Coronavirus – Why this is key to keeping Americans safe

In confronting the coronavirus, it is vitally important that we have all intelligence and information that exists, including the 90 percent known as “open-source intelligence” (OSINT). We need this so that our government can make the best decisions to keep our people and our businesses safe.

Getting accurate, real-time information about coronavirus is key to our efforts to get ahead of the virus and contain it. It's also key to knowing exactly what adversaries are doing to use the coronavirus to disrupt our financial markets.

CORONAVIRUS CAUSES SANITIZER SHORTAGE, PRICE GOUGING

Here’s why. Let’s start with China. Chinese leaders’ lack of full transparency and the breadth of the outbreak has caused real problems for the international community in terms of preparing an adequate emergency response.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said it best:

"The way you deal with a global pandemic is you become transparent and you share information beginning with the actual virus... because researchers around the world can start working on the basis of that and developing treatments and vaccines...they didn't do that."

Senator Rubio is right. China's failure to share necessary information that could have helped contain the coronavirus has put the entire world more at risk.

FDA SENDS HAND SANITIZER BRAND PURELL STRICT WARNING

President Trump, who did the right thing at the outset by suspending all travel from China, obviously understands that the world has not been getting the whole truth and full story about the virus. He has repeatedly called Chinese President Xi to press for more information.

To further complicate matters, other American adversaries, like Russia, appear to be using the coronavirus as a weapon to disrupt U.S. financial markets.

In fact, a headline over the weekend in Russia's Sputnik read, "New York Stock Exchange Bracing for Trading Floor Closure Due to Coronavirus Outbreak."

Fortunately, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) can provide the non-partisan multi-source information that’s necessary to make logical and informed decisions.

We can do this based on real-time data and information on the current state of the coronavirus, its likelihood of spreading and information on how adversaries are using the coronavirus to try to hurt the United States economy.

ARE CHILDREN THE SECRET CORONAVIRUS CARRIERS?

While OSINT is a great tool to gather the best information, understand that it is not a new concept, still the Internet has taken OSINT to a new level.

The idea of acquiring information from publicly-available sources such as newspapers, radio and television actually pre-dates the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The history of what I call OSINT 1.0 began in 1941 with the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, which analyzed broadcasts from the Axis Powers.  Under the National Security Act of 1947, this organization was reconstituted as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).

CORONAVIRUS FEARS PROMPT COSTCO SHOPPING RUSH, SHARES RISE

The mission of FBIS was enhanced to monitor all foreign media. By the end of the Cold War, FBIS was regularly translating over 3,000 news outlets from over 60 languages.

Today, with the development of the Internet and under what I call OSINT 2.0, there are advanced search engines that can easily provide the same kind of information.

Here, it should be noted that Google only gives individuals the most popular searches and not all open-source information. Using advanced search engines and in using them in different languages can give you an idea of how limited our traditional searches are in finding useful intelligence.

The late Lt. General Sam Wilson, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said, “Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other ten percent, the more clandestine work, is just more dramatic. The real intelligence hero is Sherlock Holmes, not James Bond.”

It is vitally important that our government have all intelligence that exists, including the 90 percent known as OSINT, so that we can make the best decisions to keep America safe.

In 2014, as the deadly Bird Flu began to surge in China, I was approached by an Obama administration-appointed physician and health care expert who was concerned that he wasn't getting the most up-to-date information from the CDC.

He knew that I had used OSINT in December of 2012 to reveal that Iranian experts were actually on the ground in North Korea, assisting with their nuclear and ballistic missile programs. This physician thought that OSINT might be helpful in getting better information about the spread of what was then the height of the Bird Flu outbreak in China.

Fortunately, we were able to get information that he requested several days before he was receiving it from the CDC.

There are tremendous OSINT tools out there, both in academia and in the private sector that can greatly assist the United States government to get ahead of the coronavirus by getting the most up-to-date information available, as well as using it as an intelligence tool to glean information on what our adversaries are doing to use it to hurt our economy.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

For example, Auburn University several years ago created its own OSINT Laboratory, which has a highly skilled set of intelligence analysts.

No doubt, this is the brain-child of Auburn's COO and retired Lt. General Ron Burgess, who formerly served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

There are also growing OSINT capabilities in the private sector. At least one, IA Analytica, has access to DNA researchers and state of the art DNA sequencers.

President Trump's decision to pick Amb. Ric Grenell to serve as acting Director of National Intelligence and Congressman John Ratcliffe to serve as its permanent director are refreshing choices of individuals who are known "outside-of-the-box" thinkers.

Their leadership can help ensure a renewed focus on OSINT as an effective tool to enable our leaders to have the best information available in order to make the most informed decisions.

We should definitely have a dedicated OSINT capability at those government entities that are on the front line of dealing with the coronavirus, such as the CDC, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and others.

Van D. Hipp, Jr. is Chairman of American Defense International, Inc.  He is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army and author of “The New Terrorism: How to Fight It and Defeat It.”  He is the 2018 recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II September 11 Garden Leadership Award for National Security. Follow him on  Twitter @VanHipp. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS