Our picks this weekThe Epic Failure of Coronavirus Testing in America | The Death of American Competence | How the Pandemic Will End, and more

Published 27 March 2020

·  Self-Isolation Might Stop Coronavirus, but It Will Speed the Spread of Extremism

·  The Coronavirus Is the Worst Intelligence Failure in U.S. History

·  Fiona Hill: Trump’s Coronavirus Talk Sounds a Lot Like Russia’s

·  The Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace

·  White House Releases National Strategy for 5G Security

·  DOD Official: “Adversarial Capital” Threatens Industrial Base

·  Inside the Pentagon’s Lurching Efforts to Protect Its People from the Coronavirus

·  Brazil Transforms Sports Venues into Field Hospitals for Coronavirus

·  Social Media Sees Virus Solidarity Bloom in U.K.

·  The Value of Science for Critical Decisions

·  After Putin’s Big Fail, Russia Braces for COVID-19 Onslaught

·  How the Pandemic Will End

·  American Exceptionalism Can’t Beat a Pandemic

·  The Death of American Competence

·  Chinese Hackers Attacked Foreign Health Care, Military, Oil Networks as Coronavirus Hit China

·  This Is Just the Beginning

·  Yes, Blame China for the Virus

·  “Last Resort”: Alabama’s Plan for Deciding Which Coronavirus Patients Get Ventilators

·  Homeland Security Warns Terrorists May Exploit COVID-19 Pandemic (

·  Antarctic Glacier Retreats Nearly 3 Miles, Could Foreshadow Huge Sea Level Rise

·  Fauci: Trump’s Remarks Can Lead to “Misunderstandings”

·  White supremacists discussed using the coronavirus as a bioweapon, explosive internal document reveals

·  DHS Chief: False Reports of National Shutdown May Be Part of Russian Disinformation Campaign

·  As the West Panics, Putin Is Watching

·  The Russians Are Coming Again, and They’re Winning

·  Coronavirus Confinement Challenges Intelligence Services

·  Russia’s Long-Term Campaign of Disinformation in Europe

·  The U.S. Military’s Behind-the-Scenes Moves to Protect Nuclear Readiness Amid Coronavirus

·  China Borrowing Russian Tactics to Spread Coronavirus Disinformation

·  Russia Has New Tool for Massive Internet Shutdown Attack, Leaked Documents Claim

·  All Hands on Deck: Infosec Volunteers to Protect Medical Organizations During COVID-19 Crisis

·  The Epic Failure of Coronavirus Testing in America

·  Dozens of Connecticut Officials Were Involved in CDC Drill Last Year that Revealed Problems with Response to a Pandemic

·  Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?

·  Researchers Kickstart Huge Study of Malaria Drug to Prevent Coronavirus

·  How Do You Spy When the World Is Shut Down?

·  Global Tension Points to a Future of Destructive Malware

Self-Isolation Might Stop Coronavirus, but It Will Speed the Spread of Extremism (Nikita Malik, Foreign Affairs)
Millions of people stuck at home will turn to social media, where disinformation is rife. Radical Islamists and far-right groups are exploiting widespread confusion and fear to spread hate.

 

The Coronavirus Is the Worst Intelligence Failure in U.S. History (Micha Zenko, Foreign Policy)

It’s more glaring than Pearl Harbor and 9/11—and it’s all the fault of Donald Trump’s leadership.

Fiona Hill: Trump’s Coronavirus Talk Sounds a Lot Like Russia’s (Eleanor Clift and Adam Rawnsley, Daily Beast)
Into an already toxic brew of political discord and hyperventilating social media, a pathogen of foreign origin arrives. To fight it, the country must unite. At the same time, the coronavirus makes us more vulnerable to manipulation, especially if people are scared and nobody seems to have good answers.
Some of that manipulation is from Russia, and some from China, and while the two countries are “not working in close cooperation, they are working in concert because they have similar goals,” said Fiona Hill, former national security official and Russia expert in the Trump White House. 
Hill gained public notice when she testified before Congress last year on how a “domestic political errand” about Donald Trump’s potential challenger hijacked U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

The Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace (Joshua Rovner, Lawfare)
The ongoing competition in cyberspace is largely an intelligence contest. Although the technology is different, the underlying contest exhibits all the characteristics of traditional spy-versus-spy battles.

White House Releases National Strategy for 5G Security (Brandi Vincent, Defense One)
The strategy focuses on four lines of effort and will guide how the government approaches 5G for the near future.

DOD Official: “Adversarial Capital” Threatens Industrial Base (Lauren C. Williams, FCW)
The Defense Department is concerned that foreign investment will take advantage of small businesses in the defense industrial base reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ellen Lord, DOD’s top acquisition executive, told reporters March 25 the defense industrial base, which consists of more than 300,000 companies, is “vulnerable to adversarial capital,” and DOD wants them to “stay in business without losing their technology” or be subject to intellectual property theft.
“The foreign investment issue is something that I have been tracking for the last couple years. There is no question that we have adversarial capital coming into our markets through nefarious means,” Lord said.