Peru and Ecuador are undergoing processes of military intervention by the United States
In recent months, the United States has launched two projects with a geostrategic scope and bellicose purpose. In Ecuador, it has annexed the Galapagos Islands to its security and defense architecture by authorizing the “Integral Security Project in the Insular Region.” In Peru, an agreement has been reached between the National Commission for Aerospace Research and Development (CONIDA) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) through the U.S. Space Command to build the region’s largest spaceport at the Talara Air Base in the Department of Piura.
Why is the United States setting up in Talara and Galapagos? To answer this question, this article will analyze open-source data to trace the context, intent, and possible courses of action in implementing both projects.
It is argued here that both projects are geopolitically connected and serve as new military enclaves to reinforce the United States’ dominance and control in the region, particularly in the event of an armed conflict with the People’s Republic of China or its allies. However, this incurable warmongering, that characterizes the form of US intervention, could be the main factor of instability in both countries.
The following section describes the intervention processes in Peru and Ecuador, which resulted in the agreement to build a spaceport in Talara and the de facto annexation of the Galapagos Islands to the U.S. security and defense architecture. The third section discusses U.S. motivations for engaging in both projects. The fourth section is for conclusions.
From “Stabilization ” to Military Enclaves
Since 2023, the United States has been intervening militarily in Peru and Ecuador. Although the experiences have different pretexts and nuances, they share a common trajectory that goes from “stabilization operations” (Córdova-Alarcón, 2023) to the configuration of new military enclaves with geostrategic projection. The most relevant milestones of this trajectory are described below.
Peru: From Repression to the Installation of the Spaceport in Talara
The fall of Pedro Castillo in December 2022, following a failed self-coup, deepened political instability in the country. Dina Boluarte assumed the presidency, prompting thousands of demonstrators to take to the streets, demanding her resignation and the call for new elections.
The state’s response was brutal: between December 2022 and February 2023, police and military repression left 49 dead and more than a hundred wounded. The most harrowing incident occurred in Juliaca, in the department of Puno, where, on January 9, 2023, police officers deployed in the area killed 19 people in a single day (IDL-Reporteros, 2023).
Despite the obvious illegitimate use of force by state agents, all the crimes went unpunished. Moreover, the Peruvian government rewarded those who covered up the crimes with the consent of the U.S. Embassy in Lima. Let us give an example.
The protests of December 15, 2022, left a toll of 10 dead in Huamanga, Ayacucho. The autopsies indicated that the victims were hit with projectiles compatible with Israeli-made Galil rifles, which were part of the Army’s armament deployed that day in the town. However, the inspector assigned to the case investigation exonerated all the military personnel involved. The author of the exculpatory report was Brigadier General Marco Marín Saldaña. As a reward for his cover-up, the general was appointed by Dina Boluarte as military attaché at the Peruvian embassy in Washington (Páez & Hidalgo, 2024).
In May 2023, the siege against the dissenting population tightened. While the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice declared that social protest has no legal protection whatsoever and that it constitutes an anti-value and illegal act (Romero, 2023), the Congress of the Republic approved the first arrival of U.S. military troops to participate in the Resolute Sentinel 2023 joint exercises (Legislative Resolution 31757, 2023).
Within this framework of cooperation, an airfield was installed under U.S. Air Force supervision at the Chiclayo Air Base in Chiclayo, Peru, by June 2023 (Jennings, 2023). In July of the same year, working meetings were also held between the Peruvian Space Agency and the Peruvian Air Force with the U.S. Space Command. Two months earlier, in May, they had already signed agreements to grant access to all the information produced by the Peruvian National Satellite Imagery Operations Center (Matlock, 2023).
In August 2023, Peru’s Minister of Defense, Jorge Luis Chávez, accompanied by a delegation from the military high command, traveled to Washington to advance cooperation agreements (Watson, 2023a). The response was not long in coming; the following month, in September, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, visited Lima with a large delegation to discuss an enduring defense partnership (Watson, 2023b).
These meetings agreed, among other things, on the installation of a spaceport (Spaceport) to be operated by NASA and the United States Space Command in Peruvian territory.
