Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Cuba's communist regime has embedded spies across the U.S. government and bankrolled domestic protest movements, charges backed by a 100-page State Department report and a string of espionage convictions.
Rubio laid out the case during a Saturday appearance on Fox News Channel's My View with Lara Trump, calling Cuba an "influence and espionage superpower" that poses a direct national security threat from just 90 miles off the American coast. His remarks followed the State Department's release, weeks earlier, of a sprawling report titled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, which catalogs nearly 70 years of covert operations by the Castro regime against the United States.
The interview covered Cuban spy penetrations at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence, the regime's alleged role in organizing and funding left-wing street protests, including the 2020 riots, and the network's rapid pivot from pro-Hamas demonstrations to rallies supporting Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Rubio named specific cases, specific groups, and specific patterns. He did not mince words about who in American life has provided cover for Havana.
Rubio's sharpest point concerned the nature of Cuban espionage itself. Unlike Russia or China, he said, Havana has consistently recruited agents inside the U.S. government who did not require payment, ideological volunteers embedded in sensitive positions.
"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."
He pointed to two cases that illustrate the depth of Cuba's reach. Ana Belén Montes, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, passed American secrets to Havana for years in what Rubio described as "one of the single biggest intelligence failures on the part of the United States and one of the biggest penetrations we ever had in our system." Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador, pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba and was sentenced in 2024 to 15 years in federal prison.
Both cases share a disturbing feature: the operatives were not mercenaries. They acted out of ideological commitment to the Cuban regime, exactly the recruitment model Rubio described.
Rubio went beyond intelligence failures to outline what he called a Cuban-backed protest infrastructure operating inside the United States. He described a network that organized the street violence of 2020, pivoted to pro-Hamas demonstrations, and then, within 48 hours of Maduro's arrest in January, shifted again to rallies defending the Venezuelan dictator. The same people, the same apparatus, the same foreign hand.
Rubio was blunt about the nature of these movements, as Breitbart News reported:
"There's nothing organic about it. It is funded, it is organized, and Cuba is a part of that network, and in some cases a critical part of that network."
He named Code Pink, the left-wing activist group, as one example of organizations operating within what he characterized as a Cuban-directed influence network. Rubio said the regime talks openly about weaponizing these groups to pressure American policymakers, not just domestically but around the world. He also said the network currently targets Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The secretary's claims about Cuba's links to specific protest groups and the 2020 riots are his own assertions. The State Department report, as described in available reporting, provides an extensive account of Cuban operations but its specific treatment of domestic protest networks has not been quoted directly. What is clear is that Rubio is drawing a line from Havana's intelligence apparatus to American streets, and daring critics to dispute the facts.
The State Department report that anchors Rubio's claims runs 100 pages and covers the full scope of the Castro regime's hostile operations against the United States over nearly seven decades. It details Cuba's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and describes an espionage network with active elements working inside the country to undermine American national security.
Rubio said the report was published "to highlight the role they play in our country, a very negative role." He added that everything in it is factual, "and frankly, I don't think they can dispute it."
The report lands at a moment of escalating U.S. pressure on Havana. Newsmax reported that at least 25 U.S. military intelligence-gathering flights have been tracked off Cuba's coast since February 2026, some passing within 40 miles of the island. The aircraft involved, P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol planes, RC-135V Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft, and MQ-4C Triton high-altitude reconnaissance drones, are the same types deployed before operations in Venezuela and Iran. President Trump signed Executive Order 14380 on January 29, declaring a national emergency over Cuba and authorizing tariffs on countries that supply oil to the island, followed by a second order broadening sanctions targeting Cuban officials and foreign banks.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded on state television, claiming the national security label "reflects how the U.S. government feels rather than how the American people feel, and that it is a pretext for attack."
Lara Trump asked Rubio whether critics would dismiss the State Department report as "scare tactics" designed to justify potential military action against Cuba. Rubio did not dodge the question. He went after the critics directly, not with insults, but by naming their motivations.
"People can argue that we shouldn't do with it, and 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 continued:
"Part of it is motivated by their anti-Americanism, and part of it is motivated by ideological affinity."
Rubio said sympathizers exist in "key nodes of our society, including professors" and, in the past, within the U.S. government itself. That is how Cuba recruits spies without paying them, he said, ideological alignment does the work that cash does for other foreign intelligence services.
The broader geopolitical picture reinforces Rubio's warning. The New York Post has reported that China has operated a signals intelligence base in Cuba since at least 2019, with capabilities targeting U.S. communications, including radio, cell phones, and military satellite transmissions, from a facility in Bejucal, roughly 90 miles from Florida. Iran's Quds Forces provide security and military hardware to Venezuela's Maduro regime. The Monroe Doctrine, as former Secretary of State John Kerry declared in 2013, is effectively dead, and America's adversaries have filled the vacuum.
Rubio framed Cuba's domestic influence operations as an extension of a half-century campaign across Latin America. For 50 years, he said, the Castro regime backed communist insurgencies that destabilized governments throughout the region. The difference now is that the same playbook, funding, organizing, and directing protest networks, is being run inside the United States.
A failed state propping up street movements in the world's most powerful country sounds implausible until you look at the record. A former ambassador convicted of decades of secret service to Havana. A senior DIA analyst caught funneling classified intelligence to Cuba. A protest apparatus that can shift causes in 48 hours without missing a beat. And a 100-page government report that Rubio says no one can factually dispute.
The question is not whether Cuba has the intent. The record settles that. The question is whether Washington will treat a hostile intelligence operation 90 miles from Florida with the seriousness it demands, or whether ideological sympathy in the right places will keep buying Havana time it does not deserve.
