July 3, 2025: Cuba has become the central asset for the new Chinese signals intelligence/SIGINT site that gathers information on American military operations throughout the southeastern United States. China built the island’s telecommunications infrastructure. Cuba’s sole internet provider is the Chinese Huawei firm. Cuba uses Huawei software to filter internet searches. By doing so, China created a system capable of surveillance and much more. This was obvious in mid-2021, when Cuban government officials shut down internet and telephone services, preventing Cuban protestors from communicating with anyone outside their island country.

This all began at the end of the 1990s when Cuba sought new partners to replace the defunct Soviet state. The Russians were once a valued communist ally. That is now over, never to return. Rescue came in the form of Chinese intelligence officials looking for a suitable place to set up a surveillance system that would monitor the Americans. By 2023 Cuba was a base for secret Chinese espionage operations. China paid Cuban officials billions of dollars for this opportunity. This money was welcomed because Cuba, since the 1960s, had cheated foreign companies out of billions of dollars by preventing these firms from getting their money and other assets out of the country. Cuban government officials simply seized foreign assets.

It wasn’t always this bad. In the 1950s Cuba had the largest economy in the Caribbean. When the communist rebels took over in 1959, the economy fell apart. Russian advisors arrived to establish and operate an efficient police state. While the Soviet Union eventually collapsed because of economic failure, they left behind all the tools and assets needed to create a Cuban police state. Cuban officials now controlled employment and any misbehavior or threat to the state meant the offenders were out of work. The government could also jail anyone for any reason at any time. The only ones getting rich were the Cuban officials who controlled the jobs and judicial system. This is still how it works in Cuba

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died in 2016. There were concerns about what happened next. This was particularly the case with the Cuban military. The Cuban Army regularly displayed its elderly and obsolete Soviet tanks and other light armored vehicles. But the primary power was the large number of troops armed and trained as paramilitary forces. The Soviet tanks, trucks and other equipment were poorly maintained, if at all, and left to rot in ramshackle warehouses. Troops used bicycles to get around. Some active duty troops and forces and specialized units are capable. There are lots of rifles, pistols and other weapons in the country. About ten percent of the population is alleged to be still willing to fight in support of whoever came after Fidel. Practically, only some of the paramilitary forces might be still willing to try.

Most communist dictatorships have been replaced by democracies since 1989, and all have prospered. North Korea and Cuba remain faithful to communist rule and their citizens are unhappy with this arrangement. At least Fidel Castro had the personality, and the popularity needed to placate the population. His less effective successor was his brother Raul, who fancied himself a dictator that was not to be questioned. Raul was aware of his shortcomings when thousands of Cubans fled the country for the United States. Raul announced that he sought to improve relations with the United States. That was different because Fidel Castro had exploited the testy relationship with the United States as part of an effort to stay in power. Fidel used the threat from the north angle since the 1960s to keep the impoverished and imprisoned Cuban people with him. The worked until he died in 2016. His brother Raul succeeded him and retired in 2021.

The resulting Cuban unrest resonates in the United States, which is only 150 kilometers away. In Florida, a key state in national elections, the well-organized Cuban-American minority is a political force to be reckoned with. And then there are also the problems that would accompany Cuban Americans getting actively involved in post-Fidel politics. Some Cuban American leaders have made no secret of their eagerness to do this. Trying to figure out what the current Cuban leader, Miguel Díaz-Cane, is up to is a pressing issue in the Pentagon, as it is back in Cuba.