In December 2023, the Peruvian government presented the “Multiannual Report on Investments in Public-Private Partnerships of the Ministry of Defense for the period 2023- 2026,” in which the creation of a spaceport was contemplated. By January 2024, the agreements with the United States had been made public (Watson, 2024). It was then known that the Peruvian Air Force and the U.S. Space Force would begin feasibility studies for the installation of a spaceport in Peruvian territory in March 2024.
The site chosen for the construction of the spaceport is the Peruvian Air Force Base “El Pato,” near the city of Talara, in the department of Piura. An initial investment of 1 billion Soles, equivalent to approximately US$260 million, is estimated.
For the construction of the port, a memorandum of understanding was signed with NASA, which would oversee both the construction and subsequent operation (Cuadros, 2024). All of this was agreed upon despite knowing that NASA’s main investor and operator is billionaire Elon Musk, through SpaceX and Starlink.
Ecuador: From the Manufacture of Internal Armed Conflict to Annexation of Galapagos.
The States shaped economic policy and military strategy adopted by Daniel Noboa’s government. The report “The United States in the Crosshairs No. 2” shows this in detail (Córdova-Alarcón, 2024).
Unlike the Peruvian case, in Ecuador, there is evidence of greater tutelage by the U.S. Department of Defense over the Ecuadorian Armed Forces, given the institutional weakness of the military force as a whole and the very serious criminal penetration, especially in the Ecuadorian Navy.
In order to understand the trajectory that explains recent events, it is necessary to consider that the greatest vulnerability to public security in Ecuador is in the maritime environment. First, because Ecuador’s maritime jurisdictional space exceeds one million square kilometers, while the land space is approximately a quarter. Second, because the main drug traffickers have expedited maritime routes through the Galapagos. Third, following the country’s accession to UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) in 2012, Ecuador reduced its territorial sea from 200 to 12 miles but assumed new jurisdictional competencies in the 188-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. This required the state’s capacity to implement UNCLOS and guarantee the protection of its maritime heritage. This became critical in the Galapagos archipelago.
A clear indicator of the poor maritime control by the Ecuadorian Navy has been the inability to control illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. An emblematic case occurred in August 2017 when “the Chinese vessel Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 was detained while crossing the Galapagos Marine Reserve without authorization. The vessel contained 7639 sharks, of which 432 were fetuses. Also found were 537 bags of shark fins and 2114 fish” (Carrere, 2021). Although the Ecuadorian justice system prevailed in prosecuting the crew and seizing the vessel, this case revealed the dramatic situation of the Galapagos Marine Reserve.
The following year, joint operations were reactivated with the outbreak of criminal violence in Ecuador and the reopening of the Office of Security Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy. In September 2018, the U.S. Orion P3 aircraft began flying over Ecuadorian maritime space. But it was in May 2019 when the Minister of Defense, General Oswaldo Jarrín, announced that the San Cristóbal airport in Galapagos would become a base of operations for maintenance and supply of the Orion P3 and Awac. “On Thursday, September 26, 2019, the Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) delivered to the Ministry of Defense 10,000 square meters of land to remodel the current hangar, where aircraft maintenance will be performed. It also committed to the expansion of a roadway that connects the hangar to the main runway and the adequacy of fuel tanks so that U.S. aircraft can refuel in the archipelago and execute emergency landings” (El Comercio, 2019).
In June 2020, a fishing fleet of 139 Chinese-flagged vessels once again entered the Galapagos Exclusive Economic Zone. Safety alerts were activated, and it was possible to monitor their movements in detail (Almeida, 2020). It then became known that this was a common practice of Chinese fishing fleets with more than 300 vessels moving off the Argentine, Uruguayan, Chilean, Peruvian, and Ecuadorian coasts, almost always with unsustainable practices and outside the law (Constante, 2020).
If the illegal incursions of fishing fleets cast doubt on the capacity of the Ecuadorian Navy to exercise maritime control, what happened at the beginning of 2021 confirmed it. On January 23 of that year, the Ecuadorian Navy’s computer platform, the Maritime Management System (Sigmar), was breached by hackers. Sigmar was a privately licensed software program in which the Navy stored and managed a large database of vessels and personnel registered in the country (more than 100 gigabytes of information). Until January 2019, the company that owned the license provided corrective support, but the government of Lenin Moreno did not renew the contract. Literally, this computer attack left the Ecuadorian Navy blind (Mella, 2022).
