2026-08-19 11:23:14 北美东部夏令时 / 福克斯新闻频道
美国优先政策研究所称，对手利用该岛开展情报收集、军事合作及网络行动
作者：埃弗拉特·拉赫特 福克斯新闻
发布于2026年8月19日 上午11:23 北美东部夏令时
古巴距美仅90英里，实为“重大国家安全威胁”，报告作者警告
美国优先政策研究所的梅利莎·福特·马尔多纳多表示，古巴的战略位置使其对俄罗斯和中国具有价值，同时警告称，情报活动以及莫斯科与哈瓦那的联系，正对美国本土构成风险。
一份新报告警告称，古巴与俄罗斯、中国和伊朗的关系，可能为美国的对手提供距佛罗里达仅90英里的战略立足点，并指出古巴日益加深的经济危机未必会降低其对美国的危险性。
这份题为《隔壁的独裁政权：古巴与西半球之战》的美国优先政策研究所报告认为，华盛顿过去常常主要将古巴视为人权、移民或经济问题，却忽视了哈瓦那与美国对手结盟所带来的国家安全隐患。报告称，这些伙伴关系为在美国本土附近开展情报收集、军事合作、网络行动和政治影响力运作创造了机会。
“古巴对美国而言是重大的国家安全威胁，”该报告作者、美国优先政策研究所西半球倡议主任梅利莎·福特·马尔多纳多在报告发布前接受福克斯新闻数字频道采访时表示。
卢比奥警告古巴已向美渗透间谍，称这个共产党政权为“间谍超级大国”
2025年9月4日，习近平在北京人民大会堂会见米格尔·迪亚斯-卡内尔。迪亚斯-卡内尔当时正在中国参加中国人民抗日战争暨世界反法西斯战争胜利80周年纪念活动。（新华社通过盖蒂图片社）
“他们是距佛罗里达仅90英里的敌对共产党政权，”福特·马尔多纳多表示，她认为古巴长期以来一直有损害美国利益、支持美国对手的历史。
该报告目前最具体的担忧集中在古巴岛上的中国及疑似情报设施。
2026年6月18日，战略与国际研究中心的一份分析报告发现，古巴多个场所仍在开展可支持信号情报收集的活动。该中心此前已确认四个此类场所，其中数个可能与中国有关联。
福特·马尔多纳多表示，她认为古巴境内中国情报活动的广泛证据令人信服。
“有大量可信证据表明，中国在古巴设有基地，且正在进行间谍活动，”她说，并声称中国利用古巴的地理位置监视美国的动向。
美国国务院指控：古巴通过间谍、活动人士和大学在美境内建立秘密网络
在俄罗斯国家通讯社俄新社分发的泳池照片中，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京于2025年5月7日在莫斯科克里姆林宫会见古巴总统米格尔·迪亚斯-卡内尔。（米哈伊尔·梅策尔/泳池照片/法新社通过盖蒂图片社）
俄罗斯与哈瓦那的关系历史更久、范围更广。
福特·马尔多纳多将莫斯科与哈瓦那形容为日益“亲密、可靠的伙伴”，并指出双方在外交和军事领域开展合作，还有古巴公民加入俄军在乌克兰作战。
关于古巴人参战的人数存在争议。2025年10月5日路透社获得的一份美国国务院电报估计，有1000至5000名古巴人与俄军一同在乌克兰作战。路透社报道称，乌克兰官员也曾向美国议员提出担忧，称俄罗斯在招募古巴公民。
古巴否认向乌克兰派遣军队。据路透社报道，古巴外交部在10月11日的一份声明中表示，古巴未派遣军事人员参与冲突，并称已起诉从事雇佣军活动的古巴人。哈瓦那称，2023年至2025年间，已有40名被告面临刑事诉讼，其中26人被定罪。
尽管如此，乌克兰仍于2025年10月关闭了其在哈瓦那的大使馆并降级外交关系。据《基辅独立报》报道，乌克兰外交大臣安德烈·西比哈指责古巴当局未能阻止基辅所称的俄罗斯大规模招募古巴公民的行为。
关于伊朗的公开证据则少得多——福特·马尔多纳多在接受福克斯新闻数字频道追问时承认了这一点。“伊朗的情况稍微棘手一些，”她说。
“我能找到的可纳入报告的实质性内容并不多，”福特·马尔多纳多表示，并补充称她认为伊朗主要将古巴用作影响力运作的平台。
“其证据不如我们在中国、俄罗斯和委内瑞拉身上看到的那样充分，”她说。
尽管如此，特朗普政府在对古巴的评估中，仍将伊朗与俄罗斯和中国归为一类。
卢比奥称：美国制裁五家古巴实体及一名卡斯特罗家族成员， latest施压行动
2006年12月2日，古巴特种部队携带有瞄准镜和消音器的突击步枪，在革命广场参加阅兵式，纪念古巴建军50周年暨菲德尔·卡斯特罗总统80岁诞辰。（罗德里戈·阿兰瓜/法新社通过盖蒂图片社）
2026年1月29日的一项行政命令中，唐纳德·特朗普总统将古巴的政策定性为对美国国家安全的“异常且特殊的威胁”，并称哈瓦那与俄罗斯、中国、伊朗及其代理真主党和哈马斯保持一致。该命令还指控古巴 hosted foreign military and intelligence capabilities，并特别指责其与中国开展深度情报和国防合作，以及俄罗斯的信号情报活动。
