OPINION:
A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Foreign interference in U.S. elections is a valid concern. Russia has received the greatest attention from our law enforcement system, and rightly so. Still, when FBI Director Christopher Wray on Sept. 4 publicly named a few of the rogue states attempting to interfere in the 2024 elections, he omitted one that has repeatedly and covertly undermined U.S. interests: Cuba, a client state of Russia’s and before that of the Soviet Union.
In 2019, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election by flooding social media with divisive content, false reports and conspiracy theories.
Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican and the committee’s co-chairman at the time, said that “by exploiting existing divisions, Russia is trying to breed distrust of our democratic institutions and our fellow Americans. While Russia may have been the first to hone the modern disinformation tactics outlined in this report, other adversaries, including China, North Korea and Iran, are following suit.”
Our adversaries will undoubtedly continue to use information warfare to weaken Americans’ trust in the electoral process and to help shape attitudes favorable to their preferred candidates.
Given a few U.S. politicians’ conciliatory positions on Cuba and their continued efforts to end the embargo against the military dictatorship, Havana must also be watched closely for efforts to shape the outcome of the November election. Cuba has a long record of influence operations in the United States, and in this election, Havana prefers a victory for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.
That is because the Democratic Obama and Biden administrations took a much softer approach toward the Cuban communist regime than the Republican Trump and Bush administrations did.
Cuba watchers were appreciative of the July assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, when it reported that the Cuban regime was attempting to influence the 2024 U.S. elections. Cuba, ODNI asserted, is acting just like China, Russia and Iran and is a threat to the election security of the United States.
The office warned that Havana-sponsored malign influence operations were already underway in Florida and beyond. One ODNI official confirmed last July to the Miami Herald that a Cuban interference operation is ongoing, and that its campaign is active.
“I can say that the Cuban government is conducting localized influence operations that are more narrowly focused on opposition anti-regime candidates in the United States,” the official said.
In another article that month, the Herald reported Cuban interference in the 2022 midterm elections, writing that “a U.S. intelligence report found that Cuban officials worked to build relationships with members of the U.S. media who held negative views of Havana’s critics in Congress and that a network of social media accounts almost certainly covertly tied to Cuba amplified derogatory content on U.S. politicians viewed as hostile to the Cuban state.”
We can only hope that American journalists previously manipulated by Cuba in 2022 are wiser for the experience.
Though most of Cuba’s interference operations are directed at Republicans, concern for Cuban-sponsored electoral campaigns should reach across the aisle. For example, Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — and is therefore fully briefed on the latest intelligence warnings — wanted to make sure Cuba joined the list of other malign actors, namely Russia, China and Iran.
Why did he not succeed?
In addition to the election interference, we note that Cuba is involved in a series of other national security-related threats:
• U.S. Ambassador Víctor Manuel Rocha, a national security official who worked as a secret agent for the Cuban intelligence service for over 40 years, was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison.
• “Anomalous health incidents” suffered by hundreds of our diplomats and military and intelligence officers stationed around the world are globally known as Havana syndrome, for the city where it was first used massively against U.S. officials.
• Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Cuba has been the Kremlin’s spearhead in the Western Hemisphere, Africa and the Middle East, using its assets in an aggressive propaganda and disinformation campaign in favor of Moscow. Hundreds of Cuban mercenaries have traveled to Russia to enlist in the invading army. Such recruitment is not possible in Cuba without the government’s authorization.
• On two separate occasions over the summer, Russian warships, including a nuclear submarine, docked in Havana, having sailed less than 30 miles off the coast of Florida.
• Cuba has again chosen to be a hostile platform for our two main global threats: Russia and China. Reports of Beijing expanding its electronic espionage bases on Cuban territory add to the concern.
The Cuban American community, which has long warned U.S. officials of Havana’s influence operations in Western nations, is sounding the alarm: We know this election will be close. We need voter integrity because every vote counts. Our focus as a community that cherishes the American way of life is exactly where it should be: alerting law enforcement and cooperating with Big Tech and our fellow citizens.
The main threats are Russia, China and Iran, but Cuba has earned a place on that list — and Washington must remain vigilant to detect, expose and stop our Caribbean neighbors from undermining our enduring free and fair election system.
• Dale Bendler is a retired senior intelligence officer of the CIA, where he served for 37 years and was chief of station in several world capitals. He now runs the Cyber and Urban Safety Company in Miami (161staysafe.com). Miguel Cossio is a senior Hispanic media executive and chief operating officer of America CV Network, with 35 years of industry experience as a director, producer and journalist.
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