"I'm worried that the rhetoric on both sides is very divorced from the reality. That distracts all of us from what we need to be doing, which is mounting a coordinated global fight against this virus. "The reality is that the intelligence community has been very clear that there is no evidence that this was man made; they have concurred with the scientific assessments. There is also no direct evidence that this was a naturally occurring pathogen being studied in a [...]

"In this episode, Lisa and Ken [Wainstein] do a deep dive on the national security implications of the coronavirus pandemic and break down the issues the U.S. would confront in the event of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s death or incapacitation..." Listen to the full episode here: Full Episode

"Lisa Monaco, who served as Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, remembered a notable exchange between Biden and then-Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan when the African leader visited the White House during the Ebola outbreak. "'The vice president was quite forceful with him to accelerate [his] response,' Monaco said. 'The message was: "We need you and your government to really step up and do more on detection, surveillance and tracing..."’" Read the full article here: Full Article

"Trump has complained that the federal stockpiles he inherited were inadequate to meet the pandemic’s demands. But Lisa Monaco, White House homeland security adviser under Obama, said those stockpiles were meant only to be a bridge. 'It was always envisioned that [during a pandemic], the federal government would step in and activate the supply chain and manufacturing,' she said..." Read the full article here: Full Article

"Looking ahead to a potential vaccine, there is a question as to whether the Trump administration will be able to effectively distribute a panacea. A vaccine alone is not a solution—a mass vaccination campaign is. 'As we are asking where is the plan and the resources for testing, we should be asking the same questions of what’s the strategy and the plan for once we—God willing—have a vaccine,' Monaco said. 'What thinking and planning is going on right now to ensure [...]

"[I]f I were still in my old seat today, I would've expected to see intelligence about what our intelligence community was seeing emerging out of China back in January and December. I would've expected to see what they were seeing and what they were thinking and understanding about the Chinese response, the Chinese government's response. And throughout this I would be expecting to get from them information about what other countries are doing, how they are postured, how much confidence we [...]

"A week before the inauguration, I led an exercise that had the outgoing national security team from the Obama administration sitting side-by-side with the incoming national security team for the Trump administration. We sat in a very large room on the White House campus and walked through a series of scenarios. One was very specifically a pandemic scenario, and it raised exactly the types of questions that we've been confronting for many weeks: shortage of supplies; vulnerable populations; when to close [...]

"'I would get asked, what keeps you up at night?' said Lisa Monaco, who served as Obama’s homeland security adviser between 2013 and 2017. 'An emerging infectious disease like a new strain of flu was the thing I worried most about...'" Read the full article here: Full Article

"'I don’t want to give an impression that we bestowed the answer key for dealing with such a challenging and unprecedented crisis,' Monaco said. 'But the idea was to identify issues that would say these are the kinds of things you need to be planning for and thinking about now.' "What does it mean for the federal government to be prepared? 'Oftentimes, the gauge is no mistakes, no criticism, just complete smooth sailing,' Monaco said. “That to me is not the [...]