The Covid-19 Intelligence Failure

Epidemiologists and national security agencies warned for years about the potential for a deadly pandemic, but global surveillance and warning systems were not enough to avert the Covid-19 disaster. In The Covid-19 Intelligence Failure, Erik J. Dahl demonstrates that understanding how intelligence warnings work and how they fail shows why the years of predictions were not enough.

In the first in-depth analysis of the topic, Dahl examines the roles that traditional intelligence services, medical intelligence, and surveillance systems play in providing advance warning against public health threats and how these systems must be improved for the future. For intelligence to effectively mitigate threats, tactical-level warnings must be collected and shared in real time with receptive decision makers who will take appropriate action.

Dahl shows how a combination of late and insufficient warnings about Covid-19, the Trump administration's political aversion to scientific advice, and decentralized public health systems all exacerbated the pandemic in the United States. Dahl's analysis draws parallels to other warning failures that preceded major catastrophes from Pearl Harbor to September 11, 2001, placing current events in context.

The book is published by Georgetown University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.