big ears | Cuban and US officials on Thursday denied a Wall Street Journal report suggesting Cuban officials were colluding with China to build a multibillion-dollar eavesdropping site 100 miles south of Florida that could exacerbate tensions between the US and China, and described the existence of such a site. The location is “incorrect”.
Highlights
- US officials familiar with the classified information told the Wall Street Journal that China had agreed to pay Cuba “several billion dollars” to build the station, allowing Chinese surveillance services to pick up electronic communications in the US, including at military bases and via sea transportation. passage.
- By using this site, Chinese agents will be able to monitor satellite broadcasts, emails, and phone calls from a much closer distance, which has sparked a backlash from US politicians, including presidential candidate Nikki Haley. GOP presidential election 2024, Senator Marco Rubio, who chirp “The threat that Cuba poses to America is not only real, it is much, much worse.”
- In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, John Kirby, a member of the White House National Security Council, called the report “inaccurate,” adding that the Biden administration “was concerned from day one about China’s influence activities” and that he had been “monitoring this very closely.” “.
- Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cosio also denied the existence of the agreement in a series of tweets, describing it as “completely wrong and unfounded”, considering it an invention intended to justify the economic embargo imposed by the United States for years on Cuba.
- Carlos Fernandez de Cossio also said Cuba rejects “any foreign military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean,” while a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., said he was not aware of any agreement between Cuba and China, Reuters reported.
main context
The announcement of an agreement between China and Cuba would have caused consternation within the Biden government, while relations between Washington and Beijing would deteriorate. The report comes four months after federal officials discovered a mysterious balloon, believed to be a Chinese surveillance tool, floating over Montana, which has raised concerns among lawmakers from both parties, though China’s foreign ministry denied it was a spy balloon, saying it was instead a spy balloon. A weather balloon derailed. In response, Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Gang claimed that the perception of China in the United States was “severely distorted” and that the US government was working to “contain and suppress” China. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly accused Chinese intelligence services of surveillance and harassment of US-based critics of the Chinese regime. US authorities have also expressed concern about possible Chinese surveillance through social media platform TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, although its CEO, Xu Ziqiu, has claimed that the app protects US user data from foreign surveillance. Meanwhile, tensions have flared in the wake of China’s conduct of military exercises near Taiwan, which was separated from mainland China more than 70 years ago but is still claimed by the government in Beijing, and after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the current House Speaker. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
Interesting quote
“Such fabrications were fabricated by US officials apparently with knowledge of intelligence, such as that related to the alleged sonic attacks against US diplomatic personnel,” Fernandez de Cosio wrote on Twitter.
the shadow
The allegations of Chinese espionage add to decades of tension and mutual suspicion between the United States and Cuba that date back to the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s, years before the Kennedy administration’s missile crisis. While the United States imposes a strict economic embargo on the country, American officials, including diplomats stationed in Cuba, have reported strange sounds and sensations, as well as loss of hearing and vision, nausea, and dizziness in an unexplained phenomenon called “Havana Syndrome.” Some experts have suggested the phenomenon could be caused by a “directed energy” weapon being used by Russia or another hostile country, though US intelligence officials said in March that the reported illness was not likely to be the result of action by a government. foreign.
Translated article from the American magazine Forbes – Author: Brian Bouchard
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