Coronavirus

In an interview,  the Intelligence Project's Calder Walton examines the recent assessment from entire U.S. intelligence community on the impacts of climate change on U.S. national security.

This essay makes three arguments. First, the US government will need to establish a coronavirus commission, similar to the 9/11 commission, to determine why, since April 2020, the United States has suffered more coronavirus fatalities than any other country in the world. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a watershed for what will be a major national security theme this century: biological threats, both from naturally occurring pathogens and from synthesized biology. Third, intelligence about globalized challenges, such as pandemics, needs to be dramatically reconceptualized, stripping away outmoded levels of secrecy.

Calder Walton writes that autocratic regimes — China, Russia and Iran — have been using social media to try to influence U.S. public opinion. History reveals how and why a one-party regime used disinformation to salvage its reputation following a disaster — the Soviet Union's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, whose history also reveals how such disinformation can be countered.

If you’re looking for some all too rare good news from the Middle East these days, consider Bahrain’s exceptional incident response to COVID-19.  Having become well practiced in defending itself against Iran’s pernicious attacks, Bahrain was prepared for dealing with the outbreak of COVID-19, for which Iran was also responsible.

As business leaders and public officials plan their response, they struggle to identify the proper role for emerging technologies. One of these is drones, a technology that got its start in military and security programs but over the last decade has increasingly been repurposed for civilian and commercial uses.

It is said that operations research was a decisive factor contributing to the allied victory in World War II. General Doolittle expressed his appreciation for operations analysts, the data scientists of his time, saying they made “substantial contributions toward the success of the Eighth Air Force.” General Carl Spaatz expressed his appreciation for his data scientists during the war, describing them as essential, and prophetically stated, “[w]e all hope that no similar national crisis will arise in the future...  [i]f that time ever comes we shall call upon you again as we called on you before.”  I believe that time of national crisis has arrived.

This episode of Horns of a Dilemma touches on whether the failure to properly anticipate and warn about the novel coronavirus constitutes an intelligence failure, what changes might be required in the intelligence community in the wake of the pandemic, and what type of investigation or inquiry might be appropriate in order to learn lessons and incorporate changes for both the intelligence community and the whole of government moving forward.

Calder Walton describes four ways how intelligence services are certain to contribute to defeating COVID-19 and why pandemic intelligence will become a central part of future U.S. national security.