Improving ‘Five Eyes’ Health Security Intelligence capabilities: leadership and governance challenges

Transforming the Australian intelligence community: mapping change, impact and challenges

“…Hopefully though, going forward and after the acute phase of the pandemic ends it can begin to demonstrate a leadership role in the coordination and integration of health security intelligence for the AIC by creating, for example, a health security intelligence MIG. 57 There will be other emerging threats and risks this decade and if ONI cannot get ahead of these threat trajectories to lead the AIC in coordinating and integrating intelligence collection, analysis and capability development -it will fail the aspirations of the 2017 IIR reviewers; and more importantly its legislative-mandated role of enterprise management.…”

A Health Intelligence Framework for Pandemic Response: Lessons from the UK Experience of COVID-19

“…6 This siloing of expertise has led to critical divisions in institutional attention since at least as early as 2001, when the intentional use of anthrax as a bioweapon led to the identification of engineered biothreats as an intelligence priority by the security community. 7,8 However, the GHSA has led calls for enhanced coordination between interested actors in the health and security domain, recognizing that the broader concern of ''health threats'' encompasses techniques and practices that can be harnessed across domains and tackled with a ''health-in-all'' approach. 9,10 This has become clearer in recent years, where health events such as the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo and the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed the artificial distinction between public health and biosecurity as it pertains to notions of risk and, crucially, in the deployment of mitigation and containment processes.…”

“…Walsh 7 North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, developing the perspective that the closer alignment of public health doctrine with some of the practices, processes, and priorities of the intelligence community is a necessary step to address the complex and political nature of contemporary health threats. Indeed, the UK's 2018 Biological Security Strategy 13 explicitly suggested a closer cross-government alignment of the intelligence and public health sectors in their ''all-hazards approach'' to natural, accidental, and deliberate risks.…”

“…There are several important considerations when deploying an intelligence framework; the first is the tasking and responsibility for such processes within government. Walsh 7 has advocated for a senior minister with either security or health expertise to be tasked with the health security intelligence portfolio. Such an approach has the benefit of recognizing the unique constitution of these concerns as a matter outside of the daily life of a health system, but equally unique within the security sector.…”

Why we need an intelligence-led approach to pandemics: supporting science and public health during COVID-19 and beyond

“…Such an approach would be a crucial step-change to harness the strengths and expertise of UK intelligence while embedding multi-lateral cooperation across Five Eyes partners. 11 COVID-19 has dramatically exposed the fatal limits of our current methods; future public health threats will necessitate agile systems for generating robust actionable intelligence that can operate in conditions of significant uncertainty and complex externalities.…”