In May 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a timely report titled “Beijing’s Air, Space, and Maritime Surveillance from Cuba: A Growing Threat to the Homeland.” The report confirmed China’s construction of a new signals intelligence facility near Santiago de Cuba, which is located just 70 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The installation, equipped with a circularly disposed antenna array, is designed to intercept high-frequency communications and signals across vast distances, directly targeting U.S. military and diplomatic operations.
This revelation underscores the urgency of what is no longer theoretical: Cuba has become a multi-regime staging ground for surveillance, subversion, and regional disruption. China, Russia, and Iran are not simply building influence in the Caribbean — they are constructing real-time capabilities within reach of the U.S. mainland. Their combined presence suggests a new doctrine of proximity-based deterrence and hybrid warfare emerging just offshore.
Just 90 miles from Florida, Cuba is once again becoming a frontline concern for U.S. national security — not as a Cold War holdover, but as an active platform for adversaries. China, Russia, and Iran have each embedded themselves in Havana’s infrastructure, intelligence services, and foreign policy, forging a quiet but strategic alignment against the West.
China’s presence is the most technologically advanced. Satellite imagery from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) confirms four Chinese signals intelligence facilities in Cuba: Bejucal, Calabazar, El Salao, and Wajay. At Bejucal, a 175-meter-wide circularly disposed antenna array, under construction since 2024, is capable of intercepting high-frequency signals across 8,000 miles. These stations, operated in coordination with the People’s Liberation Army, allow Beijing to monitor U.S. military, satellite, and diplomatic communications across the region.
Beyond surveillance, China is wiring Cuba’s digital backbone. Huawei has supplied government-grade 4G+ infrastructure and is reportedly laying the groundwork for future 5G expansion — despite repeated warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA and FBI, which have flagged Huawei as a national security threat due to its close ties with the Chinese Communist Party and potential for data exfiltration. Chinese engineers actively advise on the modernization of Cuban state data centers, which are believed to be integrated with PRC-origin surveillance frameworks. A bilateral cybersecurity cooperation pact was signed in 2023, and a digital sovereignty working group was launched in 2024 to align economic and surveillance standards. This is not symbolic. It is operational.
Russia has also reasserted itself. In May 2025, Moscow pledged $1.03 billion under ‘Plan 2030’ to overhaul Cuba’s energy grid, agricultural sector, and transportation infrastructure. The announcement came just days before Russian Navy vessels — including the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov — docked in Havana as part of expanded naval rotations and port access drills. Russia has also revived elements of Cold War–era intelligence sharing, reportedly exploring the partial reactivation of the former Soviet signals intelligence station at Lourdes — a facility that, at its height, was capable of monitoring nearly all U.S. telecommunications in the southeastern United States and served as one of the largest Soviet eavesdropping centers outside its borders.
Iran, meanwhile, sees Cuba as a regional proxy for asymmetric warfare — distinct from the more visible military and infrastructure investments of Russia and China. Where Moscow dispatches submarines and Beijing builds surveillance networks, Tehran focuses on covert influence operations, cyber disruption, and ideological subversion. Its approach is guerrilla in form and digital in execution. During President Ebrahim Raisi’s 2023 Latin America tour, Tehran signed 35 bilateral agreements, six of them with Cuba. These included cybersecurity training, port access for Iranian vessels, military coordination, customs integration, and telecommunications collaboration. A 2024 report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed that the IRGC’s cyber units have conducted joint exercises with Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence (DGI), including malware deployment drills, infrastructure reconnaissance, and encrypted app penetration training. U.S. Southern Command has warned of ’emerging cooperation’ between these two regimes, calling it a ‘high-risk multiplier.’
Together, these powers are embedding infrastructure in Cuba not with missiles but with cables, code, and influence tactics that evade traditional detection and fall below the threshold of military provocation. This is a conflict unfolding in bandwidth, not battlefields. As of mid-2025, China has four known signals intelligence stations on the island. Iran and Cuba have signed at least eight cybersecurity and defense agreements. Russia continues to provide logistical, energy, and naval support.
This is not a military buildup. It is a soft siege. And Havana is now a critical node in a hostile intelligence network: intercepting U.S. communications, expanding foreign propaganda, and offering Latin American access points to hostile regimes.
Chinese firms are laying the groundwork for future 5G expansion. Russian outlets like RT en Español reach tens of millions in the region, amplified through Cuban platforms. Iranian operatives, meanwhile, have conducted joint cyber exercises with Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence.
Cuba, long dependent on foreign sponsors, has found three new ones. Its alignment with authoritarian regimes is nothing new — during the Cold War, Cuba was the Soviet Union’s most entrenched ally in the Western Hemisphere, receiving billions in military and economic aid. From 1960 to 1990, Moscow funneled an estimated $65 billion into Havana’s economy, embedding Cuba deeply within the communist bloc.
Yet today, the alignment is broader — and quieter. It spans geographic reach, cyber complexity, and ideological convenience. China is building digital surveillance architecture, Russia is investing in port infrastructure and naval access, and Iran is embedding subversive tools and training. It is a convergence driven not by doctrine, but by shared strategic utility. Not ideology, but opportunity, drives the convergence. China seeks proximity. Russia wants relevance. Iran thrives on chaos. Cuba provides geography.
During the Cold War, the U.S. met Soviet missiles in Cuba with the Monroe Doctrine and a red line. Today, a subtler but equally dangerous alignment is underway. It may not involve warheads, but it threatens America’s technological, informational, and regional dominance.
To treat Cuba as a relic is to misread the moment. It is not a relic. It is a platform. And it is being used.
Cuba doesn’t need weapons. It only needs to offer space.
And now it has.
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