Rubio warns Cuba’s spy network has burrowed deep inside America

BS BULLETIN:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is warning that Cuba remains an “influence and espionage superpower,” accusing Havana of embedding spies in American institutions and cultivating activist networks capable of pressuring U.S. policymakers.
The Justice Department is now seeking to revoke the citizenship of convicted Cuban agent Victor Manuel Rocha, the former U.S. ambassador who admitted secretly supporting Havana’s intelligence mission for decades.
Cuba may be economically broken, but its intelligence operations have repeatedly reached remarkably high levels of the American government.

RUBIO SOUNDS ALARM ON CUBA’S SPIES—AND THE ENEMIES ALREADY INSIDE AMERICA

.@SecRubio: “To the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, 9.5 million people population — but people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower.” pic.twitter.com/iWN0xkYhtv

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 2, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is warning Americans not to mistake Cuba’s crumbling economy for weakness, arguing that the communist island has quietly built one of the most persistent foreign espionage and influence operations ever directed at the United States.

“They actually are an influence and espionage superpower,” Rubio said during an interview on My View with Lara Trump.

Rubio described Cuba as “a failed state 90 miles from our shores” that remains aligned with America’s adversaries and therefore presents a direct national-security threat. “If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system without even paying them,” Rubio said.

His warning followed the State Department’s publication of a sweeping report titled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism. The report alleges that Havana has spent decades cultivating spies, activists, universities, political organizations and ideological allies to influence American policy and deepen divisions inside the country. Rubio pointed to the extraordinary case of Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador and National Security Council official who admitted acting covertly for Cuba. “We had a U.S. ambassador who ended up being a Cuban spy and was recently convicted,” Rubio said.

Rocha pleaded guilty in 2024 and was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison after prosecutors said his betrayal extended across more than four decades. In May 2026, the Justice Department took the additional step of filing a civil action seeking to revoke his American citizenship. According to the department, Rocha admitted that he began secretly supporting Cuba’s intelligence mission around 1973—years before becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Rocha was hardly the only serious penetration.

Rubio also cited Ana Belén Montes, the former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who passed highly classified information to Cuba. The FBI said Montes spied from inside the American intelligence community and gained access to sensitive information, including intelligence connected to U.S. planning after the September 11 attacks. Rubio called her case one of the “single biggest intelligence failures” in American history.

But the secretary’s warning went beyond traditional espionage. Rubio accused Cuba of helping cultivate networks of American activists who can be mobilized around seemingly different causes—including anti-ICE demonstrations, pro-Hamas activism and protests supporting Venezuela’s socialist government. “There’s nothing organic about it,” Rubio said. “It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network and, in some cases, a critical part of the network.” “And it’s a network they will weaponize against us,” he continued. “They talk about it openly, about how they will use that network to pressure American policymakers.”

The State Department report alleges that Cuban influence extends into left-wing nonprofits, anti-ICE organizations, socialist groups and militant movements. It also argues that Havana has promoted revolutionary politics throughout Latin America while encouraging ideological allies inside the United States.

The Democratic Socialists of America’s international committee called the report an effort to portray domestic political opposition as foreign-controlled. Other critics have described it as a revival of Cold War-style “Red Scare” politics and questioned whether the administration is building a public justification for harsher measures against Havana.

Rubio dismissed the idea that Cuba should be ignored simply because its economy is collapsing.

“I know there are plenty of people in American academia and, frankly, in American press that sympathize with the Cuban regime and have for a very long time,” he said. “Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it motivated by ideological affinity,” Rubio added. “But it doesn’t mean we can ignore this threat.”

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