Latin America security expert Ryan C. Berg testified this week to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security that three of the suspected spy bases are near Havana on the north coast and a fourth is on the opposite side of the island near Santiago de Cuba.

“Due to Cuba’s proximity to Florida, these facilities grant China [signals intelligence] coverage of around 20 key bases and installations on the peninsula,” said Mr. Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Subcommittee Chairman Carlos Gimenez, Florida Republican, said the Chinese spy sites in Cuba represent “one of the most brazen intelligence operations ever attempted near the American mainland, and places our military operations, commercial activity and communications squarely in the crosshairs of a hostile foreign power.”

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is sounding the alarm this week that hackers are targeting oil and gas infrastructure and taking advantage of the sector’s poor security techniques. The agency warned in a new alert this week that cyberattackers are going after industrial control systems and supervisory control and data acquisition systems.

CISA also published an advisory — authored with the FBI, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency — that recommended specific mitigations to reduce cyber threats to operational technology (OT) systems.

In 2021, ransomware attackers hit major U.S. fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline. Hackers reportedly targeted the company’s IT networks and not its OT environment, but the company halted OT operations amid concerns about the hackers jumping the divide.

With that as a backdrop, CISA’s new advisory urges cybersecurity professionals to segment IT and OT networks and introduce a “demilitarized zone for passing control data.” The federal agencies’ advisory said organizations should also practice and maintain the ability to operate OT systems manually.

House lawmakers are worried Chinese thieves are stealing America’s artificial intelligence secrets and boosting confidential info from the leading labs building top technology. Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, said Wednesday that China is refusing meaningful protections to safeguard American intellectual property and is racing ahead in the contest for AI supremacy. 

“We know China’s speed is not merely because they invest in innovation, it is also the result of IP theft, reverse engineering, efforts to circumvent U.S. export controls and more,” Mr. Issa said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “China has also weaponized our legal system by financing lawsuits that target American firms in expensive litigation and with the intent, in many cases, to mine that proprietary information.”

Mr. Issa cited the example of the Chinese firm DeepSeek, which is suspected of ripping off American AI firms. In April, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party published the results of its investigation that said DeepSeek personnel infiltrated U.S. AI models and violated companies’ terms of service, among other things. China has disputed the findings as “groundless.”

Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll on Wednesday defended the service’s plans to downsize some legacy weapon systems, including cuts to the fleet of older model AH-64D Apache helicopters. He testified on Capitol Hill that the Army needs to move more quickly and aggressively toward acquiring cheaper, swarmable drones.

“We need to overinvest in [drones] and underinvest in manned systems going forward,” Mr. Driscoll told lawmakers. Army Chief of Staff Staff Gen. Randy George, meanwhile, testified that drone technology is rapidly evolving and the Army must quickly adapt to the changes by deploying drones to be controlled at the unit level.

Gen. George said Army brigades in Europe typically deploy with Apache helicopters, but one unit recently left them behind as part of a test without causing any problems in the field. “It was 300% more effective. It had drones, it had loitering munitions [and] long-range fires,” he said. “We have all these systems that can come on right now.”

The mindsets of technological governance are “out of date,” according to Diane Rinaldo. “America will not win the race for artificial intelligence leadership if it tries to go slow and overregulate, but that is precisely what the Biden administration’s overly broad policy on AI diffusion did,” she writes. “The policy harms AI innovation at home and restrains cooperation with allies abroad. It must change, starting with our allies.”

“In its last days in office, the Biden administration issued its rule on AI diffusion, classifying countries into three tiers: allies, others and adversaries,” writes Ms. Rinaldo, a former acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. “Although all of Western Europe is categorized as an ally, Portugal and Spain are lumped into the second category of everyone else that isn’t an adversary. This was a policy mistake.”

“It has been rumored that the Trump administration is considering eliminating the tiered approach in favor of government-to-government agreements with partner countries,” she writes. “This would be welcome news. The tiered approach is bad public policy and does nothing to improve America’s leadership in AI.”

• May 8 — Antarctic Global Diplomacy — Preview of the Annual Antarctic Treaty Meeting, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• May 13 — Golden Dome for America: From Inception to Implementation, Threat Status

• May 13 — Military IT & Cyber Leadership Awards, AFCEA, Washington D.C. Chapter

• May 14 — The Spy and the State with Jeffrey P. Rogg, International Spy Museum

• May 19 — Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook Reception, Foundation for American Innovation

• June 2-4 — AI+ Expo, Special Competitive Studies Project

• June 25 — The New IC, Intelligence and National Security Alliance