Report Warns Cuba’s Collapse Fuels Security Threat Near Florida

A newly released report is raising alarms that Cuba’s expanding ties with Russia, China and Iran could give U.S. rivals a valuable strategic presence barely 90 miles from Florida, warning that the island’s worsening economic collapse should not be mistaken for a reduced threat to American security.

The America First Policy Institute’s report, The Dictatorship Next Door: Cuba and the Fight for the Western Hemisphere, contends that U.S. policymakers have too often treated Cuba as mainly a human rights, migration or economic challenge. In doing so, the report argues, Washington has underestimated the national security risks tied to Havana’s cooperation with adversarial powers. Those relationships, according to the analysis, could open the door to intelligence gathering, military coordination, cyber activity and political influence operations near the U.S. mainland.

“Cuba is a massive national security threat to the U.S.,” Melissa Ford Maldonado, the report’s author and director of AFPI’s Western Hemisphere Initiative, told News Outlet in an interview before the report was made public.

Ford Maldonado described Cuba as “a hostile communist regime” located just off the coast of Florida, saying Havana has spent decades opposing American interests and aligning itself with governments hostile to the United States.

Among the report’s most immediate concerns is China’s role in Cuba, particularly suspected intelligence facilities that could strengthen Beijing’s ability to monitor U.S. communications and activity in the region.

A June 18, 2026, assessment from the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported ongoing activity at Cuban locations that could support signals intelligence collection. CSIS said it had previously identified four such sites, with several believed to have possible connections to China.

Ford Maldonado said the wider body of evidence pointing to Chinese intelligence operations in Cuba is, in her view, difficult to dismiss.

“There is a lot of credible evidence that there are Chinese bases and that there is spying going on in Cuba,” she said, claiming that China has taken advantage of Cuba’s geographic position to monitor U.S. activity.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy told News Outlet in response to a request for comment that “China-Cuba cooperation is open and aboveboard.”

“Fabricating pretexts and spreading smears cannot justify the U.S. side’s brutal blockade and illegal sanctions against Cuba, nor can they conceal the fact that the U.S. is gravely violating Cuba’s rights to survival and development and breaching the basic norms governing international relations,” the spokesperson said.

“China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security and urges the U.S. to immediately end its blockade and sanctions against Cuba, as well as all forms of coercion and pressure.”

Russia’s relationship with Havana is older and more extensive.

Ford Maldonado described Moscow and Havana as increasingly “intimate, reliable partners,” pointing to diplomatic and military cooperation as well as Cuban nationals joining Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

The number of Cubans fighting for Russia is contested. A U.S. State Department cable obtained by Reuters on Oct. 5, 2025 estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 Cubans were fighting in Ukraine alongside Russian forces. Reuters reported that Ukrainian officials had also raised concerns with U.S. lawmakers about Russia’s recruitment of Cuban nationals.

Cuba has denied sending troops to Ukraine. In an Oct. 11 statement reported by Reuters, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said Cuba was not participating in the conflict with military personnel and said it had prosecuted Cubans for mercenary activity. Havana said 40 defendants had faced criminal proceedings between 2023 and 2025, with 26 convicted.

Ukraine nevertheless closed its embassy in Havana in October 2025 and downgraded relations, with Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accusing Cuban authorities of failing to act against what Kyiv described as large-scale Russian recruitment of Cuban citizens, according to The Kyiv Independent.

The public evidence regarding Iran is considerably less developed — something Ford Maldonado acknowledged when pressed by News Outlet. “Iran was a little bit trickier,” she said.

“There wasn’t that much substance that I could find to include it in the report,” Ford Maldonado said, adding that she believes Iran has used Cuba primarily as a platform for influence operations.

“The evidence was not as substantive as we saw with China and Russia and Venezuela,” she said.

The Trump administration has nevertheless grouped Iran with Russia and China in its own assessment of Cuba.

In a Jan. 29, 2026, executive order, President Donald Trump declared Cuba’s policies an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and said Havana aligns itself with Russia, China, Iran and Iranian proxies – Hezbollah and Hamas. The order also accused Cuba of hosting foreign military and intelligence capabilities and specifically alleged deep intelligence and defense cooperation with China and Russian signals-intelligence activity.

AFPI’s report calls for a substantially tougher U.S. response.

“We are not advocating for new American bases,” she clarified. Instead, she said Washington could pursue expanded access agreements, overflight rights, cooperative security locations and stronger regional partnerships.

“The objective is just permanent and persistent… American capability,” Ford Maldonado said.

The call for even greater pressure, however, comes as ordinary Cubans are enduring a severe humanitarian crisis.

Power outages were exceeding 20 hours a day in most provinces, Reuters reported Aug. 13, 2026, crippling food production, transportation and tourism and pushing Cuba’s electrical system toward technical collapse. Reuters described the situation as one of the most severe economic and political crises in Cuba’s modern history and said it had been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s oil restrictions and hardened sanctions.

A July 7 investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW) described severe shortages of food and medicine, prolonged blackouts, water shortages and deteriorating living conditions.

HRW attributed Cuba’s crisis to multiple factors, including longstanding structural inefficiencies in its highly state-controlled economy, decades of U.S. restrictions on trade and financing, the collapse of tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent tightening of U.S. sanctions. HRW said the 2026 restrictions on oil supplies further deepened the energy crisis.

Critics of the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure strategy argue that further squeezing an already collapsing economy risks worsening civilian suffering and triggering additional instability and migration.

On June 8, U.N.-appointed independent human rights experts called for the sanctions to be lifted, arguing that they were putting Cubans’ access to essential goods and services at risk.

Asked about that broader criticism, Ford Maldonado said the blame belongs with Havana rather than Washington.

“Maximum pressure isn’t harming the Cuban people, it’s harming their regime,” she said, arguing that the Cuban government and Cuban people should be treated as distinct.

“One has brutalized and repressed the other for 67 years now,” Ford Maldonado said. “So maximum pressure is what’s necessary from the United States and from the rest of the world in order to be able to help the Cuban people.”

News Outlet reached out to the Russian and Iranian embassies but did not receive a response in time for publication.