In September 2022, the head of the U.S. Southern Command chaired the South American Conference of Defense meeting in Quito. In his speech, he portrayed China and Russia as “malign threats” to the hemisphere and “described illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing as one of the main maritime threats in the region, especially because of fuel subsidies for fishing fleets operating in South American oceans” (Loaiza, 2022).
Two months before (in June 2022), in the framework of the Summit of the Americas, President Guillermo Lasso raised the need for a “Plan Ecuador” –taking Plan Colombia as a reference–(Expreso, 2022). Then, the cards were laid bare.
Plan Ecuador” has two components. The first is a global intervention strategy in all areas of the Ecuadorian State. The framework for this global strategy is the “Ecuador-U.S. Partnership Act.” This bill was born out of a bipartisan initiative promoted by Bob Menendez, Jim Risco, Tim Kaine, and Marco Rubio, all of whom are regular visitors to Ecuador, particularly the Galapagos.
Later, Bob Menendez, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was indicted for receiving bribes from foreign governments in exchange for political favors (Fandos, 2023; Rizzo, 2024). At the same time, Marco Rubio was nominated by President Donald Trump as Secretary of State and awaits Senate ratification (Gold, 2024).
The “Ecuador-U.S. Partnership Act” officially went into effect on December 23, 2022. Regarding the Galápagos, the law authorized two key measures: first, the transfer of a Coast Guard vessel to help secure the Galápagos Marine Reserve, combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and enhance narcotics interdiction efforts. Second, it approved the transfer of up to two Island-class cutters to the Government of Ecuador as defense assets (see Section 5548 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, 2022).
Additionally, the same law set a 180-day deadline for the Department of State and USAID, in coordination with other relevant departments and agencies, to design comprehensive strategies (see Section 5549 of the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, 2022). In July 2023, exactly 180 days later, Ecuador’s Ministry of National Defense signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a Bilateral Action Plan set to be implemented through 2029. A similar agreement was established by USAID the following month.
Then came two military agreements that solidified these commitments: the “Navigators Agreement,” signed on September 27, 2023, and the “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA), signed on October 6, 2023.
With these agreements in place, the so-called “Internal Armed Conflict” was manufactured. Its inaugural act was the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio Valencia on August 9, 2023.
In retrospect, Villavicencio’s murder served three key purposes. First, it shocked both Ecuador and the world by exposing the severity of the country’s security crisis. As his closest friend, Christian Zurita, noted, just three hours before his assassination, Villavicencio had been having lunch three blocks from the site of his murder, without significant protection. This suggests that the masterminds behind the killing were not only intent on eliminating him but also on creating the greatest possible media impact—an objective they successfully achieved.
Second, his assassination effectively weakened the candidacy of Luisa González, the representative of the “Citizen Revolution” and political heir to Rafael Correa.
Third, it helped legitimize the United States’ interventionist agenda in Ecuador. Similar tactics were used in Colombia following the 1984 assassination of Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, as explained by Estefanía Ciro (2024).
After taking office as President, Daniel Noboa appointed Admiral Jaime Vela as Chief of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, on November 30, 2023. In his speech of order, the Admiral stated: “To achieve peace we have to wage war” (Ecuador Chequea, 2023). Days later, the new super minister of Government and Interior, Monica Palencia, confirmed the assessment: “The war is already there, it is not that we are going to make it, we are at war: we did not choose the enemies. It is the responsibility of civil society, and not only of the Government, to actively participate in all areas” (Agencia EFE, 2023).
Therefore, what happened at the beginning 2024, with the escape of alias “Fito”, leader of “Los Choneros”, and the spectacularization of the criminal violence with the armed assault on a television station, was used as a trigger to shape the presidential perception and to achieve the declaration of “Non-International Armed Conflict” by Executive Decree No. 111, dated January 9, 2024.
The following month, President Noboa ratified the military agreements reached with the United States through Executive Decree 164 of February 15. In March, a U.S. delegation led by the director of the Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force, Rear Admiral Mark Fedor, visited the Ecuadorian Navy in Galapagos to monitor the progress of the commitments (Armada del Ecuador, 2024).
