May 14, 2025 - Epoch Times
19:15
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| When President Trump was asked about the Chinese Communist Party bases located on the island of Cuba, He revealed his plan, which would be to give China 48 hours to remove the bases before he imposed a 100% tariff on all Chinese imports. | |
| Here's specifically what President Trump said in an interview with Reuters. | |
| And do please note, this interview was conducted in July of 2023, when Trump was still in the process of running for office and Joe Biden was the sitting president. | |
| I'd give them 48 hours to get out. | |
| And if they didn't get out, I'd charge them a 100% tariff on everything they sell to the United States, and they'd be gone within two days. | |
| They'd be gone within one hour. | |
| Now, ironically, since assuming office, President Trump did slap a 100% plus tariff on China, but he has yet to address the issue of Chinese spy bases located on the island of Cuba. | |
| Now, at this point, you might just be thinking to yourself, hold on, there's... | |
| Chinese bases located on Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida? | |
| And the answer to that question is yes, there are several bases. | |
| However, at the moment, it only appears to be spying bases used for eavesdropping on American military communications located in the southern part of the U.S. However, even back in the year 2023, when Trump answered that question, there was already an active effort being made by the Chinese to convert these spy bases into military bases that could house actual Chinese soldiers. | |
| And furthermore, this was not just a small, isolated incident. | |
| Instead, this Chinese-Cuban joint base setup is actually part of a broader Chinese Communist Party plan called Project 141. | |
| And now finally, in the year 2025, it appears that Congress is doing something about it, evidenced by this letter right here that was made public on May 6th. | |
| The letter was signed by five members of Congress, including the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, as well as the chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. | |
| The letter was addressed to the Department of Homeland Security, and it said the following, They then requested the Department of Homeland | |
| Security to give them a classified briefing ASAP on the current status of the Chinese threat over on the island of Cuba. | |
| However, even without a classified briefing, we actually already know a lot about these Chinese Now, to start with... | |
| This whole Chinese-Cuban plot was first exposed in a bombshell report that was published in the Wall Street Journal. | |
| The report, which you can see up on your screen, was titled as follows. | |
| Cuba to host secret Chinese spy base focusing on US. | |
| Beijing agrees to pay Havana several billion dollars for eavesdropping facility. | |
| And in this report, it laid out how Chinese Communist Party officials are negotiating with Cuban. | |
| Communist Party officials to set up a large spying facility reminiscent of the Cold War. | |
| Here's specifically what the article wrote. | |
| Quote, Now, | |
| initially, when this was first brought up by the Wall Street Journal, The Biden administration denied that this was true. | |
| In fact, when they were first asked about it, you have Mr. Patrick Ryder, who was a spokesperson for the U.S. Pentagon under then-Secretary Lloyd Austin. | |
| He said the following when asked specifically about this Wall Street Journal report. | |
| Quote, Just two days later, two days after the statement was made, | |
| the Biden White House reversed course, and they not only confirmed the accuracy of these negotiations, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, but they also said that there's been a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019, although they claimed that the characterization in the Wall Street Journal article was inaccurate. | |
| They added the following in a statement when asked about it. | |
| Quote, this is an ongoing issue and not a new development, and the arrangement as characterized in the reporting does not comport with our understanding. | |
| The Chinese government will keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba, and we will keep working to disrupt it. | |
| And I'll quickly mention, just as a personal anecdote, watching this story play out back in 2023 was wild. | |
| Basically, on Thursday, the federal government denied that any of this was true, but then by Saturday... | |
| They released a statement saying that not only was it true, but that actually it's been an ongoing issue since at least 2019. | |
| It was at that point that Reuters had that interview with Donald Trump about the Chinese bases back when he was still running for office, and it was that response of his that I quoted to you earlier, the one where he threatened 100% tariffs on China if they don't get rid of the bases ASAP. | |
| With that story confirmed by the federal government, let's look at what was actually uncovered regarding these China-Cuban joint bases. | |
| The Wall Street Journal, at that time, they found that China and Cuba were jointly operating four different eavesdropping stations on the island, listening in and intercepting American communications. | |
| And because of Cuba's proximity to Tampa Bay, Florida, those communications almost certainly included military communications. | |
| Here's specifically what the Wall Street Journal wrote all the way back in 2023. | |
| Quote. | |
| Using Cuba, roughly 100 miles off the Florida coast as a base, could provide eavesdropping access to U.S. military, commercial, and other communications in the Southeast region, where there are dozens of U.S. military bases, as well as the monitoring of military and commercial traffic. | |
| The U.S. military's headquarters for U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia, and U.S. Special Operations Command are both in Tampa, Florida. | |
