Getting Smart on Pandemics: Intelligence in the Wake of COVID-19

Robert Chesney, Paul Pope, Stephen Slick, Calder Walton | Apr 20, 2020

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen to a discussion moderated by Steve Slick of the Intelligence Studies Project about the role of intelligence in the COVID-19 pandemic. Slick is joined by Bobby Chesney, director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Paul Pope, senior fellow at the Intelligence Studies Project, and Calder Walton, assistant director of the Applied History Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Their conversation 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.