In July, the Ministry of Defense issued the “Guidelines for the application of the agreement between the Government of the Republic of Ecuador and the Government of the United States of America regarding the Status of Forces” (Ministerial Agreement No. MDI-DMI-2024- 0075 of July 01, 2024). And in September, the Ministry of Defense notified the Galápagos Governing Council of the “Comprehensive Security Project in the Insular Region,” which would allow the incorporation of the Galápagos into the United States’ security and defense architecture.
Finally, on December 10, the Galápagos Governing Council approved the military plan.
Why Is the United States Setting Up in Talara and Galapagos?
In both projects, the parties have coinciding positions: both the Peruvian and Ecuadorian militaries expect benefits from the U.S. intervention. As history teaches us, situations of insecurity and war always leverage big business. Those who defend the maritime control of the Galapagos by the United States or the creation of the spaceport in Talara with firm colonial convictions will not lack reasons. No attempt is made to refute such reasons or to convince fools.
Here the reader is invited to look at both projects in a larger context: that of the U.S. grand strategy. When examined from this macroscopic perspective, the intervention in the Galapagos and the construction of the spaceport in Talara take on a dangerous dimension.
Spatial Power as a Force Multiplier
As Bleddyn E. Bowen (2020) aptly explains, “space power is uniquely infrastructural and connected to the Earth.” From the perspective of strategic studies, space serves primarily as an infrastructural support system rather than a combat platform.
Hence, satellite systems play a decisive role as force multipliers on Earth. The ability to access or deny access to these systems determines space power. Washington, Moscow, and Beijing understand this reality and are acting accordingly.
In the United States, the race for space dominance was revived in 2015 with the passage of the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act by Congress. The idea was to foster the commercial space industry and resume the public-private initiative in the exploration of gravitational regimes (geocentric, cislunar, and solar), extend the legal geography of the United States towards asteroids closer to Earth for commercial uses, and facilitate its conquest in favor of the Americans.
A clearly colonial spatial law. For example, a button. Section 51303 of the referred law states:
“A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.” (U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, 2015).
During Donald Trump’s first administration (2017–2021), the space race underwent a significant transformation.
On December 20, 2019, the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces was established: the United States Space Force (USSF), headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, 2019). A few months later, in June 2020, the Pentagon unveiled its military space doctrine (United States Space Force, 2020).
Meanwhile, in May 2020, for the first time in U.S. history, a space capsule carrying two NASA astronauts was entirely manufactured by a private company: SpaceX, the aerospace firm founded by Elon Musk (Amos, 2020). This event marked the beginning of the commercial space travel era.
At the same time, SpaceX was developing Starlink, a project aimed at creating a global satellite internet constellation (Hall, 2019). Since its launch in 2019, the number of Starlink satellites has skyrocketed. Currently, there are an estimated 4,500 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth, making up 53% of all active satellites. However, Musk’s ambitions extend further, with plans to deploy up to 42,000 satellites in the coming years (Satariano et al., 2023).
This expansion has positioned Elon Musk as the dominant player in satellite internet technology and, by extension, has strengthened the United States’ geopolitical influence in space. Starlink has become the primary means of internet access in war zones, remote areas, and regions affected by natural disasters. The war in Ukraine has been a key testing ground for Starlink’s capabilities and geopolitical significance. “More than 42,000 Starlink terminals are now in use in Ukraine by militaries, hospitals, businesses, and aid organizations. During last year’s Russian bombing campaigns, which caused widespread blackouts, Ukraine’s public agencies turned to Starlink to stay online.” (Satariano et al., 2023).
In other words, one of the decisive factors of U.S. space power, the satellite network, is in the hands of a tycoon (Elon Musk) leveraged by another tycoon, Donald Trump. For this reason, Musk did not hesitate to buy Twitter (today’s X network) for 44 billion dollars in 2022 and contribute 250 million to Trump’s re-election (Schleifer & Haberman, 2024).
In addition to Internet service, Starlink is building a network of surveillance satellites for use by the U.S. government. If successful, it could become the world’s first real-time global monitoring and surveillance system at all points on Earth (Dou & Gregg, 2024).
