The Trump administration is intensifying pressure on Havana as China expands intelligence facilities in Cuba, raising alarms over Beijing’s ability to monitor U.S. military sites just 90 miles from Florida.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Trump administration is escalating its campaign to push Chinese influence out of Cuba, framing Havana’s relationship with Beijing as a direct national security threat because of Chinese intelligence facilities, military cooperation and surveillance infrastructure located near the United States.
According to a report by the Gateway Pundit, the confrontation has widened in recent months through sanctions, indictments, reconnaissance flights, diplomatic warnings and economic pressure, as Washington seeks to weaken China’s foothold on an island roughly 90 miles from Florida.
The latest flashpoint came after Cuba received a 60,000-ton rice shipment from the Chinese Communist Party on May 26, 2026. One day later, Beijing condemned the U.S. blockade and what it described as increasing military threats against Cuba.
China’s support for Havana is expanding as the Trump administration moves to cut Beijing’s foothold on the island. The pressure campaign has included sanctions, criminal charges, intelligence warnings and diplomatic ultimatums.
Satellite imagery has shown that China is expanding signals intelligence infrastructure in Cuba. The Center for Strategic and International Studies identified four facilities that it said are highly likely to support Chinese intelligence operations against the United States: Bejucal, Wajay and Calabazar near Havana, along with El Salao, which sits roughly 70 miles from the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay.
A May 2025 CSIS satellite update documented major construction at Bejucal, where crews removed six existing pole antennas and began building a Circularly Disposed Antenna Array with an outer ring nearly 574 feet across. The imagery also showed satellite dishes being repositioned across multiple captures, confirming the site was active.
CDAAs are used for high-frequency direction finding and can identify radio-signal origins from 3,000 to 8,000 miles away. China has deployed the same technology at Mischief Reef and Subi Reef in the South China Sea to monitor U.S. naval activity.
Together, the four Cuban facilities can cover roughly 20 U.S. military installations in Florida. Those include U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Central Command headquarters, the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and multiple submarine bases.
A May 2025 House Homeland Security Committee letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem warned that China’s use of telemetry interception, geospatial intelligence and electromagnetic surveillance in Cuba could allow Beijing to “systematically erode U.S. strategic advantages without ever firing a shot.” The 2025 SOUTHCOM Posture Statement similarly warned that Cuba “serves as a proximate location for intelligence gathering and force projection by our adversaries.”
In May 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that China and Russia had nearly tripled their combined intelligence personnel in Cuba since 2023 and upgraded listening facilities within range of both U.S. combatant commands. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to deliver a classified report to Congress by June 2026 on Chinese and Russian intelligence capabilities in Cuba.
China has provided nearly $8 billion in financing to Cuba since 2000. In 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing agreed to pay Havana several billion dollars for the right to establish electronic eavesdropping facilities on the island.
China has also helped build Cuba’s telecommunications system, including Huawei equipment with filtering software used to monitor and block citizen communications. Cuban authorities showed that capability in July 2021 when the regime shut down internet and phone services to suppress anti-government protests.
Cuba’s intelligence cooperation with China also involves human intelligence. In December 2023, former U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha was arrested and charged with espionage after allegedly serving for 15 years as a Cuban intelligence asset inside the U.S. government. Attorney General Merrick Garland described the case as one of the “highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations” of the U.S. government by a foreign agent. Because Cuba and China routinely share collected intelligence, classified information acquired by Cuban assets may have reached Beijing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Cuba in May 2026 as a direct national security threat.
“Cuba not only has weapons that they’ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in their country, not far from where we’re standing right now,” Rubio said. “The other thing that poses a threat to the national security of the United States is to have a failed state 90 miles from our shores run by friends of our adversaries.”
An Axios report published May 17, 2026, citing classified U.S. intelligence provided by a senior Trump administration official, said Cuba had acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran since 2023. The report said Cuban military officials discussed potential scenarios involving the use of drones against Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, U.S. military vessels and Key West. The drone figure, based on a classified leak and not supported by a public document, has not been independently verified.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed before Congress that the Russian nuclear submarine Kazan has used Cuban ports.
Since February 2026, the U.S. Air Force has conducted at least 25 reconnaissance flights near Cuba under Operation Southern Spear. The flights have included RC-135V Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft to assess Cuban military capabilities and defense systems.
The Trump administration has moved against Cuba through multiple channels at once. On Jan. 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, ending subsidized Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba that had provided about 26,500 barrels per day, or roughly 24% of the island’s daily consumption.
On Jan. 29, Trump signed Executive Order 14380, declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and imposing tariffs on countries supplying oil to Havana. On May 1, Trump signed Executive Order 14404, expanding secondary sanctions to foreign entities, including financial institutions, that provide material support to the Cuban government or designated Cuban entities. The approach mirrors secondary sanctions previously used against Iran, Russia and North Korea.
