America’s Pandemic Response Doesn’t Bode Well for a Potential Cyberattack

America’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic is a warning that, unless our broken political and administrative systems are fixed, the country could experience a similar breakdown in future national crises, such as a massive cyberattack.

This stark message was contained in a little-noticed white paper recently released by the bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission, titled “Cybersecurity Lessons From the Pandemic.” As the paper highlighted, the covid-19 outbreak has been a stress test for our national crisis-management system — and that system has, to a frightening extent, failed. The challenges of a cyberattack would be even greater.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the panel’s co-chairs, describe the disorganized response to covid-19 this way: “The pandemic produces cascading effects and high levels of uncertainty. It has undermined normal policymaking processes and, in the absence of the requisite preparedness, has forced decision makers to craft hasty and ad hoc emergency responses.”

President Trump’s chaotic and sometimes counterproductive personal management of the covid-19 crisis has underlined the need for clear executive authority that can coordinate different federal agencies and state and local responders. Trump dismantled or disdained the management tools that might have been useful — and seemed to develop a love-hate relationship with experts who could have helped frame a coherent response, such as Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.