The Perils of Politicized Pandemic Intelligence
Is the Trump administration determined to twist the facts on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic within China?
The origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and changed the world nearly overnight, remain largely unknown – at least authoritatively. Theories – both based in reason and conspiracy – abound, and have since the virus became popularly known as cause for concern in Asia back in January. Now, with the virus having spread to almost every corner of the world and having claimed more than 300,000 lives, interest in an answer remains high. On May 19, the World Health Organization‘s World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an independent inquiry by the body. Among the 194 member states, not one formally objected to an impartial, independent investigation.
The United States, however, has not only defunded the World Health Organization (WHO) over what the Trump administration has pointed to as malpractice in handling the early phase of the pandemic – apparently by the WHO giving too much credence to official statements by China – but remains determined to press its own case on the virus’ origins. Through April and May, troubling signs persisted that the Trump administration was out to politicize the process of intelligence analysis within the U.S. intelligence community to support a politically favored theory: That the virus was the result of a biosafety negligence incident at a facility in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the early epicenter of the pandemic.
These claims found currency as the death toll in the United States spiked. The U.S. government, unable to explain why the world’s foremost superpower had failed spectacularly to contain the pandemic within its borders, pointed to China. Trump’s own re-election efforts, for instance, center on shifting blame to China to explain away the cause of the ongoing spike in U.S. unemployment and the vast death toll from the pandemic.
The president himself pointed directly at Beijing in late April, saying that he had a “high degree of confidence” that SARS-CoV-2 had originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of the facilities of interest in Wuhan. Asked if that’s what he considered to be the point of origin for the virus and if he had seen intelligence support this, Trump said “Yes, I have.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during a television interview, similarly said that he had reason to believe a laboratory release was a probable explanation – though not without conveying a low level of confidence. Pompeo, after asserting the theory, said that there was “evidence that it came from somewhere in the vicinity of the lab, but that could be wrong.”
To U.S. allies with memories of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 off the backs of exaggerated intelligence conclusions, much of this raised warning flags. Quickly after Trump and Pompeo’s statements, multiple reports emerged in Australian news outlets, for instance, citing Australian intelligence sources rubbishing the idea that the lab-origin theory had any legs. At the same time, reporting by the Daily Beast’s national security team suggested that a report compiled by a contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, leveraging “open source” information to support the lab release theory, was based on seriously shoddy analytical techniques, with its most basic conclusions falling apart after even slight scrutiny.
The contradictions in the administration’s messaging on this matter started to become plainly apparent following the release of a rare statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the agency overseeing the entire U.S. intelligence community. According to ODNI, “The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China.” The statement continued that the intelligence community “also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”
That much was a repudiation of the most imaginative conspiracy theories around the virus dating back to January, suggesting that it had been engineered for deliberate release as a biological weapon. That the ODNI would publicly attest to its rejection of this hypothesis should have steered the administration away from pursuing the notion of a deliberate – or even accidental – release. The statement, however, added that the intelligence community “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
The latter part of this statement left open the notion that the administration’s seemingly favored theory – an accidental release – would continue to receive analytical energies. The ODNI statement, however, was likely framed in this way to limit the controversy that would arise from the intelligence community throwing cold water on the president’s preferred alibi for the United States’ own domestic predicament. Trump’s fraught relationship with his own intelligence community continues to fester, despite staffing recent staffing decisions – like the appointment of Trump loyalist Richard Grenell as acting DNI.
The blatantly politicized nature in which the administration has sought to present American intelligence findings presents several challenges over the short and long run. Most immediately, the administration’s reaction has cut American credibility, already in short supply with allies, shorter yet. If American assessments are being publicly pooh-poohed by Australian intelligence analysts – certainly a group not known for its affinity for the Chinese Community Party – then the United States has a serious problem. It remains too soon to know whether COVID-19 might mark an irreversible turning point in so-called great power competition between the United States and China, but if it does, Washington must preserve the credibility of its intelligence community to effectively manage that competition with its allies.
Not only is the politicization of intelligence not a productive way to manage the effects of the pandemic at home and abroad, but the real missed opportunity was at the World Health Assembly, where the United States played no role in the Australian and European-backed effort to press a resolution to encourage an impartial investigation into the origins of the pandemic. Yes, the answer to the question of how exactly COVID-19 came to be is deeply consequential for the entire world. Yes, the answer will likely lead back to China, where Hubei province and Wuhan city were apparent early on as the epicenter. But throwing caution to the wind and embarking on an alarmist, exaggerated, and politicized process of analysis will do little but fan U.S.-China tensions for a limited political payoff domestically.
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Ankit Panda is a senior editor at The Diplomat and director of research at Diplomat Risk Intelligence.