Will the intelligence agencies spot the next outbreak?

Should we have been so surprised by the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK? The purpose of having intelligence is to enable better, more timely, decisions by reducing the ignorance of the decision takers. That does not mean giving exact forecasts of how a situation may develop — intelligence analysts and scientists are not fortune tellers. Nor does it involve simplifying decisions. My experience is that intelligence analysis often shows that an issue is far more complex than current politics might suggest. But governments do need a system for providing strategic notice of possible developments of serious concern to our well-being. That is as true for significant possible developments in fields of science and technology, the environment and public health as it is for the traditional worlds of international relations, defence and security.

Over generations, the UK has evolved world class processes through the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and now the National Security Council for using secret intelligence on issues such as terrorism and malign state activity. There is direct drive between the JIC and the Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet colleagues since the chair of the JIC and the heads of the intelligence agencies attend the National Security Council. A modern approach to national security needs comparable and compatible processes for all the serious global hazards that may lie ahead for the British people and British interests.

The processes for identifying and managing serious natural hazards, including human and animal disease, major accidents, flooding and solar flares are part of the National Security Council framework. There is a published national risk register, and the National Security Strategy identifies from it the top priority risks. During my time as UK Intelligence and Security Coordinator after 9/11, a mutated flu pandemic occupied the top right-hand corner of the strategic notice risk matrix — of all the threats and risks, it posed the most lethal potential combination of impact and probability. Such strategic notice should be the trigger for investment in resilience, and testing plans (as was indeed done for a pandemic with Exercise Cygnus in 2016).

We all know that there are some inevitable policy failures when governments follow strategies that fail to deliver the desired results, often because the ends of the policy and the ways and means of delivering it are not aligned. And sometimes, however logical the policy might appear to be to its drafters, the public does not buy into it. Often, new policies have to be developed in situations of great uncertainty, as has had to be the case with a new virus of initially unknown characteristics. Leadership makes a big difference here. It can be used to generate a sense of purpose in circumstances when danger looms and to guide the political class and the public to reframe their expectations and goals accordingly. There will be questions to be addressed when the pandemic has ebbed, and when genuine international comparisons can be made, about whether the policies followed in the nations of the UK were optimal and taken early enough.

We know there can be intelligence failures, when threatening signs are missed or misunderstood — perhaps due to unimaginative tasking, failures to access relevant data or in assessment — this is inevitable to some extent, in a dangerous and chaotic world. The assessment of disease outbreaks is not the business of the intelligence community but in the case of Covid-19, I have no doubt there were warnings that the Chinese authorities had a history of not being open about internal affairs. A coronavirus outbreak was not a strategic surprise, however, even though the timing and characteristics of the mutation could not have been predicted.

We should also recognise that there can be “warning failures” that fall into the cracks between intelligence and policy. Warning is a deliberative act. It is being pro-active. Warning is more than writing an intelligence estimate or a scientific paper. An effective warning is a loud shout to senior leadership for attention giving:

• A strong knowledge claim about a very worrying development
• An assessment of why it really matters if it happens to us
• Sufficient illustration of how current policies may fail, in order to drive home the message that action is needed now to avoid disaster, for example recognising that if a dangerous virus took hold in the UK there would be a mismatch between the plans and the availability of PPE, testing facilities, critical care beds with ventilators, insufficient processes to cover the care sector and so on.

That is, warnings are a powerful combination of professional intelligence and scientific assessments (giving strategic notice of developments with serious potential for harm) with honest and rigorous policy analysis.

When this crisis is over we need to look at what warning systems are best suited for natural hazards as well as malign threats. All governments need strategic notice of possible serious developments that can then trigger honest debate over whether to invest in precautionary measures to build up national resilience to cope, just in case the risk crystalises.