Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the Cuban government of running one of the most sophisticated infiltrations of U.S. politics, in part using the Democratic Socialists of America.
The State Department released a 100-page report on Monday titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” In the report, the agency claimed that the Cuban government has positioned itself as the center of anti-American forces worldwide and conducted an extensive infiltration of left-wing political groups in the United States to foment violence and chaos within the country.
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“For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States,” the report began. “It is a campaign that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history.”
The report described the campaign as unique, with the small island nation punching far above its weight through having “perfected a new model for a long war of attrition, organized around espionage, infiltration, sabotage, proxy networks, and a revolutionary infrastructure designed to turn America against itself.”
“In contrast to every other aspect of Cuba’s failed state, this model has yielded remarkable success,” the report states.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Cuban Embassy for a response.
The report outlined the process by which Cuba became the world capital of Third Worldism, a variant of Marxism that portrays the primary global struggle as one of the oppressed Third World against the oppressor First World, led by the U.S.
Many of the details in the report are already publicly known, including Cuba’s status as a hub for training left-wing guerrilla groups and a safe haven for left-wing criminals, most famously Assata Shakur, who lived nearly half a decade as a fugitive in Cuba after murdering a New Jersey state trooper at a traffic stop. Lesser known was the extent of the Cuban regime’s backing for leftist groups and causes in the U.S., something documented extensively in the report.
An entire section of the report was dedicated to outlining the leading leftist groups that either function as front groups for Cuban influence or willingly embrace it. Among the most prominent groups outlined was the DSA, a group the agency said serves as a “particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism.”
This victory came not through founding the DSA as a front group, but through the DSA’s willful adherence to its cause without needed pressure.
“The DSA was not founded as a Cuban intelligence or influence front; it was born in 1982 as a fusion of socialist organizations and movements from both the Old Left and New Left factions, including veterans of CPUSA and SDS,” the report said. “Today, it maintains a fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime – not because the group is controlled by Cuban agents, per se, but because that commitment is now simply the de facto policy orthodoxy on the American far left.
“This represents a significant advance for the Cuban influence operation: Havana no longer needs to rely solely on intelligence penetration or asset cultivation to exert influence over the United States,” it reads.
With the DSA openly taking up its cause, Cuba’s hold on the ideological Left in the U.S. has shifted from the militant fringes to a mass membership organization with chapters country-wide, and “real influence inside the Democratic Party coalition.” Unlike most of the other groups covered in the report, the growing relationship with Cuba came from the opposite direction, with the DSA seeking out and boosting its ties with Havana as it grew, including the building of a “designated lobbying and campaign infrastructure around Cuba-specific advocacy.”
The DSA has organized delegations to visit the heavily sanctioned island for several years in a row. Among the most alarming visits was one in 2023, which was hosted by the Communist Party of Cuba itself, with the explicitly stated purpose of “establish[ing] formal channels of communication between various Cuban organizations, ministries and the DSA,” as well as normaliz[ing] relations with representatives of the Cuban government.” As part of the trip, the delegates had a private meeting with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, then separate meetings with senior military and intelligence officials.
The DSA is also explicit about its opposition to the U.S. and support for the hostile U.S. government, running a fund to “support the struggle to dismantle U.S. empire,” while its Cuba Solidarity Working Group has openly sought to “cultivate Cuba’s solidarity in up-and-coming politicians” and build a “pro-Cuba block basically of elected officials … especially at the federal level.”
The DSA is also a member of the 60-member coalition, the National Network on Cuba, which coordinates leftist support for the Cuban government. In June 2026, the NNOC started distributing a “National Rapid Response Plan,” giving detailed instructions for an escalation ladder to target federal facilities if the U.S. were to go to war against Cuba. The plan calls on members to take part in “coordinated nationwide actions” against federal institutions, U.S. military bases, and ICE detention centers in the U.S. within 24 hours of U.S. military action.
The stated objective of the plan was to “make it politically and materially costly for the U.S. government to wage war on Cuba.”
Other organizations the DSA is linked to were even more concerning. The Venceremos Brigade, which the State Department quoted a Senate report as describing as among “the most extensive and dangerous infiltration operations ever undertaken by a foreign power against the United States,” has direct financial ties with the DSA.
“Since its creation, the Brigade has served as a tool for the Cuban regime to sponsor a wide range of subversive activities against the United States – ranging from influence campaigns to espionage and guerilla violence,” the State Department report said. “It has been linked to the formation of some of the most infamous far-left terrorist movements in U.S. history.”
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Cuban government defectors said that Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate was “strategically placed alongside the young Americans in the Brigade camps in Cuba.” The brigade became so important to Cuban intelligence that it was put under a “special section” of the DGI and placed under the direct supervision of DGI’s deputy director, who “personally supervised the creation and subsequent activities of the Brigade.”
The Venceremos Brigade’s influence has helped get Cuban influence a foothold in “elite academia, major nonprofits and NGOs, and even the Democratic Party itself,” pointing out that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass served as a leading brigade organizer and made frequent trips to Cuba when she was younger. Antonio Villaraigosa, who served as Los Angeles mayor from 2005 to 2013, also served as a Brigade alumnus.
