U.S. intelligence official says Cuban attempt to influence local races is underway
The Cuban government has begun an effort to influence local races in the 2024 election targeting political candidates that are hostile to the regime in Havana, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Monday.
McClatchy and the Miami Herald reported in June that intelligence officials expected Cuba to attempt to influence local races in Florida. But the ODNI official said on Monday that those efforts are now underway.
“I can say that the Cuban government is conducting localized influence operations that are much more narrowly focused on opposing anti-regime candidates in the United States,” the official said during a briefing with reporters.
Asked by McClatchy whether the Cuban campaign was active, the official added, “that is correct.”
The assessment comes after the director’s office assessed last year that Havana attempted to affect midterm elections in Florida in 2022. After that election, the intelligence community found that Cuba conducted influence operations in the United States “aimed at denigrating specific U.S. candidates in Florida.”
A U.S. intelligence report found that Cuban officials worked to build relationships with members of the U.S. media who held critical views of Havana’s critics in Congress, and that a network of social media accounts “almost certainly covertly tied” to Cuba “amplified derogatory content” on U.S. politicians viewed as hostile to the Cuban state.
Cuba’s efforts are of concern, even though they are at a smaller scale than the attempted influence campaigns of Washington’s major adversaries in Russia, China and Iran, the official said.
