The NCMI’s mission is to monitor, track and assess a full range of global health events that could impact both US military and civilian populations. Thus admitting weaknesses in this area, even in the event of an ongoing epidemic, is not permissible.
This provides a plausible explanation for the decision by NATO and the United States to cancel some exercises in Europe but to continue, even if after having numerically reduced it, Defender Europe 2020.
The NCMI is the only organisation in the world with this comprehensive medical intelligence mission. As such, it has a diverse customer base, from operational and tactical commanders, preventive medicine personnel, and medical planners and researchers to the policymakers in the DoD, the White House staff and other federal agencies.
It has also been increasing its use of new technologies to transform its delivery of “customer-focused” medical intelligence.
As part of the DIA, this tri-service organisation produces finished, all-source medical intelligence assessments, forecasts and databases on foreign military and civilian health care capabilities and trends, worldwide infectious disease risks, global environmental health risks, and militarily significant life science issues.
In an epidemic phase, the NCMI works in concert with other agencies, such as the CIA or the NSA , to collect all the possible information in what is called medical Sigint (Signal Intelligence) or the collection of any type of communication inherent to the infection, from the difficulty of the intensive care units in Italian hospitals to the spread of contagion in refugee camps for Syrians.
The work linked to the outbreak of an epidemic by an intelligence agency is not limited to what has been reported so far. The secret services, in addition to monitoring the contagion daily, have been faced with a new phase of the epidemic, which is a propaganda plan rather than the medical one.
In fact, China has launched a massive propaganda campaign regarding the origins of the virus to counter US efforts.
