult for the US to intervene to stop construction. To do this, he recalls the missile crisis of 1962 and how the country ended up stealthily withdrawing from Turkey the intermediate-range ballistics that bothered Moscow to close the crisis, and after the Russians took their own from Cuba.
“Beijing is likely to argue that the base in Cuba is justified, due to the US military and intelligence activities close to China,” several analysts consulted told the US newspaper. The newspaper recalls that there are US military planes that carry out electronic surveillance over the China Sea and that Washington sells arms to Taiwan, where it also has troops deployed and sails its navy ships.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month and may meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both powers are trying to end the crisis experienced a few months ago, when a Chinese balloon flew over the United States and was shot down over Atlantic waters. Beijing then admitted that the balloon belonged to it, but claimed that it had been lost and that it was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
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