This has prompted the development of antisatellite weapons (ASAT) in Russia and China. Apparently, the most recent one concerns the launch of the Russian satellite Cosmos 2553, which took place on February 5, 2022. According to the U.S. Space Command, which issued the alert, Cosmos 2553 is a satellite capable of storing a nuclear warhead. The idea of the program would be to detonate a nuclear bomb in low Earth orbit where the Starlink satellites are located (Hennigan, 2024).
With all this in mind, it is not difficult to imagine the dependence of the military forces of powers such as the United States on space power. This is even more so when it comes to monitoring and controlling what they consider their natural “zone of influence”: Latin America and the Caribbean.
Just a few weeks ago, NASA terminated its strategy to sustain human presence in the Earth’s low Earth orbit: they succeeded. In doing so, NASA opened the doors to deep space exploration and moved from the International Space Station to a new era of commercial space stations (Bardan, 2024). The Talara spaceport fits in very well here.
Recall that on April 6, 2020, Trump issued Executive Order 13914 titled “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Utilization of Space Resources,” which recognizes the vital importance of “rare earths” in securing U.S. economic, technological, and military dominance. In it, they expressly acknowledge that “outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons.”
Based on this order, on October 13, 2020, the Artemis Agreements were signed with seven U.S. allies. To date, 54 countries have signed the agreements. Ecuador acceded in June 2023 and Peru in May 2024 (U.S. Embassy-Peru, 2024). These agreements are the political basis on which the United States intends to delimit “safe zones” on the Moon and “avoid harmful interference” with the Moon to develop space mining (Serrano, 2020).
From this perspective, the Talara spaceport in Peru would become the ideal platform for the commercial space race. What is good romance language is called “the colonization of space.” The reason is the geographical location of Talara. As acknowledged by the Commander General of the Peruvian Air Force, Carlos Chavez: “This Talara base is only four degrees below the equatorial line, which gives us an enormous advantage for the location and subsequent growth of a launch station for space vehicles and suborbital vehicles” (Cuadros, 2024). The Earth’s rotational speed is higher at the equator, and a spacecraft could save up to 25% fuel, making the trip more cost-effective and energy-efficient.
Strengthening Maritime Power to Deny China Access to Latin America
At present, the hypothesis of conflict with the People’s Republic of China is the basis of the Pentagon’s strategic design. The most significant source of friction is Taiwan, where the production of 40 percent of all the world’s semiconductors or integrated circuits is concentrated. In fact, TSMC produces almost all of the world’s most advanced processors. A few weeks ago, the Chinese government protested the growing U.S. military sales and security assistance to Taiwan: “they are playing with fire,” warned Beijing’s spokesman (AP, 2024).
As China consolidates its position as a global power, Washington hawks have become increasingly paranoid. The first Trump administration saw the most significant strategic shifts, and the pugnacity has grown since then.
In Latin America, the Pentagon’s greatest concern is the dual use (civilian and military) that critical infrastructure controlled by Chinese companies could have: ports, airports, hydroelectric plants, video surveillance systems, electric power grids, and a long etcetera. That is why the United States has made every effort to sever ties with Chinese companies in the hemisphere. A task with relative success since the region demands money and infrastructure that China does provide. It was not until June 2022 that Joe Biden launched the “Partnership for Economic Prosperity in the Americas” initiative, but it did not come to fruition (U.S. Department of State, 2022).
The U.S. military deployment in the region is therefore guided by an expanded strategy of anti-access/area denial or A2/AD (Bonds et al., 2017). This old-style strategy is characterized by increasing operational challenges to the enemy to the point of deterring certain wartime courses of action (Russel, 2017). This is something that China has been doing in the Indo-Pacific region for three lustrums to undermine US dominance.
As Choi (2020) argues, “sea control is the fundamental step in the operational level of sea conflicts.” In his research, he shows how the Norwegian Navy developed an efficient maritime control strategy through its Coast Guard, something that the United States learned well and is now replicating in the Galapagos.
In a widely publicized interview (CSIS / Crisis, 2023), the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Laura Richardson, recognized the Chinese presence in critical infrastructure as a threat to national security and the importance of maritime dominance to counter it. She highlighted the presence of five Chinese companies along the Panama Canal and the strategic value of the new port in Chancay, Peru.
