WASHINGTON —

China has been operating a spy base in Cuba since at least 2019, part of a global effort by Beijing to upgrade its intelligence-gathering capabilities, according to a Biden administration official.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. intelligence community has been aware of China's spying from Cuba and a larger effort to set up intelligence-gathering operations around the globe for some time.

The Biden administration has stepped up efforts to thwart the Chinese push to expand its spying operations and believes it has made some progress through diplomacy and other unspecified action, according to the official, who was familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed after The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island. The Journal reported China planned to pay cash-strapped Cuba billions of dollars as part of the negotiations.

The White House called the report inaccurate.

"I've seen that press report, it's not accurate," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an MSNBC interview Thursday. "What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China's influence activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we're watching this very, very closely."

The U.S. intelligence community had determined Chinese spying from Cuba has been an "ongoing" matter and is "not a new development," the administration official said.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also refuted the report in a Twitter post Saturday.

"The slanderous speculation continues, evidently promoted by certain media to cause harm and alarm without observing minimum patterns of communication and without providing data or evidence to support what they disseminate," he wrote.

President Joe Biden's national security team was briefed by the intelligence community soon after he took office in January 2021 about a number of sensitive Chinese efforts around the globe where Beijing was weighing expanding logistics, basing and collection infrastructure as part of the People's Liberation Army's attempt to further its influence, the official said.

Chinese officials looked at sites spanning the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The effort included looking at existing collection facilities in Cuba, and China conducted an upgrade of its spying operation on the island in 2019, the official said.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been fraught throughout Biden's term.

The relationship may have hit a nadir last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to democratically governed Taiwan. That visit, the first by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997, led China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch military exercises around Taiwan.

U.S.-China relations became further strained early this year after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.

Beijing also was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's stopover in the U.S. last month which included an encounter with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The speaker hosted the Taiwanese leader at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in southern California.

Still, the White House has been eager to resume high-level communications between the two sides.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to travel to China next week, a trip that was canceled as the balloon was flying over the U.S. Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, according to U.S. officials, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because neither the State Department nor the Chinese foreign ministry has yet confirmed the trip.

CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing with his counterpart last month. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna over two days in May and made clear that the administration wanted to improve high-level communications with the Chinese side.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently spoke briefly with Li Shangfu, China's minister of national defense, at the opening dinner of a security forum in Singapore. China had earlier rejected Austin's request for a meeting on the sidelines of the forum.

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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We rarely get to see behind the lines of fire and into the technology that keeps our troops safe on the battlefield.

But that changed recently when the advanced weapons technology company, AimLock, opened their doors ever so slightly to show us the auto-tracking, auto-aiming, and auto-stabilizing device that is being tested by the U.S. government right now.

“It certainly seems like [this technology becoming the future of combat] is an inevitability,” said Bryan Bochmon, CEO of the company. “Our adversaries are going to use automated lethal force at some point in the future because there are public examples where they have used it against some of their other enemies.”

Bochmon made our rules of engagement during our visit very clear: no close-up video or photographs within six feet, no video or photographs of employees, no shots that might reveal our location, and the answer to many of our questions would probably be “that’s private information.”

The technology was first created in 2014 when AimLock was founded. Bochmon describes it as a similar tech to what is found in precision-guided missiles; a computer that can track up to 100 targets at one time while moving from target to target in half of a second, delivering a precision strike each time. The technology, however, requires an authorized human operator to make the decision to deliver it.

I asked Bochmon what ethical considerations were discussed through the technology’s development.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Any time a new technology is created there are all kinds of intended consequences and unintended consequences. In general, all decisions about whether or not it’s appropriate to use lethal force are reserved for appropriate human operators, so when we build these machines, we make sure that the right human operators have full control and authority and decision to use force.”

Bochmon says outside of eliminating high-value targets, the technology is exceptionally useful at protecting our troops from threats on the battlefield such as mortar strikes and other lethal forces launched in the direction of US troops. In addition, Bochmon says a goal of the technology is to reduce collateral damage such as friendly fire by increasing accuracy and reducing human error.