美国优先政策研究所的报告呼吁美国采取大幅更强硬的应对措施。
“我们并非主张建立新的美国军事基地，”她澄清道。相反，她说华盛顿可以寻求扩大准入协议、飞越权、合作安全地点以及加强区域伙伴关系。
“我们的目标仅仅是永久且持续地……部署美国军事能力，”福特·马尔多纳多说。
然而，呼吁加大施压之际，普通古巴民众正经历严重的人道主义危机。
路透社2026年8月13日报道称，古巴大多数省份的停电时长已超过每天20小时，严重破坏了食品生产、交通和旅游业，使古巴电力系统濒临技术崩溃。路透社将这种情况描述为古巴现代史上最严重的经济和政治危机之一，并表示特朗普政府的石油限制和强化制裁加剧了这一局势。
人权观察组织7月7日的一项调查显示，古巴面临严重的食品和药品短缺、长期停电、水资源短缺以及生活条件恶化。
瓦尔茨警告：中俄推动的“国家安全威胁”正逼近美国海岸
2026年8月5日，古巴哈瓦那前一晚全面停电后，古巴国家电力系统（SEN）周一再次发生断电，电力部门仍在努力恢复电网。古巴电力联盟（UNE）将这次新的挫折归咎于恶劣天气，称其击中了本已不稳定的电网，导致部分已恢复的发电能力再次瘫痪。（安吉洛·马斯特拉斯库萨/阿纳多卢通讯社通过盖蒂图片社）
人权观察组织将古巴的危机归咎于多重因素，包括其高度国家控制的经济长期存在的结构性低效、数十年来美国的贸易和融资限制、新冠疫情期间旅游业的崩溃以及随后美国制裁的收紧。该组织表示，2026年的石油供应限制进一步加剧了能源危机。
特朗普政府“最大施压”战略的批评者认为，进一步挤压本已崩溃的经济，可能会加剧平民的苦难，引发更多不稳定和移民潮。
6月8日，联合国任命的独立人权专家呼吁解除制裁，称制裁使古巴民众获取基本商品和服务的面临风险。
当被问及这些广泛的批评时，福特·马尔多纳多表示，责任在于哈瓦那而非华盛顿。
“最大施压并未伤害古巴人民，而是伤害了他们的政权，”她说，并认为应将古巴政府和古巴人民区分开来。
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此次停电是古巴2026年第六次全国电网故障，7月期间已发生三次此类停电。（亚米尔·拉赫/法新社通过盖蒂图片社）
“一个政权已经压迫和镇压另一方长达67年之久，”福特·马尔多纳多说。“因此，美国乃至全世界都有必要采取最大施压政策，以帮助古巴人民。”
福克斯新闻数字频道已联系俄罗斯、中国和伊朗大使馆，但未能在出版前收到回复。
路透社和美联社为本报告贡献了内容。
埃弗拉特（埃菲）·拉赫特是福克斯新闻数字频道的记者，拥有超过15年报道冲突、全球事务、人权和政治问责的经验。
她曾执导并制作了200多段纪录片片段，足迹遍布40多个国家，记录冲突、人道主义危机、腐败、人口贩运、基于性别的暴力以及重大世界事件背后的人性故事。
拉赫特的报道将她带入了中东、欧洲、亚洲和非洲的冲突地区和危机地带。她的工作包括揭露人口贩运网络、揭露叙利亚境内的ISIS地下酷刑监狱、记录乌克兰战争以及采访高级政治人物和世界领导人。她也是战争开始后进入俄罗斯的西方记者之一，带回了普京反对派的证词。拉赫特曾获得2022年佩雷斯和平中心奖，并曾担任2023-2024年密歇根大学奈特-华莱士新闻研究员。她还曾两次获得洛克沃尔卓越报道奖。她拥有传播学学士学位和政治学硕士学位。
Cuba’s economic freefall is hiding a national security threat just miles from Florida: report
2026-08-19 11:23:14 EDT / Fox News
AFPI says adversaries exploit the island for intelligence collection, military cooperation and cyber operations
By Efrat Lachter Fox News
Published August 19, 2026 11:23am EDT
Cuba is a ‘massive national security threat’ just 90 miles from US, report author warns
America First Policy Institute’s Melissa Ford Maldonado says Cuba’s strategic location has made it valuable to Russia and China, warning that intelligence activity and Moscow’s ties to Havana pose risks close to the US homeland.
