The White House stated on June 12 that the existence of a Chinese spy base in Cuba isn’t a recent development and dates to the time when President Donald Trump was in office.
During a press briefing at the White House, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, confirmed that the Biden administration is aware of China’s intelligence-collecting capabilities in Cuba and is taking them seriously.
“We’re not going to be able to get into too much detail about our own counterintelligence efforts,” Kirby said. “As we’ve communicated over the weekend, this is not a new development that China’s been trying to achieve some intelligence gathering capabilities in Cuba and, frankly, elsewhere in the hemisphere, and that from day one, when we came in, we took this issue seriously.”
The remarks came after several media outlets reported that Beijing has been operating a spy base in Cuba since 2019.
Previously, both the White House and the Pentagon denied claims that China struck a “secret agreement” with Cuba recently to build a spy base, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The report cited anonymous sources who said Beijing had agreed to pay Cuba billions of dollars for the opportunity to build the spy facility in the United States’ backyard.
Kirby claimed that the report wasn’t accurate but didn’t elaborate on what was incorrect.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Trump administration hadn’t done enough to prevent Chinese ambitions to increase overseas intelligence-gathering.
China upgraded its Cuban intelligence collection facilities in 2019, Blinken told reporters on June 12 at a briefing alongside Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
“It was our assessment that despite awareness of the basing efforts and some attempts to address the challenge in the past administration, we weren’t making enough progress on this issue and we needed a more direct approach,” Blinken said.
“And that’s exactly what President Biden instructed his team to do to address the challenge.”
By Emel Akan