| U.S. Southern Command is based in Miami. | |
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| Only confirmed to be true. | |
| In fact, a year later, on July 1st of 2024, you had the Center for Strategic and International Studies release a report. | |
| You can see it up on your screen. | |
| This report, which by the way is beautifully designed and laid out in my opinion, it gave us a lot more details regarding the methodologies that they were likely using to collect American signals, as well as where these spy bases were actually located on the island of Cuba. | |
| Now, in regards to the methodology of spying, here is what the report wrote. | |
| Signals intelligence, SIGINT, is a core element of modern spycraft. | |
| Intercepting signals transmitted by both civilian and military actors can provide countries with valuable information about their adversaries, competitors, and allies alike. | |
| Collecting SIGINT is a complex task that requires specialized equipment, namely antennas optimized for the signal characteristics of their targets. | |
| The size, number, orientation, and layout of these antennas determine their capabilities and function. | |
| And then right below that in the same report, they provide four different examples of how these antennas could physically be set up in order to collect data. | |
| You can have a single antenna. | |
| You can have two synchronized antennas next to each other using a process called beamforming, where they can both basically scan the same area for added effect. | |
| Then you can also beamform with multiple antennas lined up one next to each other, not just two. | |
| Or lastly, you can also organize the antennas into a grid. | |
| Each one of these different types of setups has their pluses and their minuses, but regardless of how these antennas are physically set up, the key point is that you need to be close to your target. | |
| This type of signals collection, it can only work when you're in proximity to the actual signals you're trying to collect. | |
| You can now do it from across the globe, meaning China can't do it from mainland China. | |
| They have to be somewhere in close proximity to the military bases that they're trying to collect signals from, which is a point highlighted by this report. | |
| Geography impacts the effectiveness of SIGINT. | |
| Over long distances, radio signals can become difficult to isolate from surrounding signal traffic. | |
| Radar transmissions generally require a direct line of sight to the target, leading to limitations caused by the curvature of the Earth and other physical obstacles. | |
| Cuba's proximity to the southern United States and the Caribbean makes it a prime location for collecting SIGINT on the region. | |
| For Beijing, having access to SIGIN capabilities in Cuba would open a significant intelligence window inaccessible from within Chinese territory. | |
| And what they wrote here becomes really obvious when you take a look at an actual map. | |
| Cuba is clearly in a good position to be able to capture signals from all of the American military installations that you see in Florida, in Georgia, as well as, of course, in Guantanamo Bay. | |
| And so, using their knowledge of antenna setups, these researchers poured over the publicly available satellite imagery, and they were able to actually locate the four spy stations on the island of Cuba. | |
| They are as follows. | |
| And by the way, I'll mention I do not speak Spanish, so if I mispronounce the names of these locations, I do apologize. | |
| The first spy station's site was located in the town of Bujical on the western side of Cuba, right outside the capital city of Havana. | |
| Looking at the satellite imagery, you can clearly see a field with six evenly spaced vertical antennas. | |
| The second site was located in El Salo, which showed ongoing construction for a control building in the center, as well as the foundations having been built for 16 equally spaced vertical antennas. | |
| Then you had another site located in Wajay on the northwest part of the island, and this site was found to have multiple antennas set up, including one batch of three antennas that were set up in an evenly spaced line formation. | |
| And then lastly, they were able to identify a spy station in Kalabazar, a village located kind of in the center north part of the island, and there they were able to identify an antenna field with two horizontal antennas, one next to each other. | |
| By the way, if you want to, for yourself, pour over these satellite images, I will throw the PDF link to this slide that came out of this report. | |
| I'll throw it down into the description box below if you want to actually dig into the weeds for yourself. | |
| Now, this report that we've been going through, it was published in July of 2024. | |
| Five months later, however, in December of 2024, a follow-up report was released, which contained evidence, including satellite images over time, showing that all four of these different spy stations have been developing further, with more construction, more antennas, as well as the building of what appears to be more underground facilities. | |
| And that, more recently, just earlier this month, you had the Center for Strategic and International Studies release their most up-to-date report, you can see it up on your screen, wherein they wrote the following, quote, Now... | |
| Now, Up on your screen is an image of a CDAA. | |
| It basically looks like Stonehenge, if Stonehenge was made out of antennas rather than stone blocks. | |
| And the site in question in Cuba that's getting upgraded with a CDAA is the Bujical site near Havana. | |
| Here's specifically what the most recent report says in this matter. | |
| Quote... | |
| New satellite imagery from April 16, 2025 shows major developments at the site in recent months. | |
| At an existing antenna field on the northern side of the complex, the land has been excavated and six pole antennas have been removed. | |