If we take these statements seriously, we can grasp the strategic importance of the Galápagos Islands and their maritime space within the United States’ security and defense architecture. From Galápagos, maritime control over access to both the Panama Canal and the port of Chancay is unparalleled.
The Pentagon’s “Joint Maritime Operations” doctrine, published on June 8, 2018 (Defense Department, 2018), provides insights into the doctrinal framework within which the military enclaves of Galápagos (island node) and Talara (continental node) are integrated.
Additionally, former President Donald Trump has recently stated his intentions to regain control of the Panama Canal if tariff rates are not adjusted and the purchase of Greenland is not reconsidered (Baker & Klimentov, 2024; Barrow & Weissert, 2024; Sanger & Friedman, 2024).
Given the current geopolitical tensions and conflicts, an expansionist policy is highly likely in a new Trump administration. History itself reinforces this possibility:
“The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 reactivated the strategic importance of the Galápagos Islands as a potential waypoint for transoceanic transport. In 1911, the U.S. proposed a 99-year lease of the islands in exchange for $15 million. Later, negotiations between the United States and Ecuador explored the possibility of leasing or purchasing San Cristóbal Island or even the entire archipelago” (Galápagos Conservancy, 2024).
“With the advent of World War II, the strategic importance of the Galapagos grew, and, in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. approached Ecuador with the idea of establishing a U.S. air base on Baltra Island to protect the Panama Canal. In late 1941, U.S. forces arrived from the Panama Canal Zone” (Galapagos Conservancy, 2024).
In 1942, the U.S. Sixth Air Force built an air base that would have significant long-term consequences for the Galápagos Islands. By 1943, the base housed 2,474 U.S. officers and personnel, along with 750 civilian workers. This marked the largest colonization of the islands up to that point. In 1941, the civilian population of the Galápagos Islands was just 810 people. The United States closed the air base in 1946.”
If this historical pattern of behavior continues, Ecuador is clearly at risk for having authorized the annexation of the Galapagos Islands into the United States’ security and defense architecture. As the hypothesis of conflict with China gains more traction in the region, the Galapagos Islands will become vital to ensuring an “Area of Maritime Operations” that provides tactical superiority to the Southern Command.
The Pentagon’s organic think tanks keep feeding the paranoia. In December 2024, the Center for Strategic and International Studies published a report with the first evidence of Chinese espionage operating from Cuba. The authors claim that Cuba’s proximity to the southern United States and the Caribbean makes it a prime location for collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) in the region (Funaiole et al., 2024).
In October 2023, the U.S. Navy surveillance station on Whidbey Island, Virginia, was renamed Theater Undersea Surveillance Command (Brock, 2023b). The change is not minor; it is in response to the largest reconstruction of the U.S. undersea espionage program since the end of the Cold War.
The Navy’s plan includes deploying a fleet of unpiloted marine drones to listen for enemy ships, placing portable water sensors on the seafloor to scan submarines, and using satellites to locate ships by tracking their radio frequencies and artificial intelligence software to analyze maritime espionage data in a fraction of the time it would typically take human analysts (Brock, 2023b).
What motivates such an aggressive espionage program is China’s meteoric rise as a maritime power. Some weeks ago, China unveiled its first Type 076 amphibious assault ship (Cadell, 2024b), a 40,000-ton ship equipped with an electromagnetic catapult and combat capability in distant seas.
However, the expansion of Chinese military capabilities is widespread, as the Pentagon acknowledged in its latest report on Chinese military power (Cadell, 2024a).
Another major motivation for activating this espionage program is to protect the undersea fiber-optic cables that cross the ocean floor and make Internet data transmission possible. In February, two undersea Internet cables connecting Taiwan to the Matsu Islands were cut (Brock, 2023a). In December, another incident with a Russian oil tanker cutting a submarine cable at an anchor between Finland and Estonia alerted about the sensitivity of this infrastructure (Francis, 2023).
