WASHINGTON, D.C. –– This week, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, held a hearing to examine suspected efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to build surveillance infrastructure in Cuba, just 90 miles off the United States’ coast. 
 
Witness testimony was provided by Dr. Ryan C. Berg, director of Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrés Martínez-Fernández, a Latin America senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security; and Leland Lazarus, associate director for the National Security Program at Florida International University’s Gordon Institute for Public Policy.
 
Witnesses provided an overview of the CCP’s suspected signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities at facilities in Cuba and the risk this activity poses to the homeland. Dr. Berg revealed new satellite imagery showing potential new sites of surveillance activity in Cuba and highlighted the steps that should be taken to counter the threat, including briefing all members of Congress on what Dr. Berg views as an “escalation and red line.”

In his opening statement, Chairman Gimenez discussed the serious national security threat posed by the CCP’s intelligence operations in Cuba:

“Mounting evidence suggests that the Chinese Communist Party is expanding its strategic partnership with the totalitarian communist regime in Cuba to build advanced surveillance infrastructure capable of targeting the United States.
 
“This collaboration represents one of the most brazen intelligence operations ever attempted near the American mainland, and places our military operations, commercial activity, and communications squarely in the crosshairs of a hostile foreign power.
 
“Recent satellite imagery and open-source analysis suggest the presence of several Chinese-funded signals intelligence facilities across Cuba. The possibility that these sites are capable of monitoring U.S. military operations, commercial shipping, space launches, and sensitive communications is deeply troubling.”

In his opening statement, Dr. Berg discussed the CCP’s path to establishing intelligence operations in Cuba and the CCP’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities:
 
“When Soviet influence diminished on the island [Cuba], following the end of the Cold War, eyes, ears, and antennas stayed. In many ways China filled the void. On June 8th, 2023, the Wall Street Journal first reported that Cuba hosted secret Chinese spy bases in return for billions of dollars for the Cuban regime. That same day, the Biden administration’s Defense Department denied the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, characterizing the report as, quote, ‘inaccurate.’”
 
“Three days later, however, the NSC spokesperson, John Kirby, reversed course and admitted to China’s spy bases in Cuba, but said that its presence had existed since 2019 out of the first Trump administration, implying that the Biden admin had inherited this challenge.”
 
“Around the same time, reports surfaced that China was pursuing the construction of a military training base in Cuba. CSIS then published a groundbreaking report called Secret Signals, Decoding China’s Intelligence Activities in Cuba. The CSIS team scoured the island using commercially available satellite imagery, identifying four likely sites for signals intelligence collection in that process.”
 
“This was followed by a Wall Street Journal exclusive confirming its earlier reporting on the spy stations. CSIS published another updated set of images in December 2024 and has tracked China’s progress at these four sites.”

Chairman Gimenez asked witnesses about Russia’s presence in Cuba and how it affects Cuba’s relationship with China:
 
“Let’s talk about Cuba and the threat and the Chinese threat in Cuba. The Russians have been operating there for years, decades. Are the Chinese supplanting the Russians or are they adding to the Russian threat?”
 
Dr. Berg answered: 
 
“I think that they are both supplanting but also adding too. There’s still a residual Russian presence, of course. In Cuba, we saw last year at the tail end of the Biden administration how the Russians sailed a vessel through the Florida Strait, ported both in Cuba and in Havana. Importantly, before porting in Cuba, displayed one of its Zircon hypersonic missiles in the Atlantic. But I would say in terms of presence, Mr. Chairman, the Chinese have supplanted them in terms of the more important partner and quite literally, some of these sites that we’ve showed were former Russian sites that are now occupied, we believe, by the Chinese.”
 
Chairman Gimenez then asked about the risks to our national security due to the proximity of the suspicious facilities to training ranges in Florida:
 
“The training range that’s just outside of Florida, it’s the largest training range that we have. It’s the only training range that actually can simulate battle in the Taiwan Straits. What kind of a threat do these facilities pose to those ranges and what kind of intelligence could the Chinese get from surveying those ranges in relation to our tactics––of how we may operate in the Taiwan Straits?”
 
Dr. Berg answered: 
 
“To my understanding, that military communications is of course encrypted and protected in certain ways, but if it’s scooped up by some of this equipment, then it is available for the Chinese to try to crack that communication. And so that’s why one of my recommendations is doing an exercise to harden facilities and figure out what our vulnerabilities are so that we make sure that we protect those very vulnerable secrets, both on the commercial side and on the military side.”

Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC) asked about the strategy the CCP is developing through potential facilities in Cuba:
 
“Are China’s activities in Cuba more reminiscent of Cold War style strategic encirclement or are they more aligned with a new model of digital influence and persistent surveillance?”
 
Martínez-Fernández answered: 
 
“I think that there are many aspects of China’s engagement in Cuba that are reminiscent of the Cold War-era engagement by the Soviet Union, and they align primarily with, or often with, military and geostrategic aims for those reasons. I think certainly we’re seeing an increased leveraging of modern technologies, as well as the more deep economic ties that China has globally as compared to maybe the Soviet Union as part of what’s being leveraged in Latin America, and the Caribbean, and with Cuba to create this kind of broader surveillance and operational infrastructure for China. And that raises many concerns because we obviously, we saw the consequences and the risks during [the] Cold War of this presence from hostile extra-hemispheric actors at just 90 miles off of our shores. And we’re seeing that, I think, at a new level. As I said, because of these new, and in some way expanded, capacities that the Chinese governments can employ because of its resources, because of its capacities.”
 

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