Florida Governor Ron DeSantis revealed new details about the efforts of his administration to bring internet to Cuba during the protests of July 11, 2021, and stated that the project reached the stage of having a company willing to deploy balloons to provide direct connectivity to mobile phones on the island.
During an intervention on Thursday September 10 in Miami, at an event held at the Museum of Brigade 2506, an organization linked to the veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, behind a banner that read “Teaching the Dangers of Communism”, DeSantis recalled that, in light of the internet blackouts imposed by the Cuban regime during the historic protests of July 11, his government began exploring alternatives to keep Cubans connected.
"As people began to protest, the regime shut down the internet, obviously because it did not want individuals to be able to communicate," stated the governor, who claimed that at that time, the Joe Biden administration was not willing to provide the assistance Florida was seeking.
One of the first options considered was Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet network. However, DeSantis explained that this technology required ground-based receiving equipment, which complicated its use in Cuba.
Faced with that obstacle, the Florida government explored another alternative through its Division of Emergency Management.
"I found a company that was going to send balloons with internet so they could transmit directly to their smartphones and do what they needed to do," DeSantis recounted.
According to the governor, the project progressed beyond a mere proposal: costs were calculated, and Florida was ready to launch it.
"We estimated the price roughly and we were going to do it," he assured. DeSantis stated that he believed if that technology could make a difference for Cubans, the expense was justified.
The plan, however, was never carried out.
DeSantis stated that the company involved backed down after receiving a warning that it could lose its federal license.
The governor did not identify the company during his speech nor specify which federal agency had made that warning.
The efforts to bring internet access to Cuba had been known since 2021. Just two days after the social outbreak, DeSantis announced that he would speak with companies in Florida to explore options for restoring connectivity in response to the outages ordered by the Cuban regime.
The proposal to use balloons also emerged weeks later. In August 2021, it was revealed that DeSantis was pressuring the White House to consider that technology and that Cuban-American Congress members María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez, the then-commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr, and attorney Marcell Felipe were involved in the discussions.
Felipe stated then that he had been talking for two years with a defense contractor who could deploy balloons near Cuba to transmit connectivity directly to mobile phones without relying on a land-based provider on the island.
The Biden administration also publicly acknowledged that it was exploring alternatives. In July 2021, a senior U.S. official confirmed that the Departments of Commerce and Treasury, as well as the FCC, were examining the necessary authorizations and licenses to make various technologies, including satellites and balloons, viable, although he noted that there were significant technical and legal challenges.
Republican criticism increased in the following weeks. Florida lawmakers publicly questioned Biden's limited support for providing Cubans with internet access that the regime could not disrupt.
In August 2021, the U.S. Departments of the Treasury and Commerce issued joint guidance to clarify the exemptions and authorizations available to businesses and individuals under U.S. jurisdiction to provide certain internet and telecommunications services to Cuba.
The Biden administration stated that it maintained a favorable stance toward specific license requests aimed at facilitating safe access to the free flow of information on the internet for Cubans.
Five years later, DeSantis claims that opportunity was wasted and holds the Biden administration responsible for not sufficiently supporting Florida's efforts.
«If there had been a more robust effort to provide support to the people in 2021, we could have a very different landscape today», he stated.
"I believe it was a missed opportunity. We tried to do what we could, and unfortunately, we didn't have the help from Washington at that moment, under the Biden administration, to get the job done," he concluded.
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