China has teamed up with a communist ally to spy on america just 90 miles south of Florida, White House officials have confirmed.
The country has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019 as a part of an effort to ramp up spying efforts, a Biden administration official said, noting that the difficulty is “ongoing” and predates Biden’s presidency.
An anonymous White House official said the US intelligence community had known about China’s espionage from Cuba for a while, considering it an “ongoing” affair that was “not a latest development.”
Biden’s administrator has been working to stop China’s efforts to expand spying operations and believes some progress has been made through diplomacy and other specific efforts, the official said.
The existence of a Chinese spy base has been confirmed By The Wall Street Journal on Thursdaywho reported that China and Cuba had reached an agreement to construct an electronic listening station on the island.
It was reported that China planned to pay the failing island nation billions of dollars as a part of the negotiations.
Following Thursday’s news, the White House called the report inaccurate.
“I saw this press report, it is not accurate,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby he said in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday. “I can let you know that from day one among this administration, we have now been concerned about China’s influential actions world wide; definitely in this hemisphere and in this region we’re watching very, very closely.”
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also denied the reports in a Twitter post on Saturday.
“Defamatory speculation continues, evidently promoted by some media outlets to cause harm and alarm, without following minimum communication patterns and without providing data or evidence to support what they’re disseminating,” he wrote.
In line with an anonymous official, Biden’s national security team was briefed on the espionage base and China’s efforts to extend its influence and espionage capabilities shortly after taking office in January 2021.
Chinese officials looked at destinations spanning the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific before selecting Cuba. An existing facility on the island was upgraded to a spy operation in 2019, an official said.
Tensions between the US and China have been tense throughout Biden’s tenure.
US-China relations were volatile throughout Biden’s tenure. The situation worsened after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited democratically governed Taiwan. The visit of the Speaker of the House of Representatives since 1997 prompted China, which claims the island as its territory, to begin military exercises around Taiwan.
Relations became much more strained after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon that entered the US earlier this yr.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to go to China next week the previous trip was cancelled when the balloon flew over america.
Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, in accordance with US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity on Friday.
CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing along with his counterpart last month.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met along with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna last month and explained that the administration wanted to enhance high-level communication with Chinese officials.
With AP cables