Intelligence failure and how to prepare for the next global crisis

Many failures have contributed to the devastation the COVID-19 pandemic has caused in the United States and around the world. Some of these problems are well known, such as the failure to develop sufficient test kits and personal protective equipment in the early weeks of the crisis, and the failure to provide adequate funding to public health. increase. But it is less understood that the pandemic was a failure of global intelligence services. For traditional national security information systems, and more importantly, for much more complex systems of public health information and surveillance designed to anticipate and prevent just such events. disaster.

We’ve seen this story before, so these failures are all the more tragic. The failure of intelligence and warnings in the coronavirus pandemic is the same as the failure of intelligence that preceded other national disasters such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and more recently the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States. It was eerily similar. US Capitol.

It’s been more than three years since the coronavirus spread across the world, and we’re still unprepared to deal with the next pandemic. Expert Let me know what could be around the corner. But it’s not too late to learn lessons from the COVID-19 intelligence failure and prepare for future catastrophes. The next global disaster may come in the form of another virus or be caused by one of the many other dangers threatening humanity. But whatever the cause of the next crisis, we need better information and warnings to mitigate the risks.

Was it really an intelligence failure?

many experts argued Above all, intelligence leaders and agencies have been warning about the threat of a global pandemic for years, so the pandemic was not an intelligence failure. For example, US intelligence leaders have often included global health threats in their goals. annual testimony Before parliament. The Good Commission has also frequently warned that the world needs to be better prepared for infectious disease outbreaks.Several conspicuous warning,actually, Autumn 2019just before the COVID-19 outbreak began in China.

But why, despite all these warnings, the United States and the world still seemed surprised when the outbreak began? Often referred to as the “strategic warning”), it is unlikely that action will be taken on the part of leaders who are dealing with many other issues. of a future global pandemic.

To name just one example, in January 2019, then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates issued what sounds like a very prescient warning today about the dangers of a global infectious disease pandemic.but in the same threat assessmenthe also warned of dangers from cyberattacks, weapons of mass destruction, great power competition, environmental change, and many other threats. But where do they start?

It is not enough for the intellect to raise the alarm. The intelligence agency’s job is not just to warn, but to help leaders and policy makers avert disaster. To that end, intelligence agencies need to issue specific warnings when real threats arise. This is called “tactical intelligence”. Policy makers need to understand and trust their intelligence advisors enough to be willing to heed the warnings they receive. And that is where intelligence agencies and systems have failed, both in the world of conventional intelligence and in the world of medical and public health intelligence.

familiar pattern

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, and in the early weeks and months of the global pandemic, U.S. intelligence agencies and the larger medical and public health surveillance systems all had actionable information about the growing threat. It failed to fulfill its important mission of providing. As the novel coronavirus spread in early 2020, the traditional intelligence community simply repeated what was publicly available. Worse, much of this information was misleading.US President Donald Trump at the time Received an explanation on January 23rd “The good news is the virus wasn’t that deadly.”

later as the House Intelligence Committee report“The intelligence community was not well positioned or prepared to provide early warning and unique insight into the pandemic.” Senate Homeland Security and Government Matters committee, and House Select Subcommittee About coronavirus.

The pandemic has also been a failure of public health and medical information and surveillance, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).As Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found“Between January and February 2020, CDC surveillance missed at least half of the cases that entered the country, thus giving Americans the false assurance that the United States had no community spread. Another example: Intelligence and Surveillance tracks the progress of potential threats, but no one in the U.S. government was prepared to compile all the information available, so Johns Hopkins The university decided to create it. DashboardAnd the failure was not confined to the United States. For example, in Canada a system known as the Global Public Health Intelligence Network was created just for such crises. failed in its mission Provide actionable warnings.

The final part of the failure was the lack of receptivity on the part of policy makers. A truism in the intelligence world is that warnings are of no value unless they reach consumers who are willing to listen and act. In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, too many policy makers were reluctant to act. Trump famously ignored information and ignored his early warnings about the coronavirus, but he wasn’t the only one. Trump’s lack of receptivity does not explain why many leaders in the United States and around the world have not taken decisive action to mitigate the threat.

like i have explained elsewhereThese intelligence failures were very similar to past failures such as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Tactical information about real threats came too little, too late. Too often, leaders have refused to heed the warnings they receive. I’ve seen the Adequate warning before attackingbut again, the leader did not listen.

Bad news: not ready for next time

Unfortunately, we are far less prepared to predict, detect, and contain future pandemics than we were at the end of 2019.The rapid spread of monkeypox, now called Mpox, we’re still not as good as we need to be Outbreak detection and tracking. COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, but experts warn The next pandemic could be even worse. public health authorities Commentators such as bill gates They argue that we must start planning now for the next global health crisis.

Good news: it’s not too late

so what should i do? Preparing for the next pandemic and other global threats requires change on several levels. First, US intelligence agencies need to be reformed to raise the level of attention to non-traditional threats such as infectious diseases. There have been some positive changes, such as the rebranding of the National Containment Center. National Containment and Biosecurity Center It reflects the growing importance of biosecurity today.

But more needs to be done, such as elevating the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) from a relatively small organization under the Defense Intelligence Agency to a true national center.As House Intelligence Committee review noted Of the NCMI, “its secluded position in the Department of Defense did not attract the attention it needed to attract the attention of the wider intelligence community, the National Security Council or Congress.”

Changes are also needed at the level of medical and public health surveillance. even here, sewage monitoring detect early signs of an outbreak, Center for Forecasting and Outbreaks Analysis Predict outbreaks using data and modeling.but more genome surveillance Tracing the subspecies of the virus that causes COVID-19, conducting more extensive contact tracing, and ultimately global early warning system To alert policy makers before dangerous pathogens lead to another pandemic.

A pandemic is just one of many serious threats facing humanity. COVID-19 is testing how well our global intelligence, warning and response systems work in a crisis. I failed this time, but I can’t afford to fail the next time the disaster could be even worse. We need to start developing systems and organizations that will provide us with the actionable information we need when the next global crisis strikes. We also need to train and educate information policy makers so that they will listen when the next warning is issued.

Dahl is the author of COVID-19 Intelligence Fails: Why Warnings Were Not Enough.

IMAGE: Check by Nurse A patient in the COVID-19 Acute Care Unit at Harbourview Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, January 21, 2022. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)