A new report warns that Cuba’s relationships with Russia, China and Iran could provide America’s adversaries with a strategic foothold just 90 miles from Florida, arguing that the island’s deepening economic crisis does not necessarily make it less dangerous to the United States.
The America First Policy Institute report, The Dictatorship Next Door: Cuba and the Fight for the Western Hemisphere, argues that Washington has too often viewed Cuba primarily as a human rights, migration or economic problem while overlooking the national security implications of Havana’s relationships with U.S. adversaries. The report says those partnerships create opportunities for intelligence collection, military cooperation, cyber operations and political influence close to the U.S. homeland.
“Cuba is a massive national security threat to the U.S.,” report author Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of AFPI’s Western Hemisphere Initiative, told Fox News Digital in an interview ahead of the report’s release.
RUBIO WARNS CUBA HAS INFILTRATED US WITH SPIES, CALLS COMMUNIST REGIME AN ‘ESPIONAGE SUPERPOWER’
Xi Jinping meets with Miguel Diaz-Canel at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 4, 2025. Diaz-Canel is in China for commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.(Xinhua News Agency via Getty Ima)
“They are a hostile communist regime that is only 90 miles from Florida,” Ford Maldonado said, arguing that Cuba has a decades-long history of working against American interests and supporting U.S. adversaries.
The report’s most concrete current concern centers on China and suspected intelligence facilities on the island.
A June 18, 2026, analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found continued activity at Cuban sites capable of supporting signals intelligence collection. CSIS said it had previously identified four such sites, several with possible links to China.
Ford Maldonado said she believes the broader evidence of Chinese intelligence activity on Cuba is compelling.
“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.
CUBA BUILT COVERT NETWORK INSIDE AMERICA THROUGH SPIES, ACTIVISTS AND UNIVERSITIES, STATE DEPT ALLEGES
In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 7, 2025.(Mikhail Metzel/ POOL / AFP via Getty Images)
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 Fox News Digital. “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.
US SANCTIONS FIVE CUBAN ENTITIES, CASTRO FAMILY MEMBER IN LATEST PRESSURE CAMPAIGN, RUBIO SAYS
Cuban special forces carrying assault rifles equipped with scopes and silencers take part in a military parade 02 December 2006 at Revolution Square celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Army and the 80th birthday of President Fidel Castro.(Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images)
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 Iran 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 described severe shortages of food and medicine, prolonged blackouts, water shortages and deteriorating living conditions.
WALTZ WARNS OF CHINESE, RUSSIAN-FUELED ‘NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT’ LOOMING CLOSE TO US SHORES
Cuba’s National Electric System (SEN) suffered another disconnection on Monday while efforts were still underway to restore the grid following the previous night’s total blackout in Havana, Cuba on August 5, 2026. The Electric Union (UNE) attributed this new setback to weather conditions that struck an unstable grid, knocking out part of the generation capacity that had already been brought back online.(Angelo Mastrascusa/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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, UN-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.
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The latest blackout marks Cuba’s sixth nationwide electrical grid failure of 2026, with three such outages occurring during July.(Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images)
“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.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Russian, Chinese and Iranian embassies but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Efrat (Effie) Lachter is a reporter for Fox News Digital with more than 15 years of experience covering conflict, global affairs, human rights and political accountability.She has directed and produced more than 200 documentary segments across more than 40 countries, documenting conflicts, humanitarian crises, corruption, human trafficking, gender-based violence and the human stories behind major world events.
Lachter’s reporting has taken her into conflict zones and crisis areas across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her work has included uncovering human trafficking networks, revealing an ISIS underground torture prison in Syria, documenting the war in Ukraine and interviewing senior political figures and world leaders. She was also among the Western journalists who entered Russia after the war began to bring testimonies from Putin’s opposition. Lachter is the recipient of the 2022 Peres Center for Peace Award and was a 2023–2024 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. She also won two Rockower Awards for Excellence in Reporting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in political science.