July 16, 2026:
Last year the Americans invaded the South American nation of Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. The American Special Operations team had to kill dozens of Cuban bodyguards during this successful operation. The American President also threatened nations that might aid Cuba with harsh economic sanctions if they did so. Venezuela was the main source of free and below-market-price oil for Cuba, whose communist regime had bankrupted the nation. The American oil embargo was not absolute. At the end of March, a Russian oil tanker carrying 100,000 tons of unrefined petroleum was allowed to deliver its cargo to Cuba. This fuel was gone within a few months, leaving Cuba destitute and desperate. America wants a new, non-Communist government in Cuba, but the well-entrenched Communists are not willing to cooperate, at least not yet.
Meanwhile, Cuba has become the central asset for a Chinese SIGINT/SIGnals Intelligence site that gathers information on American military operations throughout the US southeast. China built the island’s telecommunications infrastructure. Cuba’s sole internet provider is the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. Cuba uses Huawei software to filter internet searches. By doing so, China created a system capable of surveillance and much more. This was obvious in mid-2021, when Cuban government officials shut down internet and telephone services, preventing Cuban protestors from communicating with anyone outside their island country.
Cuba first became a site for foreign intelligence collection in 1962 when its then-ally, the Soviet Union, established a SIGINT operation there. This facility remained operational until 2001, when Russia increased aid to Cuba in an effort to compete with the Chinese.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, along with most of the Communist governments worldwide, Russian economic aid to Cuba ceased. This aid would not have been needed if Fidel Castro had not overthrown the Cuban government in 1959 and replaced an efficient market economy with a disastrous Communist planned economy. That meant Cuba went from the most prosperous economy in the Caribbean to one of the least. The Cuban Communist government relied on Russian economic aid to remain functional. When that aid disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba underwent a decade of poverty. When the Russian economy recovered in the 21st Century, aid shipments for Cuba resumed. When Russia began its aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the Western world retaliated with economic sanctions. These had an impact on Cuba, which was dependent on aid from heavily sanctioned Russia. At this point, China showed up and gradually replaced Russia as the primary diplomatic and economic ally. But even the Chinese could not overcome the American economic blockade, and the 21st Century became known in Cuba as a period of shortages, mass poverty, and intermittent collapses of the national electrical power network.