SARS-CoV-2 Was Not A Strategic Surprise and the Belgian Intelligence Services Should Not Be Blamed
(2021) Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies — Vol. 4, n° 1, p. 45-56 (2021)
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- Abstract
- In June 2020, the French-speaking journal La Libre Belgique published a carte blanche (opinion) entitled Why the Intelligence Services Failed to Warn of the Coronavirus . Its main argument was that a new nontraditional security (NTS) threat appeared in Wuhan, China, in the end of 2019 and that the intelligence services did fail collectively. In the first half of 2020, economic experts explained that SARS-CoV-2 was a so-called black swan an unpredictable event. In this paper, we will develop four elements in response to these assertions: (1) The current security environment is much more complex than that of previous generations. As a result, the security agenda now encompasses a larger number of actors and a wide and varied range of threats; (2) The COVID-19 health crisis was certainly surprising in its speed and scale but that was not unexpected; (3) The resources that Belgium currently has to deal with this type of situation; (4) Finally, we will identify possible areas for improvement and/or adaptive measures.
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Alexandre, M. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 Was Not A Strategic Surprise and the Belgian Intelligence Services Should Not Be Blamed. Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies, 4(1), 45-56. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/100327 (Original work published 2021)