The Americas are no strangers to this reality. Submarine cables are a strategic asset for civilian and military operations throughout the region and carry 95 percent of Internet data. For example, Peru’s submarine platform has a 1,180-kilometer cable owned by the Chinese company HMN Tech that provides Internet to Bolivia.
HMN Tech was the name it acquired in 2020 to distance itself from its parent company, Huawei Technologies, which was then the target of a trade and technology war with the United States.
The United States is currently the leader in the submarine cable industry. However, in the last four years, the United States has managed to block at least four projects in the Asia-Pacific region, fearing that China could use this infrastructure to spy on them. The message is clear: the only ones who can spy on the Internet through submarine cables are the United States, as was demonstrated after Edward Snowden’s allegations in 2013. A technological war between the two powers is also being waged under the sea (Brock, 2023a).
The United States is expanding and improving its anti-submarine surveillance capabilities as tensions with China rise. The eavesdropping network, shown in a 2017 U.S. Navy document, began with the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS): long cables equipped with underwater microphones placed on the ocean floor in the 1950s to listen for Soviet submarines. Since then, SOSUS has been supplemented with additional listening cables, known as the Fixed Distributed System (FDS). Data collected by underwater sensors placed at secret locations are sent to processing centers ashore, where they are analyzed to identify enemy vessels.
U.S. maritime and air patrolling, submarine espionage capabilities, and satellite support are essential to ensuring dominance and control over a ‘Maritime Area of Operations.’ This is precisely what the Pentagon aims to achieve through the annexation of the Galapagos and the construction of a spaceport in Talara.
Conclusions
This report highlights the extent to which Peru and Ecuador are undergoing processes of military intervention by the United States. In Peru, the intervention aims to stabilize the country amid an organic crisis of a political system weakened by an exclusionary and criminal economic regime. In Ecuador, an “intervention by invitation” has transformed the country into a client state of the U.S. military-industrial complex, as it implements the failed policy of the “war on drugs.”
This dynamic also underscores the double standards of U.S. foreign policy. While the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador has positioned itself in the media as a champion of the fight against corruption and organized crime, in Peru, it has chosen to remain complicitly silent in the face of blatantly corrupt behavior by the Peruvian political elite. As Sánchez-Moreno (2024) warns, Peru is becoming a haven for organized crime due to the severe breakdown of the rule of law, and the United States “has been reluctant to do or say anything” about it.
On the other hand, by framing the Talara and Galápagos projects within the U.S. ‘Grand Strategy,’ it becomes evident that their scope extends far beyond what has been officially declared by their proponents. This macroscopic analysis reveals that the motivations behind U.S. involvement in both projects are driven by geostrategic ambitions and belligerent intentions.
Peru’s spaceport is tied to a new era of commercial space exploration led by NASA and an aggressive program to establish satellite hegemony in low Earth orbit. In contrast, the integration of the Galápagos into U.S. security and defense architecture takes center stage as the Pentagon perceives growing Chinese threats in the Panama Canal and the newly constructed port of Chancay.
Given the fragility of democratic institutions in both countries, U.S. military intervention effectively endorses the political and economic influence of the Armed Forces, bolstering their power at the expense of civilian authority and democratic order. Since these are medium- to long-term projects, it is foreseeable that future electoral processes will become less transparent if the candidates most likely to win are not aligned with U.S. interests. This, in turn, will exacerbate social conflict and state repression.
However, the U.S. approach differs between the two countries. In Peru, it focuses on “capacity building,” given the presence of a government firmly aligned with its interests. In Ecuador, it has revived a policy of rewards and punishments to discipline decision-makers. The reason is clear: the severe criminal infiltration of state institutions erodes trust daily, forcing the United States to proceed with caution. This explains why the U.S. is opting for direct control over the Galápagos in Ecuador.
Finally, a measured assessment of China’s presence in both countries—its interests and projections—is necessary to complete the strategic political landscape outlined here. Nevertheless, the emphasis on the role of the United States reflects the historical and ongoing influence it wields in the region, despite the rise of China as a global power.
Luis Córdova-Alarcón holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Salamanca and is a professor-researcher at the Central University of Ecuador (UCE) focusing on political violence, civil-military relations and foreign policy.
Bibliography: Find it here.
This article was first published in Spanish here.
Translation: Mariana Fernández
