friday, march 13 , 2020. the washington post eZ re a23
FRIDAY Opinion
A
mid the chaos of the coronavirus,
it was encouraging this week to
see a bipartisan, blue-ribbon
commission announce a coher-
ent plan for dealing with the next poten-
tial catastrophe — a major cyberattack
against the United States.
Covid-19 has given us all a foretaste of
what a crippling cyberattack would look
like: Transportation, infrastructure and
health-care services would all be severely
disrupted. We’d depend on good plan-
ning, trusted experts and competent lead-
ership at the top — all qualities that have
been in short supply in the Trump admin-
istration’s response to the pandemic.
Democracies often aren’t great at plan-
ning; that’s the cruel efficiency of authori-
tarian governments. But in a welcome
change, Congress took the initiative more
than a year ago to create a group to
revamp cyber policy that would cut across
political and bureaucratic lines — draw-
ing in members of Congress from both
parties; representatives of defense and
intelligence agencies; and top private-
s ector experts.
This rare exercise in preparedness was
known as the Cyberspace Solarium Com-
mission. The name evoked President
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 “Solarium
Project” that developed a “New Look”
approach to the Soviet Union. Two policy-
makers dubbed it “the best example of
long-term strategic planning in the histo-
ry of the American presidency.”
The Cyberspace Solarium Commis-
sion’s two co-chairs w ere Sen. Angus King,
a Maine independent, and Rep. Mike
Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican and
Marine combat veteran in Iraq. The panel
had 12 other members, including the FBI
director, the deputy defense secretary, the
acting deputy director of national intelli-
gence and the acting deputy secretary of
homeland security. The executive branch
members helped craft the report but
didn’t formally endorse it.
With The Post’s blessing, I moderated
the presentation of the group’s report
Wednesday, interviewing the two co-
chairs a nd eight of the panelists onstage. I
also attended one of the commission’s
roughly 30 meetings and met with execu-
tive director Mark Montgomery and his
staff at their headquarters in Crystal City,
Va. My takeaway is that this kind of
nonpartisan crisis planning is what the
American people want and need from
their government, especially in this peri-
od of public anxiety and division.
The group’s marquee recommenda-
tions were for clearer leadership and
accountability at the top. To coordinate
planning across the walled gardens of the
federal government, it proposed a nation-
al cyber director, attached to the White
House but confirmable by the Senate, who
could drive policy in an emergency. We
can see the need for such a policy czar in
the Trump administration’s chaotic ad
hoc response to the coronavirus. We
weren’t ready for a pandemic, just as we
aren’t ready for a cyberattack.
Because the biggest risks in a cyberat-
tack would be to the civilian economy, t he
commission designated the Department
of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as
the lead. Personally, I would have pre-
ferred a new agency, f ree from the bureau-
cratic clutter and political turf wars of
DHS. But the organization chart matters
less than CISA’s leadership under Director
Christopher Krebs, who was Microsoft’s
director of cybersecurity policy and has
solid experience.
The commission made smart recom-
mendations for some new tools: a bureau
of cyber statistics to gather threat data; an
assistant secretary of state for cyber policy
to oversee global rules and standards in
cyberspace; new cybersecurity certifica-
tion requirements for companies so that
boards of directors and insurance firms
have better yardsticks to measure pre-
paredness.
Surviving a cyberattack is about resil-
ience, and the commission proposed a
series of measures: A “continuity of the
economy” initiative would clarify how
banking, food supply, power and other
essentials would survive a digital assault.
To aid private firms, and state and local
governments, there would be a “Cyber
State of Distress” and a “Cyber Response
and Recovery Fund.”
The group made more than 75 recom-
mendations in all, many to be pre-
p ackaged as draft legislation. One of the
hardest tasks will be getting Congress’s
own act together. Nearly 80 committees
and subcommittees now have oversight of
aspects of cyber policy. The commission
proposed c reating new cybersecurity com-
mittees in each chamber that would have
primary jurisdiction. Something similar
happened 40 years ago with t he creation o f
the intelligence committees. The coming
turf war will be brutal, but that’s the price
of preparation for cyberwar.
King and Gallagher said in introducing
this commission’s work: “We are doing a
9/11 report to prevent a 9/11 in the future.”
We can see, right now, in the jittery
response to the coronavirus, the cost of
being unprepared.
