Cuba news took on a sharper security edge on Sunday when Mike Waltz said Chinese and Russian intelligence sites operating in Cuba remain an active national security threat to the United States. Waltz said the collection activity is taking place just off the U.S. coast, with both Chinese and Russian entities gathering information around U.S. military bases.
Waltz said, “[There are] both Chinese and Russian [sites],” and added that “The Cuban regime is not only a threat to its own people, it's a national security threat, and this administration is not going to stand for it any longer.” The warning puts the issue inside a broader fight over foreign influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Waltz on Cuba and U.S. bases
Waltz said Russia and China still have intelligence posts, signals collection posts and military officers in Cuba right off U.S. shores. He also said Russia and China are no longer in Venezuela, South Central America or the Panama Canal in the way they were under Under the Biden administration and previous administrations. For Washington, DC, the concern is not just geography. It is the combination of close range, collection capability and access to U.S. military facilities.
Jeb Bush on Iranian Shahed
Jeb Bush raised a separate Cuba-related concern linked to Iran. At an event at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables on On July 8, 2026, Bush said roughly 300 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones are stationed on the island. That adds another layer to the pressure around Cuba, where foreign security activity is being described in public not as a distant problem but as something sitting 90 miles off Florida's coast.
Trump administration pressure
The Trump administration has already pushed back against Chinese and Russian influence in Venezuela, Central America and around the Panama Canal, according to the facts provided. Waltz’s warning suggests Cuba is now being treated as a separate but connected node in that same effort, with the near-term focus on surveillance, signals collection and military access rather than on abstract influence.
The immediate question is whether the United States will identify which sites in Cuba are being used and how extensive the Chinese and Russian presence is. Waltz did not name those facilities, so the public warning stops at the edge of the map while leaving the exact scope of the intelligence network unresolved.
