China Plans Spy Base In Cuba.

 China related events are accelerating.

"WASHINGTON -- China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, in a brash new geopolitical challenge by Beijing to the U.S., U.S. officials familiar with highly classified intelligence said.

An eavesdropping facility in Cuba, about 100 miles from Florida, would allow Chinese intelligence services to scoop up electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic.

Officials familiar with the matter said China has agreed to pay cash-strapped Cuba several billion dollars to allow it to build the station and that the two countries had reached an agreement in principle.

The revelation has sparked alarm within the Biden administration. Washington regards Beijing as its most significant economic and military rival. A Chinese base with advanced military and intelligence capabilities in the U.S.'s backyard could be an unprecedented new threat.

On Wednesday evening, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said he couldn't comment on the details of the Journal's reporting but noted the U.S. was monitoring and taking steps to counter the Chinese government's efforts to invest in infrastructure that might have military purposes.

On Thursday, after publication of this article, Kirby said "this report is not accurate" without providing any details. He added: "We remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and in the region."

Cuba's Embassy in Washington said Thursday that the article was "totally mendacious and unfounded information." The Chinese Embassy had no comment.

U.S. officials described the intelligence on the planned Cuba site, apparently gathered in recent weeks, as convincing. They said the base would enable China to conduct signals intelligence, known in the espionage world as sigint, which could include the monitoring of communications including emails, phone calls and satellite transmissions.

Officials declined to provide more details about the proposed location of the listening station or whether construction had begun. It couldn't be determined what, if anything, the Biden administration could do to stop completion of the facility.

The top lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee said a Chinese eavesdropping facility in Cuba would pose a "serious threat to our national security and sovereignty" and urged the administration to take action.

"We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people," Chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), the vice chairman of the panel, said.

The U.S. has intervened before to stop foreign powers from extending their influence in the Western Hemisphere, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviets deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba, prompting a U.S. Navy quarantine of the island.

The Soviets backed down and removed the missiles. A few months later, the U.S. quietly removed intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Turkey about which the Soviets had complained.

The intelligence on the new base comes in the midst of the Biden administration's efforts to improve U.S.-China relations after months of acrimony that followed a Chinese spy balloon's flight over the U.S. this year.

President Biden in May sent Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns on a secret trip to Beijing, and Jake Sullivan, the national-security adviser, held talks with a top Chinese official in Vienna.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Beijing this month and possibly meet with President Xi Jinping of China. Biden in May said he believed there would be a thaw in U.S.-China relations despite recent public tensions.

Beijing is likely to argue that the base in Cuba is justified because of U.S. military and intelligence activities close to China, some analysts said. U.S. military aircraft fly over the South China Sea, engaging in electronic surveillance. The U.S. sells arms to Taiwan, deploys a small number of troops there to train its military, and sails Navy ships through the Taiwan Strait.

An eavesdropping facility in Cuba would make clear "China is prepared to do the same in America's backyard," said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national-security think tank in Washington.

"Establishing this facility signals a new, escalatory phase in China's broader defense strategy. It's a bit of a game changer," Singleton said. "The selection of Cuba is also intentionally provocative."

The U.S. also maintains a military base in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay, where a prison was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to house alleged foreign terrorists captured overseas. The U.S. has used the base as a sigint station.

China's only declared foreign military base is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. It has embarked on a global port-development campaign in places including Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. officials said that effort is aimed at creating a network of military ports and intelligence bases to project Chinese power.

Security relations between Washington and Beijing have grown tense in recent weeks after close encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships in the Taiwan Strait and between the two nations' military aircraft over the South China Sea.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China's defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, traded barbs at a conference in Singapore last weekend, though the two shook hands in a widely publicized gesture. Austin complained about Beijing's lack of communication on military matters and Li's refusal to meet with him. China has said it won't agree to such a meeting until Washington lifts sanctions it placed on Li in 2018.

The Biden administration has attempted to pull closer to Havana, reversing some Trump-era policies by loosening restrictions on travel to and from Cuba and re-establishing a family-reunification program. The administration has also expanded consular services to allow more Cubans to visit the U.S. and has restored some diplomatic personnel who were removed after a series of mysterious health incidents affecting U.S. personnel in Havana.

Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. since it became a Communist dictatorship after the 1959 revolution." [1]

Indeed, superpowers penetrating one another's sphere of influence is  an uncomfortable and dangerous game.

1.  China Plans Spy Base In Cuba. Strobel, Warren P;
Lubold, Gordon. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 09 June 2023: A.1.