| In their place, work is underway to construct a large CDAA. | |
| CDAAs are used primarily for high-frequency direction finding, which involves pinpointing the origin of incoming radio signals from as far as 3,000 or even 8,000 miles away. | |
| A new CDAA at Budzikul could offer a significantly enhanced capability to monitor air and maritime activity in and around the United States. | |
| Interestingly, the Soviets also operated a now abandoned antenna array just outside of the current complex at Budzikul. | |
| Meaning, for this site in Cuba, the Chinese might be able to collect not only the signals coming from the southern part of the United States, like Florida and Georgia, but also from as far away as Montana, Arizona, and Washington State. | |
| And also... | |
| It's worth mentioning that this whole situation in Cuba is not an isolated case. | |
| Instead, what the CCP is doing in Cuba very likely is part of a Chinese Communist Party initiative called Project 141. | |
| And the reason that we even know about the existence of Project 141 is because of those Discord leaks a few years ago. | |
| You might remember how, back in 2023, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, he leaked hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence documents onto Discord. | |
| And included among them were files related to the CCP. | |
| Here was the Washington Post reporting on Project 141 in a report they did, not about Cuba, but rather about a Chinese military site that was at the time being built in the United Arab Emirates. | |
| Quote, Beijing's efforts in the United Arab Emirates are part of an ambitious campaign by China's People's Liberation Army, the PLA, to build a global military network that includes at least five overseas bases and ten logistical support sites by 2030, says one of the documents, which features a map of other planned facilities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and throughout Africa. | |
| Chinese military officials call the initiative Project 141, the leaked materials say. | |
| Essentially, the Chinese military is looking to set up shop all across the world. | |
| Project 141 sites, they include the following. | |
| A Chinese naval outpost in Cambodia. | |
| A Chinese military facility over in the United Arab Emirates, which I should mention the U.S. State Department was actually able to put a pause on through backroom negotiations. | |
| Then there's the Chinese base over in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. | |
| And, of course, you have the base over in Cuba, which the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to expand from a spy base into an actual military outpost. | |
| And so, it's amidst this broader push by the CCP to set up locations all around the world, including 90 miles off the coast of Florida, that this congressional letter was written. | |
| This is the letter that we mentioned at the top of the episode, wherein you have several congressional committee chairmen requesting the Department of Homeland Security to give them an immediate classified briefing on what is actually taking place in Cuba. | |
| Now, what that classified briefing might show, I obviously have no idea. | |
| But what we know thus far is that at least four sites have been built in Cuba, with one of them getting a nice fat upgrade to antennas that can capture signals upwards of 8,000 miles away. | |
| And that's not sitting well with some congressman like Cuban-born Representative Carlos Jimenez, who is a member on the Committee of Homeland Security. | |
| And he posted on Twitter recently that Cuba is only 90 miles away from his home district. | |
| And, well, here's what he's pushing the White House to do. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| I think the commander-in-chief should put maximum pressure on Cuba. | |
| There's things that I've asked the Trump administration to do. | |
| I've asked them to stop flights to Cuba, both in and out. | |
| I've asked them to stop remittances from the United States into Cuba that feeds the regime with billions of dollars. | |
| I've asked them to take action against those countries that are contracting with Cuba for doctors and nurses. | |
| By the way, those countries are actually contracting directly with Cuba. | |
| They pay Cuba directly. | |
| Those doctors and nurses aren't receiving those funds. | |
| Therefore, this is modern-day slavery. | |
| Those are just three of the things we should be doing. | |
| We should be putting maximum pressure on Cuba, because I believe the regime is at its weakest point in decades, and we need to take advantage of that. | |
| If you'd like to dig through any of these reports for yourself, I'll throw the links to all my research notes. | |
| You'll be able to find them down in the description box below. | |
| And if you're interested in this topic, I would really recommend going through these reports. | |
| They are well written. | |
| They are very, very well designed. | |
| And they do give you a nice scope of the size and capabilities of these spying bases, as well as how fast they're being built. | |
| Because from one report to the other, the satellite images, they basically show the year-on-year progression, which is just very interesting. | |
| It's fascinating to see how fast and how significantly the sites are being built up, meaning that it's not just something that happened in 2023 and we can forget about it. | |
| Actually, through time, the sites are getting bigger and more advanced and they're able to capture more and more signals. | |
| So if you want to get deeper into it, I would highly recommend it. | |
| And I'll throw those links down in the description box below if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the wheat. | |
| And again, I'll ask in return is that if you haven't already, smash those like and subscribe buttons so that this content can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman. |
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