Here’s a chance to get it right. It’s
Sept. 10 in cyberspace. Congress united to
create the commission. Now it needs to
enact the laws.
Twitter: @IgnatiusPost
david ignatius
We need to
prepare for
the next crisis
W
as it the news that To m
Hanks, someone as famil-
iar as a next-door neighbor,
tested positive for the nov-
el coronavirus? Was it the NBA sus-
pending its season, or the NCAA’s
decision to cancel the March Madness
tournament? Was it the World Health
Organization’s official designation of
the outbreak as a global pandemic?
Was it President Trump’s less-than-
comforting prime-time address to the
nation, which seemed more about
vague xenophobia than concrete solu-
tions?
Whatever the trigger, the threat
posed by the coronavirus no longer
feels theoretical in the least. It is real.
And the one medicine that could calm
worried citizens and jittery markets —
good, solid information — is in shock-
ingly short supply.
Like millions of Americans, I’m
working from home. My refrigerator
and cupboards are well-stocked. I’ve
been washing my hands like crazy, I
greet people with nods of the head
rather than risk physical contact, I’m
avoiding crowds — and somehow none
of this seems adequate. I feel uneasy
because we’re being given no reliable
sense of what comes next.
When the history of the failed
U.S. response to this virulent new
pathogen is written, the unbelievable
lack of testing will be seen as the
original sin. As of Thursday, as few as
10,000 individuals across this country
had been tested for the virus. By con-
trast, South Korea — where new infec-
tions are tapering o ff — h as been able to
test more than 10,000 people per day.
Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson,
know they have the virus, and are
receiving appropriate treatment, be-
cause they happened to be in Australia
when they came down with flu-like
symptoms. There, testing for the coro-
navirus is free and widely available.
When the tests came back positive,
mandated protocols were followed.
They were put into isolation and are
receiving necessary care.
What could they have done if they’d
come down with those same symp-
toms here at home? Not much at all.
Here, testing is not free — though
major health insurers have agreed to
waive co-pays, according to Trump —
and generally not available, period.
There are still nowhere near enough
test kits available. Administration offi-
cials keep saying this situation will
soon change, but for now Americans
are left ignorant and vulnerable.
The official advice right now, if you
come down with symptoms such as
fever and a cough, is to call your
doctor. Why make a phone call rather
than just go to the doctor’s office?
Because the doctor can’t test you and
thus can’t give a definitive answer. If
you don’t have the coronavirus, which
is likely, it will have been a waste of
time and effort for both you and the
doctor. If you do have it, the unavail-
ability of test kits means you won’t be
able to find out — and you may
inadvertently transmit the virus to
others in the waiting room.
Our medical system is forced to
focus on the most vulnerable: the
elderly, those with preexisting health
conditions and those who exhibit seri-
ous respiratory symptoms. This epi-
demic has revealed serious deficien-
cies in a health system that delivers
some of the most advanced care in the
world yet also does not cover millions
of Americans. I wouldn’t be surprised
if nations with better testing soon
began imposing travel bans against
those coming from the United States.
The measures that Trump an-
nounced Wednesday were not unrea-
sonable. Europe is the “hot zone” of
new infections at this point — but
somehow he managed to make many
people feel more anxious, not less. To
me, it was both typical of Trump and
deeply unsettling that he tried so hard
to portray the coronavirus as a foreign
threat. Wherever it came from, the
virus is here. Further efforts to keep it
out, even if epidemiologically sound,
seem beside the point.
I’m not the only one less than
reassured by Trump’s address. On
Thursday, the stock markets plunged
violently enough to flip a “circuit
breaker” t hat halts trading for 15 min-
utes to give everyone a breather. It w as
the second such emergency halt this
week.
Many thousands of college students
have been sent home or told not to
come back to campus from spring
break. Businesses have curtailed or
eliminated travel. Restaurant workers
and others in service jobs are having
their hours curtailed. At the moment,
there’s nobody to serve.
Will our lives be disrupted for a few
weeks? A few months? Longer? Will
we somehow have a presidential cam-
paign without crowds? Capable lead-
ership would be giving us some an-
swers, or at least telling us when
answers may come. Unfortunately for
the nation and world, we have no such
leadership now.
Twitter: @Eugene_Robinsoneugene robinsonThe
unbelievable
lack of testing
BY CATHY YOUNGH
arvey Weinstein’s s exual assault
conviction, and the 23-year
prison sentence imposed
Wednesday, have been hailed as
a vindication of the #MeToo movement
unleashed by the Hollywood mogul’s
downfall more than two years ago.
