It's China, Cuba needs $8-10 billion USD, money that China isn't that eager to put into Cuba, but Trump's constant warmongering against Cuba has given China the opportunity to put a bunch of spy stations on the island.

#savedyouaclick

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vintermann 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, the question is how reliable those claims are.

Cuba doesn't have a lot of foreign currency, but it does have a lot of cheap labor, often shockingly skilled labor. Boiling it down to a cost in dollars may not be easy, let alone saying "China won't spend that".

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fakedang a day ago | parent [-]

China is most definitely going to be spending that in a tit-for-tat arrangement, as hinted at by the spy stations.

	▲	vintermann a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, China is already spending so much in much less developed/educated places, seemingly just for "goodwill" or at least to be in a good place once the US hegemony falls. The only reason they wouldn't do it in Cuba would be to avoid needlessly provoking the US, but I think they have a good excuse now (clearly US is the provocateur, they're only restoring some semblance of balance in the longer term).

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ohhman11 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Trump's constant warmongering against Cuba has given China the opportunity to put a bunch of spy stations on the island.

These kinds of claims would really benefit from additional information regarding the nature of such spy stations. What would they do and why? I don't think Cuba is exactly a top tier sigint location.

They could install radar, but that's not spying.

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fakedang a day ago | parent [-]

You'd be surprised at the benefits of something as mundane as proximity in espionage. Especially for a country like China or Russia which is very far away from mainland USA. Tracking troop movements at lower latency, tracking comms on unsecured networks, monitoring satellite launches happening from Florida, etc.

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ohhman11 a day ago | parent [-]

What espionage equipment could China put in Cuba that they could not put inside the US?

	▲	fakedang a day ago \| parent [-]
		For starters, actual spy stations away from the US, inside the borders of a friendly country? Mar-a-Lago is just next door to Cuba. Setting up reliable and fully controlled spy networks within the borders of a hostile country is hard. Like casting Idris Elba as James Bond (to borrow Trevor Noah's quote). With a few in Cuba, they've got proximity to develop HUMINT, gather OSINT and SIGINT, with potential tracking of US military movements in the Caribbean and Atlantic at super-low latency.