The Biden administration watched Cubans get beaten and arrested for demanding freedom in 2021.
Now Ron DeSantis just revealed how Biden's people did something worse than nothing.
And Ron DeSantis explained how Joe Biden killed Florida’s plan to beam internet into Cuba while people were being shot in the streets.
The Plan That Almost Freed Cuba
When Cuba's communist regime shut down the internet on July 11, 2021, they were executing a playbook every dictator knows by heart.
Cut the phones, cut the cameras, cut the outside world – and then send in the security forces.
Thousands of Cubans had flooded the streets in the largest uprising against the communist government in decades.
They were chanting "Freedom."
They were filming everything.
https://twitter.com/ReOpenChris/status/2098174924699414850?s=20
And the regime knew those videos were the only thing keeping the international community watching.
So they killed the internet.
DeSantis said his administration immediately started hunting for a solution through Florida's Division of Emergency Management.
Starlink was the first idea – but Starlink requires receivers on the ground, and the Biden administration wasn't willing to help get equipment into Cuba.
Then Florida found a company willing to do something bolder.
Balloons.
Hot air internet balloons that could float over Cuban airspace and transmit connectivity directly to every smartphone on the island – no ground equipment required, nothing the regime could confiscate or destroy.
"We kind of priced it out and, you know, we were going to do it," DeSantis said.
Florida was ready to fund it.
The company was ready to launch.
Cubans fighting for their lives were ready for it.
Then Washington, DC Made a Phone Call
The company got a message.
Proceed with the balloon operation, and lose your federal license.
DeSantis didn't name the company.
He didn't name the agency that made the call.
But the result was the same either way: the balloons never flew, the internet stayed dark, and Cuba's communist government had the cover it needed to crush the uprising.
"We were going to do it, but the company was told that if they proceeded with it that they would lose their federal license," DeSantis said. "And so they kind of went back and didn't do it."
Think about what that means.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2098133922702069922?s=20
A state government identified a solution.
A private company agreed to execute it.
Florida calculated the cost and was prepared to pay it.
And someone in Biden's Washington – in an agency nobody has named – made a single phone call that ended it.
Not a congressional vote.
Not a public policy debate.
A phone call.
While Cubans Were Being Beaten Biden Sent a Press Release
The regime's leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel, went on national television during the protests and told his security forces that "the order to fight has been given."
He was talking about fighting the protesters.
Cuba's state-run telecom monopoly, ETECSA, pulled the plug on every major platform – WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram – as demonstrations spread from city to city.
Cubans were operating completely blind – unable to coordinate, unable to show the world what was happening, unable to call for help.
This was the moment Florida's balloon plan was designed to address.
And Biden's Washington killed it.
"Had there been a more forceful effort to give the people some support in 2021, we could have a much different picture today," DeSantis said.
He's right.
The Castro-Diaz regime has been in power for over six decades specifically because every attempt to break its information stranglehold has been stopped, delayed, or undermined from within the American bureaucracy.
DeSantis revealed the Cuba disclosure while launching Florida's first full school year under SB 1264 – the law he signed in 2024 requiring communist history to be taught in Florida schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.
https://twitter.com/CiberCuba/status/2098470170490556602?s=20
That law is now in effect this school year.
Florida kids are learning what communism actually does to human beings – not the sanitized university version, but the real one, the one where regimes shut down the internet so they can beat people in the streets without witnesses.
DeSantis signed SB 1264 on the 63rd anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, surrounded by the veterans who were abandoned by another Democratic president at another pivotal moment in Cuban history.
The pattern is not subtle.
Why This Keeps Happening
Every generation produces one version of the same story: Cubans rise up, America comes to the edge of helping, and someone in Washington blinks.
Kennedy blinked at the Bay of Pigs.
Biden's people blinked at the balloon.
DeSantis is the first American governor to put that on the record with specifics – a company, a technology, a cost estimate, and a federal threat that killed it.
Biden's Treasury and Commerce Departments issued joint guidance in August 2021 claiming to support internet access for Cubans – after the protest window had already closed and the regime had already won.
https://twitter.com/CiberCuba/status/2099285547327881330?s=20
That guidance was a press release.
Florida's balloon plan was real.
One of them got shut down.
The other got issued.
The agency that made that phone call still hasn't been named.
Someone in Biden's Washington threatened a private company out of helping freedom fighters – and five years later nobody has been asked to answer for it.
That's a question Congress should be asking right now.
Sources:
- Fox 49 Staff, "DeSantis says Florida had plan to beam internet into Cuba during 2021 protests," Fox 49, September 13, 2026.
- CiberCuba Editorial Team, "DeSantis reveals that the company that would bring internet to Cuba during the 11J backed down after federal warning," CiberCuba, September 13, 2026.
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Governor Ron DeSantis Urges the Biden Administration to Step Up and Restore Internet Access for the People of Cuba," Office of the Governor of Florida, July 14, 2021.
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Governor DeSantis Signs Legislation Further Enhancing Florida's Education Standards on the Evils of Communism," Office of the Governor of Florida, April 17, 2024.