Currently, AimLock has three weapons systems out for testing: a drone with an attached carbine underneath it, a buggy with a machine gun turret attached to the top, and a precision rifle. Each is remote-controlled by the human operator.

The technology is not available for public sale.

Eight years after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Geoffrey Easterling remains astonished by the Confederate history still memorialized on the storied academy's campus – the six-foot-tall painting of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the library, the barracks dormitory named for Lee and the Lee Gate on Lee Road.

As a Black student at the Army academy, he remembers feeling "devastated" when a classmate pointed out the slave also depicted in the Lee painting. "How did the only Black person who got on a wall in this entire humongous school — how is it a slave?" he recalls thinking.

As a diversity admissions officer, he later traveled the country recruiting students to West Point from underrepresented communities. "It was so hard to tell people like, 'Yeah, you can trust the military,' and then their kids Google and go 'Why is there a barracks named after Lee?'" he said.

The nation's military academies provide a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services and, for the better part of the last decade, they have welcomed more racially diverse students each year. But beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions volunteer little about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.

In an Associated Press story earlier this year, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it. Less attention has been paid to the premiere institutions that produce a significant portion of the services' officer corps – the academies of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine.

Some graduates of color from the nation's top military schools who endured what they describe as a hostile environment are left questioning the military maxim that all service members wearing the same uniform are equal.

That includes Carlton Shelley II, who was recruited to play football for West Point from his Sarasota, Florida, high school and entered the academy in 2009. On the field, he described the team as "a brotherhood," where his skin color didn't matter. But off the field, he said, he and other Black classmates too often were treated like the stereotype of the angry Black man.

Some students of color have spotlighted what they see as systemic discrimination at the academies by creating Instagram accounts — "Black at West Point," "Black at USAFA" and "Black at USNA" — to relate their personal experiences.

In response to the AP's findings, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, Maj. Charlie Dietz, said the academies make it a policy to offer equal opportunities regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. He said the DOD formed a team in April to advance progress on diversity, equity and inclusion across the entire department, including the academies.

The latest annual defense spending bill mandated that the Defense Department survey all its military properties for references or symbols that potentially commemorate the Confederacy, including at West Point, which the commission overseeing the work picked as its first site to visit earlier this year. But the deadline to act on any recommendations is still more than two years away.

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which sparked global protests, a group of West Point alums released a 40-page letter urging the academy to address "major failures" in combatting intolerance and racism, adding "we hold fast to the hope that our Alma Mater will take the necessary steps to champion the values it espouses."

Shelley said the academy has significant work to do to retain and support students of color. In his class, he estimated about 35 Black students graduated — "some crazy low number," he said. "And we started with a lot more."

West Point did not respond to repeated requests for comment, beyond reiterating the importance of diversity to its admissions process.

The academies are a growing pathway to officer status for Black cadets, 2019 data from the Under Secretary of Defense shows, with about 13% of Black active-duty officers commissioned through the five institutions, compared to 19% of white active-duty officers.

Most students who enroll — about 60-70% — are nominated by U.S. senators or representatives from their home states as part of a system created in the 1840s to build a geographically diverse officer corps. But today, the country's changed demographics mean the system gives disproportionate influence to rural congressional districts that tend to be whiter.

Only 6% of nominations to the Army, Air Force and Naval academies made by the current members of Congress went to Black candidates, even though 15% of the population aged 18 to 24 is Black, according to a March report by the Connecticut Veterans' Legal Center. Eight percent of congressional nominations went to Hispanic students, though they make up 22% of young adults, the report said.

The diversity of nominations has improved slightly in the past 25 years, but the report noted that 49 Congress members did not nominate a single Black student while in office and 31 nominated no Hispanic candidates.

Curtis Harris said he was awarded one of just three nominations to West Point out of more than 300 applications to his congressman. Now, he helps review applications for a New York Congressman and visits schools to encourage young candidates of diverse backgrounds to apply.

Diversifying West Point is "not going to happen by itself," he said.

