By Francisco Delgado Rodríguez on February 8, 2025
Photo: Fernando Vergara/ AP
The ineffable Elon Musk has just given us some interesting news by labeling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as an institution with criminal, illegal aims. He accused it of being linked to intelligence operations, coups d’état and even the conception and spread of Covid-19.
USAID is said to have been a creation of the Democratic Party, although it was obviously used by both parties since it was founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Its objectives were clearly to sell a kinder face of the proverbial imperial arrogance and, in the process, to do what it could to undermine popular support for governments that were not to Washington’s liking, through what they later called soft power.
The Cuban Revolution was a target of USAID from the start, so cataloguing all the projects they funded would be very extensive. According to the available public information, some examples: from 1996 to 2005 they spent no less than 74 million USD “on the promotion of democratic change”. One example that springs to mind is the ZunZuneo project, aimed at facilitating communication between Cuban citizens via text messages, as they promised, and which operated between 2009 and 2012, when it was discarded as useless.
Other sadly evocative projects refer to those implemented since 2014 to influence the Cuban hip-hop music movement, revealing that the culture sector was and continues to be one of the main targets of this type of attack. As an example of the perversity of these policies, there are also those designed to influence projects to help HIV patients, which are really a cover to identify possible local sympathizers.
This is known to be an old trick of the US special services, who have always come up against so-called visa syndrome, whereby obtaining a visa to emigrate to the US becomes the real, and not always admitted, purpose. The aforementioned syndrome has now been recycled under the concept of so-called credible fear, a step towards obtaining asylum, regardless of whether the individual needs it, it is enough to put together an “oppositional” story on digital social networks.
To this day it functions with the financial support of USAID and the NED, which would well deserve a separate analysis, the so-called counter-revolutionary cluster, a conglomerate of media and digital platforms generating fanciful content, which exaggerates the description of the problems facing Cuba, naturally ignoring the main culprit, the blockade.
The exploits of USAID in the rest of the world are also well known, some widely denounced. The scandal currently surrounding the government of Narnia, sorry, the spawn of the Venezuelan far right abroad, is unspeakable; also remembered over time is the support for crueler plans such as Operation Condor, or the euphemistically named color revolutions in Europe and the Middle East, which left an impressive number of human victims and truths that cry out to be clarified someday.
It could be said that Musk discovered warm water, but behind this comment lie other projects, updated to the current times and the immediate future, and which represent an alternative to the practices of the now defunct USAID. No one should expect the empire to give up its traditional plans, in an endless race to contain the inevitable loss of its once undisputed hegemony.
It is worth mentioning, for example, the so-called Palantir Foundation for Defense Policy and International Affairs, which has existed since at least 2004 and is associated with the US intelligence services and the Pentagon. Palantir works on the development of AI for the digital collection of data from third countries, with the aim of replacing CIA agencies, or the actions of NGOs in the physical field, based on the extraordinary influence of US-based digital social media platforms such as X itself, with segmented audiences, especially vulnerable ones such as the youngest.
It is easy to imagine the subversive power of this type of project, cheaper and obviously more far-reaching than the outdated USAID; Musk’s participation gives it a twist, because apparently the character is preparing to line his pockets with public funds, promoting projects like the one mentioned, in which he is known to have a significant stake.
What is Musk saying in concrete terms? Welcome to a much more hostile and opaque world in terms of the methods of attack against anyone who tries to challenge imperialism. In any case, the criminal organization of USAID already has someone to do the job for it.
Raising the alarm about this reality is urgent. Resistance is essential to maintain and invigorate patriotic, revolutionary values in digital social networks, as has been said; hence the request of the First Secretary of the PCC, comrade Díaz-Canel, when he called for a new Vindication of Cuba in that space, where the “new” USAID will have to be confronted.
Source: Cuba Si