New Activity at China-Linked Spy Sites in Cuba

Cuba has expanded work on a listening site 100 miles from Florida that analysts believe may be linked to China, new satellite imagery shows.

The expansion could further strain relations with the United States, which in recent months has tightened pressure on Havana, with Washington piling on sanctions, imposing an oil blockade and indicting former President Raúl Castro. It also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to walk back tensions with China after his tariff hikes escalated the long-running trade war between the two countries.

Newsweek contacted the Pentagon, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. and Cuba’s Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Expansion at Bejucal

The bulk of the expansion has been at Bejucal, once the temporary home to Soviet nuclear warheads that led to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The site, about 50 miles south of Havana, has also long been suspected of hosting Chinese intelligence operations, with then-Senator Marco Rubio calling it a “Chinese listening station” in 2016.

The site has expanded and now features an array of 32 antennae, larger and more capable than it appeared in a satellite analysis the think tank released in 2025, and has been reconfigured from a linear antenna grid into a large circularly disposed antenna array (CDAA), according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analysis of satellite imagery captured on May 5 and shared by the Earth observation software company Vantor.

A CDAA is used to determine the direction of radio signals and can help locate their point of origin over long distances.

Washington’s Suspicions

Bejucal “could improve the ability of Cuban authorities-or potentially their foreign partners-to monitor sensitive U.S. activities in the Caribbean and across the southeastern seaboard,” the report said, including air and naval operations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

The work could further stoke tensions with the U.S, especially given Cuba’s close relationship with China. The CSIS report follows a White House statement in May that accused the Latin American nation of hosting “foreign adversary facilities focused on targeting and exploiting sensitive national security information from the United States.”

The sites appear to be used mainly to pick up and track radio signals from U.S. military activity, rather than show China is helping Cuba build up a defensive military posture, said Evan Ellis, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute who focuses on China’s role in Latin America.

Instead, their value lies in watching movement across the Caribbean and nearby sea lanes. But the facilities could still “potentially be used to observe and disrupt U.S. assets that would be important in time of a war in the Indo-Pacific,” Ellis told Newsweek.

“This leads further credence to the importance of Cuba as one of many different sites … from which China can operate and gather information on the U.S.,” he added

China has repeatedly pledged to support Cuba and condemned the U.S.’s sanctions and blockade against the island country.

In a statement earlier this month, China’s Foreign Ministry said, “We urge the U.S. to immediately stop its blockade and any other forms of coercion and pressuring against Cuba, and stop infringing upon Cuban people’s right to survive and thrive.”

2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 12:04 PM.