According to data supplied to the AP by the four schools, the Naval, Air Force, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard academies have generally become less white over the past two decades. West Point did not provide full data, but said it is increasingly welcoming diverse students, with 37% of the class of 2024 identifying as nonwhite, compared to about 25% a decade ago.

While the number of Hispanic cadets increased in the past two decades at the Coast Guard and Naval academies, Black cadets showed no noticeable increase during that time. In the class of 2000, there were 73 Black midshipmen in the Naval Academy and just 77 in 2020. At the Coast Guard Academy, there were 15 Black cadets in the 2001 class. And in 2021? Merely 16.

Two of the five academies -- West Point and the Air Force Academy -- now have their first Black leaders. But Easterling, the West Point graduate, noted that the faculty there remains mostly white, meaning students who "don't see themselves, and don't want to stay" can find it hard to ask for help.

Greg Elliott said he often found himself in trouble while at the Merchant Marine Academy and was asked to leave without graduating. He said he didn't face overt racism, but wonders if a more diverse faculty and student body could have changed his course by making him feel he belonged.

He recalls a fellow Black alum telling him to just plow through with his head down and realize the academy was "a terrible place to be at, but it's a great place to be from."

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AP writers James LaPorta in Miami and Kat Stafford in Detroit and data intern Jasen Lo in Chicago contributed to this story.

Wieffering is a Roy W. Howard Investigative Fellow.

The social justice reckoning that has taken place in the United States is very public, but in the private ranks of the military, a similar battle is being waged.

Sikh Americans who serve in the U.S. military are enforcing their right to wear articles of faith while serving, something that has long been forbidden. And in many cases, those requests are being accommodated but not before a few legal battles.

“The idea is I would rather give up my head, I would rather give my life than give up this [Sikh] uniform which is indicative of the principles and values that I hold,” said Maj. Simratpal Singh of the U.S. Army.

Maj. Singh joined the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2007. Shortly after, a commander approached him saying if we wanted to stay, he would have to shave his beard and remove his turban.

“This idea that the very values and principles that compelled me to serve this country, that were such a fundamental part of my upbringing; it felt like I was betraying those values and principles,” said Maj. Singh.

Up until 1981, Sikhs in the Army could serve freely with their articles of faith, but that year, the Army banned them, saying beards and turbans could hinder servicemembers from meeting health, safety, and mission requirements. It became a standard in every branch of the military, and one that stood until 2010 when the Army made its first religious accommodation for a Sikh servicemember.

Only a few years later, in 2016, Maj. Singh took the Army to court over the same issue, and won, in the process strengthening the precedent for other servicemembers to do the same.

“The only promise that I made myself was that I’ll figure out a way to wear my articles of faith again and come back to my roots and practice my faith the way that I want to,” said Maj. Singh, whose landmark ruling has paved the way for other servicemembers to follow in his footsteps.

IN 2018, the Air Force made its first religious accommodation when it allowed Capt. Maysaa Ouza to wear a Hijab. Only a year later, the Air Force granted Airman First class Harpreetinder Singh Bajwa permission to wear a turban and beard while serving, before permanently changing its regulations in February 2020 to formally allow airmen to ask for a waiver to wear religious apparel for religious reasons.

“There are young Sikh kids in this country currently who might actually have a passion to be in the Marines and always have since they were kids, but look at the policies; they look at the rules for uniform and grooming, and they realize I’m not accepted there,” said Giselle Klapper, an attorney with the Sikh Coalition who currently represents First Lieutenant Sukhbir Toor, a Marine who has threatened legal against the Marine Corps.

In April of this year, First Lt. Toor became the latest Sikh American to request a religious accommodation to wear religious apparel. The Marines granted that request, but only while he was on base, saying if 1^st. Lt. Toor was deployed to combat zones he would have to adhere to its dress code that bars him from wearing a turban and beard.

First Lt. Toor appealed the ruling, threatening legal action if the Marines do not grant his request.

“We’re ready to do the same thing against the Marine Corp. and unfortunately ask a judge to rule against them because we understand that we are on the right side of the law,” said Klapper.

The Sikh Coalition estimates there are currently 100 active-duty servicemembers who serve in turbans and beards.