By Denis Korkodinov
The coronavirus pandemic has significantly increased the need for intelligence. The activities of special services of most countries were most in demand in the context of the global crisis. Their main goal is not only to monitor public sentiment and combat manifestations of extremism, but also to actively intervene in the internal affairs of other states.
The COVID-19 strikes an extremely large demand for intelligence services, which within the international community have become a powerful institution of control and management, due to the fact that the pandemic made it possible to consider any critical statement on Internet as a threat to national security.
The special role of intelligence in the global crisis is a completely unique phenomenon. So, during the First and Second World Wars, it was intelligence that determined the main direction of military operations and allowed the use of preventive measures to combat non-systemic opposition. In addition, as early as 1915, a number of European countries identified epidemics as one of the main threats in which intelligence data should be crucial.
The spread of Ebola on the African continent in 2014 and 2016 confirmed the European thesis that intelligence services under extremely favorable epidemiological conditions remain almost the only objective source of information that may be of international interest.
At present, intelligence carries out two interrelated tasks, to anticipate and be prepared for new foci of the disease. Satellite images, interception of negotiations, theft of documents, in this case, are the most popular methods of collecting information about the extent of the coronavirus threat. However, the greatest attention is paid to the analysis of all the collected information from various sources. Therefore, the work of professional analysts in intelligence services, in the time of the coronavirus has become one of the most popular.
For example, in Russia, a whole spectrum of intelligence services (the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Security Service, the Center “E” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) is used to collect operational information on the spread of coronavirus, its origin, and its influence on the mood in society. Meanwhile specialized cybersecurity organizations monitor the traffic of messages from pandemic epicenters in order to be able to control new foci of infection or possible social riots.
A similar monitoring system operates in almost all countries of the world that have significantly modernized the data collection process. Thanks to this, now the world intelligence services in aggregate have the ability to quickly process up to 1,500 terabytes of information regarding the coronavirus and the social unrest caused by it within 0.00001 minutes.
In the USA, the Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP) is noticeably active, whose specialists, acting on the basis of diplomatic missions in various countries, including Russia, collect information primarily about the laboratory origin of COVID-19 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In addition, the GSRP aims to collect the maximum amount of information about the military preparations of states in a pandemic.
Meanwhile, intelligence services are currently facing many challenges that could affect national security. One of these problems is the low level of training in identifying reliable and false information. This is due primarily to the fact that the pandemic has generated a lot of rumors and misconceptions, which have acquired national and international coverage. In this regard, it is now quite difficult to determine the primary source of information and to identify the reliability of the information presented without analyzing all sources in its entirety.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).