In late 2019, three different open source public alerts of an unknown pneumonia in Wuhan were issued—one week before the first COVID-19 report from the US CDC, and 10 days before the WHO. How does this experience inform conventional intelligence community assessments of biologic or other emergent threats? This National Security Task Force pandemic security brief reports on civil society early warning networks that employ 21st century communication and data technologies.

Among the container ships waiting for a berth at the port of Long Beach during the ocean-carrier traffic jam early this year were vessels of COSCO Shipping. The Chinese state-owned shipping company sails under the guidance of Captain Panda, a jolly stuffed-bear skipper decked out in crisp blue and gold nautical officer’s garb befitting the leader of one of the most powerful organizations of the Middle Kingdom.

Propaganda is older than the medieval printing press, and every communications innovation increases the propagandists’ reach. Westerners most often think of propaganda coming from its two ardent twentieth-century practitioners: the German Nazis and the Soviet communists.

AUDIO ONLY

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, his new book on the decisions made by governments and public health officials around the world during the COVID pandemic. In this wide-ranging discussion, Ferguson describes what governments and leaders got right and got wrong—very wrong—over the 15 months since the coronavirus spread from China.