Rethinking Warning: Intelligence, Novel Events, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract: There are various dimensions of the COVID-19 warning problem. For example, how did the scientific, intelligence, and strategic studies communities issue accurate diffuse warnings of the growing risk of a global pandemic? This raises the possibility that the warnings issued might have been misleading because they focus on the disease’s details and not on the second- and third-order effects that would significantly impede national and global responses to coronavirus. The pandemic outbreak also led to the acceleration of ongoing work in the pharmaceutical industry, producing “game-changing” medical advances that might soon be replicated in other fields. It may be time to develop a specialized organization—a warning “skunkworks”—whose sole mission is to identify and assess the impact of novel developments in both domestic and international settings.

Notes

1 Azhar Hussain, Syed Ali, Madiha Ahmed, and Sheharyar Hussain, “The Anti-Vaccination Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine,” Cureus, Vol. 10, No. 7 (2018). doi:10.7759/cureus.2019

2 Avner Barnea, “Strategic Intelligence: A Concentrated and Diffused Intelligence Model,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 35, No. 5 (2020), pp. 701–716.

3 Shlomo Shpiro, “Israeli Intelligence and the Coronavirus Crisis,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,” Vol. 34, No. 1 (2021), pp. 1–16. doi:10.1089/08850607/2020.1805711

4 Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, A World at Risk: Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, September 2019. https://apps.who.int/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf

5 John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon, Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), p. 11. See also Cynthia M. Grabo, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010); Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable,” World Politics, Vol. 31 (1978), pp. 61–89; Ehraim Kahana, “Early Warning Versus Concept: The Case of the Yom Kippur War, 1973,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 17 (2002), pp. 81–104.

6 The Office of the Director of National Intelligence website (https://www.odni.gov/index.php/what-we-do/what-is-intelligence) identifies three mission objectives for the Intelligence Community, one of which is Anticipatory Intelligence, defined as efforts to “detect, identify, and warn of emerging issues and discontinuities.” Intelligence Community Directive (ICD)-191: Duty to Warn elaborates on those objectives, but focuses exclusively on the acquisition of “credible and specific information indicating an impending threat” of several specific threats. http://www.odni.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD_191.pdf

7 ODNI, ICD-207: National Intelligence Council. https://www.odni.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD_207.pdf

8 Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. (New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 109.

9 This section is drawn from James J. Wirtz, “COVID-19: Observations for Strategists,” Defence Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2021.1896361

10 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2008), p. 75.

11 National Intelligence Council, “Implications for US National Security of Anticipated Climate Change,” NIC WP 2016-01, 21 September 2016, pp. 9–10; Jim Robbins, “The Ecology of Disease,” New York Times, 14 July 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html

12 Tara O’Toole, Michael Mair, and Thomas V. Inglesby, “Shining Light on ‘Dark Winter,’” Clinical Infectious Disease, Vol. 34, No. 7 (2002), pp. 972–983. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/34/7/972/316999

13 James J. Wirtz, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Contemporary Security Studies, 4th ed., edited by Alan Colins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 306; Christian W. Erikson and Bethany Barratt, “Prudence or Panic? Preparedness Exercises, Counterterror Mobilization, and Media Coverage—Dark Winter, TOPOFF 1 and 2,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Vol. 1, No. 4, article 413.

14 Jong-Wha Lee and Warwick J. McKibbin, “Globalization and Disease: The Case of SARS,” Asian Economic Papers, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2004), pp. 113–131.

15 Dan Diamond and Nahal Toosi, “Trump Team Failed to follow NSC’s Pandemic Playbook,” Politico (25 March 2020).

16 Executive Office of the President of the United States, Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents. https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:hy459js4845/Pandemic-playbook.pdf, p. 9.

17 Joe Concha, “Jane Fonda Calls Coronavirus ‘God’s Gift to the Left,’” MSN News, 7 October 2020. https://www/msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jane-finda-calls-coronavirus-god-s-gift-to-theleft/ar-BB19NNMX

18 Katya Adler, “Covid: Why is EU’s Vaccine Rollout So Slow?” BBC News, 29 January 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55844268

19 Director of National Intelligence, Intelligence Community Directive 732, Damage Assessments (2014), https://www.odni.gov/files/documents/ICD/ICD%20732.pdf

20 See, for example, Federal Emergency Management Administration, 2019 National Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA): Overview and Methodology (2019), https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/fema_national-thira-overview-methodology_2019_0.pdf; White House, Federal Mission Resilience Strategy (2020). https://www.hdsl.org/?view&did848323

21 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder (New York: Random House, 2012).

22 Damian Garde, “The Story of mRNA: How a Once-Dismissed Idea became a Leading Idea became a Leading Technology in the Covid Vaccine Race,” Stat, 10 November 2020. https://www/statnews/com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

23 Ibid.

24 Noah Welland, Katie Thomas, and Carl Zimmer, “Vaccines Adapted for Variants Will Not Need Lengthy Testing, F.D.A. Says,” The New York Times, 22 February 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/health/covid-vaccine-varients.html

25 J. Peter Scoblic and Philip E. Tetlock, “A Better Crystal Ball: The Right Way to Think About the Future,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 99, No. 6 (2020), pp. 10–18, offer such a suggestion, albeit without detailing how such an effort might be undertaken.

26 One of us, Gressang, has been involved in scenario development in “red team” exercises for an intelligence agency, imagining multiple specific future threat possibilities given a variety of current situational circumstances, and identifying possible future events and development that could indicate evolution toward one or more futures. Those indicator lists were used, in turn, by other federal agencies, which used them as both warning indicators for immediate threat recognition and for response planning.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel S. Gressang

Daniel S. Gressang is an Assistant Professor of Security Studies and International Affairs at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida. He served for 31 years at the National Security Agency and his prior publications focus on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

James J. Wirtz

James J. Wirtz is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is the author of Understanding Intelligence Failure: Warning, Response and Deterrence (Routledge, 2017). In 2016, Professor Wirtz was named a Distinguished Senior Scholar by the International Studies Association’s Intelligence Studies Section. The author can be contacted at [email protected].