On May 7, Rubio used that authority to sanction GAESA, the Cuban military-run conglomerate that controls hotels, ports, banking and retail operations. The sanctions also targeted GAESA executive president Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera and the Moa Nickel joint venture.
Rubio said GAESA controls “$18 billion of assets, and not a penny of that transfers over to the state budget. Not a penny of that goes over to help the people of Cuba.”
Canadian firm Sherritt International suspended its participation in Cuban joint venture activities the same day the sanctions were announced.
On May 20, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft and four counts of murder connected to the Cuban Air Force’s 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue civilian aircraft, which killed four men.
The next day, ICE arrested Adys Lastres Morera, sister of GAESA’s executive president, in Miami after Rubio revoked her green card. U.S. officials said she was managing real estate assets in Florida while aiding the Cuban regime under Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Since January 2026, the administration has imposed more than 240 new sanctions on Cuba and intercepted at least seven tankers carrying oil to the island, slashing Cuba’s energy imports by 80% to 90%.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana in May 2026 and gave Cuban officials a direct ultimatum: structural political changes in exchange for sanctions relief, with a warning that the offer would not remain open indefinitely. Cuba’s ambassador said three rounds of diplomatic talks with Washington had produced “no progress.”
The administration’s effort to roll back Chinese influence has extended across Latin America. After meetings with Rubio, Panama withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative in February 2025, becoming the first country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. Panama also moved to restore control over canal port operations previously dominated by Chinese state-linked companies.
Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. military operation that captured Maduro in January 2026, disrupted China’s access to subsidized Venezuelan oil and weakened Beijing’s strategic position in Venezuela. Honduras moved to reactivate its trade relationship with Taiwan. Mexico imposed tariffs of up to 50% on Chinese imports to close a backdoor route into the U.S. market. Chile cancelled a China Mobile submarine cable concession connecting Valparaíso to Hong Kong after a U.S. warning. Peru withdrew congressional authorization allowing a Chinese military hospital ship to dock. U.S. security cooperation has also increased with Guyana, El Salvador, Argentina and Peru.
The rollback has limits. Colombia formally joined Belt and Road in May 2025. China has surpassed the United States as the top trading partner of Brazil, Peru, Chile and other regional economies, and two-thirds of Latin American and Caribbean nations have joined Belt and Road. Trade between China and South America reached a record $518 billion in 2024.
As U.S. sanctions have restricted Cuba’s oil access, China has increased its energy role on the island. Chinese solar equipment exports to Cuba rose from about $3 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025, according to the British energy think tank Ember. Cuba connected 49 new solar parks to its grid from early 2025 to early 2026, adding more than 1,000 megawatts of capacity with Chinese equipment and financing. In January 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping approved an $80 million emergency aid package for Cuban electrical infrastructure, along with the 60,000-ton rice shipment.
China’s Foreign Ministry has called U.S. sanctions “brutal” and “unlawful,” demanding they end immediately. Spokesman Lin Jian said Washington was “creating pretexts and spreading rumors to defame” Cuba while maintaining an illegal blockade. Beijing has framed its energy cooperation with Havana as resistance to U.S. economic pressure. CFR analysts have warned that China’s expanding role in Cuba’s solar infrastructure could give Beijing additional leverage to expand intelligence-gathering capabilities beyond existing satellite-linked facilities.
The FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Pentagon to provide Congress with a classified report on Chinese and Russian intelligence capabilities in Cuba by June 2026. The report must address the four identified signals intelligence facilities, personnel levels and equipment upgrades at each site, Russian naval use of Cuban ports and the combined threat to U.S. military installations across Florida and the Caribbean.
The report will be the first congressionally required Pentagon assessment of the full Chinese and Russian intelligence presence in Cuba. It arrives amid the sharpest U.S.-Cuba confrontation since the 1962 Missile Crisis. The COINS Act, incorporated into the FY2026 NDAA, also expanded the definition of “country of concern” for outbound U.S. investment restrictions beyond China to include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, signaling that Congress views those governments as operating in coordination.
Rubio has said Cuba has a history of “buying time and waiting us out” and that the current administration will not permit that strategy. Trump has said previous U.S. presidents considered intervening in Cuba for decades but that “it looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”
The Raúl Castro indictment gives Washington a legal basis for a possible capture operation modeled on the Maduro raid. At the same time, with the White House focused on the war with Iran, the likelihood of military action against Cuba is being assessed as moderate. Polymarket, a prediction market where traders wager on geopolitical outcomes, currently places the probability of U.S. military action against Cuba by Dec. 31, 2026, at 54%, with more than $5.2 million traded on the question.
Cuba’s ambassador to the United States has acknowledged that three rounds of direct talks with Washington have produced no results. The Pentagon report due this month is expected to define, in official terms, what the Trump administration is demanding that Havana dismantle and what Washington may be prepared to do if Cuba refuses.
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