Directorate of Intelligence

Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence, historically known as the DGI (Dirección General de Inteligencia), is the foreign intelligence Arm of the state, responsible for overseas espionage, counterintelligence, and covert operations abroad. Founded in the early 1960s with significant Soviet KGB mentorship, the DGI developed into one of the more capable intelligence services in Latin America during the Cold War, penetrating Cuban exile organisations in the United States, running agents in Europe, and providing intelligence support to revolutionary movements across Africa and the Americas. The service underwent structural reorganisations through the 1990s and 2000s but its core mission, protecting the Cuban government from external threats and projecting Cuban intelligence influence abroad, has remained continuous.

On 18 May 2026 the US State Department designated the Directorate of Intelligence as an entity under Executive Order 14404, naming it alongside MININT and the National Revolutionary Police. This is a notable escalation: prior US Cuba sanctions regimes had targeted individuals and economic entities such as GAESA, but designating the foreign intelligence service as a body reflects a US determination that institutional designation, rather than naming individual case officers, better captures the systemic Nature of Cuba's intelligence operations against dissidents in the diaspora and its cooperative intelligence relationships with Russia and China .

The DGI designation carries significance that extends beyond the Cuba-US bilateral relationship. The service has long been of concern to European counterintelligence agencies given its documented penetration of Cuban diaspora communities in Spain and other EU member states. Its cooperative relationship with Russian intelligence services is a factor in the broader US assessment of the Cuba-Russia alignment that the oil-supply dependency and the 1 May 2026 Castro-Díaz-Canel joint appearance have underlined. Designating the intelligence directorate rather than individual agents signals the US intends to treat Cuba's intelligence apparatus as a state instrument in the same category as the security structures of other adversary states.