No doubt, achieving more account-
ability for high-status sexual predators
and empowering women to speak out
about abuse are a #MeToo gain. But
those who rightfully celebrate Wein-
stein’s punishment should not ignore
evidence that #MeToo has also brought
forth more troubling episodes — ones in
which those accused of wrongdoing
have had to contend with seemingly
insurmountable presumptions of guilt
and vague, subjective definitions of
sexual misconduct.
Although Weinstein is the emblemat-
ic #MeToo perpetrator — a man who
coerced unwilling women through in-
timidation, manipulation and some-
times force — other men have taken a fall
over far more ambiguous allegations.
Ta ke a January story by Kelefa Sanneh
in the New Yorker — the magazine that
played a major role in Weinstein’s undo-
ing — about the travails of Pinegrove, an
independent rock group struggling to
recover from its lead singer’s #MeTo o
problem.
In November 2017, Evan Stephens
Hall agreed to take a one-year hiatus and
seek therapy after a crew member who
had toured with the band accused him of
“sexual coercion.” The charge stemmed
from a brief relationship the accuser
eventually came to see as damaging
(partly, perhaps, because it led to a
breakup with her previous boyfriend)
and, in the magazine’s words, “implicitly
manipulative.” The woman acknowl-
edged that Hall wielded no power over
her — the band had an unstructured,
egalitarian atmosphere and was not asource of steady income — but said that
“in the bubble of tour, I really felt like he
did.” For his part, Hall “believed we were
mutually in love,” as he said in a state-
ment on Facebook, but apologized for
being blind to his “inherent privilege” as
a man and a “recognized performer.”
Remarkably, after 2,700 words, the New
Yorker article asked: “Is this enough?”
Or consider the professional reper-
cussions suffered by Jack Smith IV,
formerly a journalist for the progressive
website Mic. A September 2018 story by
Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, editor in
chief of the feminist Website Jezebel,
about taking #MeToo into “gray areas,”
vilified Smith based on accounts from a
“whisper network” of five women with
whom he had sexual relationships, none
of whom worked with him at Mic but all
of whom, according to Jezebel, accused
Smith of “emotional abuse, manipula-
tion, and gaslighting.” Apart from one
allegation of nonconsensual choking
during sex, which Smith denied, their
claims discussed “coercive” sex and
“emotional manipulation” s uch as alter-
nating between affection and aloofness
or hostility. A Mic investigation sparked
by one of the women’s e arlier allegations
on social media had cleared Smith of
impropriety at work. Nonetheless, he
was fired hours after the article was
posted because of what Mic’s executive
news director called “multiple, disturb-
ing allegations.”
Very quickly after #MeToo emerged,
the movement’s focus expanded from
abuse of power in the workplace to a
wider terrain of male misbehavior. But
what does “misbehavior” mean? Human
interaction, intimate or professional, is
often a tangled web. People routinely
revise their memories, especially when a
romance or friendship sours — and
when the personal becomes political. In
a cultural moment that urges the reex-
amination of male-female dynamics
through the lens of patriarchal oppres-sion, a messy relationship can easily be
reframed as one-sidedly abusive, and a
reciprocal flirtation with a colleague can
be recast as reluctantly tolerated sexual
harassment.
Disturbingly, even some accused
men who are exonerated can remain in
#MeToo’s shadow. In 2018, writer Junot
Diaz was accused of nonconsensually
kissing a female writer and misogynis-
tic verbal aggression toward two other
female writers at e vents. One a llegation
of verbal abuse was undercut by an
audio recording. Although Diaz re-
sponded to the first accusation with a
statement saying that "I take responsi-
bility for my past” and emphasizing the
need to “continue to teach all men
about consent and boundaries,” he later
specifically denied the kissing allega-
tion. The Massachusetts Institute of
Te chnology and Boston Review con-
ducted investigations and decided not
to cut professional ties w ith Diaz. T hese
decisions were met with a social media
outcry. “A month after accusations of
sexual misconduct, Junot Díaz is more
or less unscathed,” one headline said, as
though the writer had gotten away with
bad acts. Sales of his books fell 85 per-
cent in seven months, the New York
Times reported in an article on #MeToo
fallout in classrooms.
