The administration notified Congress late last week that it intends to spend $175.8 million to replace outdated and aging undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving in. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the notification on Monday.
The State Department is considering spending nearly half a billion dollars more on programs aimed at China throughout the Western Hemisphere, Africa and Asia, according to an internal State Department document obtained by AP.
Many of those proposed programs are designed to “reclaim diplomatic leverage” through investments in areas where the U.S. had previously been spending money but stopped as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, carried out deep cuts to government budgets and personnel last year.
Those cuts, which dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and eliminated several hundred diplomatic posts worldwide, also affected previously approved projects, including some aimed at countering China.
The program described to Congress on Friday is called the “Countering CCP Control of Caribbean and Central America Undersea Cables project.”
At the same time, the administration has drawn up plans to spend more than $340 million for over 50 specific anti-China projects around the world, including many in the Western Hemisphere, according to the internal State Department document outlining various proposals.
The administration notified Congress in May that it had spent several hundred million dollars in counter-China funding from the 2024 budget that was approved by the Biden administration. However, many other projects funded for 2024 and 2025 had been put on hold.
Among the plans to be resurrected are the creation of security operations centers in Argentina and Belize to monitor Chinese threats to critical infrastructure and cyber platforms throughout the region. Also coming back would be initiatives to protect Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay from alleged Chinese attempts to infiltrate port operations and illegally exploit offshore fishing and critical minerals extraction.
More broadly, the proposal, which is still under consideration, would work against Chinese influence in the selection of a successor to the Dalai Lama “by developing proprietary technology to ensure secure communications and information collection.” It also would go after international support for China’s space program and push back against Chinese firms seeking to export surveillance and censorship technology.
The world should act more on anti-American programs. Actually Europe is already moving on.
In regards to Africa, China is well established there both investment in infrastructure and by soft power by providing medical services. And at least China knows the correct name of each African country.