It’s impossible to tell how common
unjust allegations and “gray area” cases
are, especially since injustice and ambi-
guity are also, to a large extent, in the eye
of the beholder. But the #MeToo move-
ment has succeeded largely on the power
of personal stories, and there are cer-
tainly enough compelling personal sto-
ries to suggest that #MeToo overreach is
real. It can ruin careers and lives, and it
tarnishes the movement’s positive ac-
complishments.cathy Young is a contributor to reason
magazine and an associate editor for arc
digital.#MeToo overreach is real
ted s. Warren/associated Presshave been 66 percent fewer cases.
“Who would have thought we would
even be having [this crisis]?” President
Trump said last week. In f act, the director
for medical and biodefense preparedness
policy of his own National Security Coun-
cil gave a speech in Atlanta in 2018
saying, “The threat of pandemic flu is our
number one health security concern. We
know that it cannot be stopped at the
border.” The day after she made this
speech, the White House eliminated her
unit. (Hat tip to “The Daily” podcast from
the New Yo rk Times.)
Trump did make one very good deci-
sion — to ban most travelers from China
from entering the United States, on
Jan. 31. That bought the United States
time. Alas, that time was wasted as
testing turned into a fiasco.
If this were a war, the generals in
charge of this operation would have been
relieved of their command. Just one
comparison: South Korea has tested more
than 230,000 potential cases with a popu-
lation of about 50 million. In the United
States, this would be about 1.5 million. In
fact, the United States has conducted
about 10,000 tests in public health labs
(and more in private labs). Per capita, the
United States has tested far fewer people
than most other advanced countries.
Trump’s m ost recent, dramatic move —
the travel ban on most of Europe — is
symbolic of the administration’s actions.
The thousands of Americans currently in
Europe are apparently exempt, as are a
small number of others. More important-
ly, the disease is already in the United
States and spreading. The policy was soT
he outbreak of an epidemic is
something like a natural disaster
— a spontaneous, accidental
eruption that is no one’s f ault. But
that does not mean we can do little about
it and just wait for it to run its deadly
course. The evidence is now clear: The
spread of the virus can be greatly reduced
if governments act early, aggressively and
intelligently. Unfortunately, that does not
describe the response of the U.S. govern-
ment to the coronavirus pandemic.
We can track the speed of the outbreak
since January, by which time the virus
had spread from China to other coun-
tries. In South Korea, after an initial
spike, the number of new cases has
slowed. Hong Kong, Singapore and Ta i-
wan — despite lots of travelers from
China — have kept numbers low from the
beginning. In the United States, however,
we are seeing accelerating increases.
What did the successful countries do
that seems to have worked? They began
testing early and often. They coupled
these tests with careful quarantines of
those infected and tracking of where they
had been, to better predict where the next
outbreaks might occur. The public health
systems had surge capacity because f und-
ing had been adequate. And authorities
largely communicated simple, clear and
consistent messages to the public.
One new study, which has not yet been
peer-reviewed, argues that without en-
hanced detection and restrictions on
movement, the number of cases in China
could have been 67 times higher by the
end of February. And had China started
acting just one week earlier, there couldpoorly thought through that amend-
ments, corrections and reversals were
made to the president’s speech within
minutes of his having delivered it.
This crisis seems to have been designed
to bring out the worst in Trump. The
president doesn’t like or trust experts,
often explaining that he knows more than
they do. He h as bluffed and fibbed his way
through much of his life and thinks
nothing of doing so again — except this
time we are not charmed or amused by
the bluster but rather frightened.
In most global crises, the United States
takes the lead and provides comfort and
assurances to the world. In this one,
Trump has been mostly AWOL. When he
does appear, it is to blame the disease on
foreigners and announce policies that are
designed to reinforce that view. The
broad collapse in global markets is surely
in part a reaction to the vast vacuum of
leadership in the White House.
Trump views everything from the
narcissistic prism of his ego. He dismiss-
es opposing views and insists that even
the senior-most members of his admin-
istration repeatedly praise him and his
leadership at all times. Watching the
heads of America’s leading science agen-
cies prefacing their statements with
ritual praise for the “dear leader” has
been depressing.
Come to think of it, the Trump admin-
istration has been copying the wrong
Korea. Instead of the intelligence and
expertise of South Korea, it is emulating
the sycophancy, incompetence and pro-
paganda of North Korea.
[email protected]Fareed ZakariaThe U.S. is imitating the wrong Korea
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