This short essay on Salon is by Tracy Walder. Who is she and why should we take her warning seriously? The bio below is from her from her website. It should answer this question:
Tracy worked as Staff Operations Officer (SOO) at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center Weapons of Mass Destruction Group. During her time at the CIA, Tracy traveled to Afghanistan, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Morocco, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and England. During this time Tracy received many awards for her service from both the CIA and from foreign intelligence offices as well. Among her awards were four Exceptional Performance Awards from the Director of the CIA, two Special Activity Awards, a Meritorious Unit Citation Award, a DCI Counterterrorism Center Medal, and two Operation Enduring Freedom Targeting Awards. After the CIA, Tracy became a Special Agent at the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office specializing in Chinese counterintelligence operations. Tracy has done a TED talk and is a sought after public speaker through the World Affairs Council.
This essay is just seven paragraphs long. Below are just a few sentences to pique your interest.
- If the world is high school, The United States is the most popular girl: hated by many, worshipped by some and watched by all. Nothing goes unnoticed.
- My thinking as I sought to shut down chemical plans was not only to know the enemy but also to know how the enemy knows us.
- Each time blatantly wrong messages are put out, such as when President Trump said, "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China," we are letting our enemies know that this administration does not have a clear, concise and effective plan for how to manage a crisis, since there is no acknowledgment that a crisis even exists.
- So this is not hypothetical: Enemies have already begun to mobilize in face of the chaos and confusion currently being exhibited by the United States.
- So far, all we have shown is that we do not have leadership, we do not have supplies or equipment and we do not have a cohesive communication system.
- Her concluding sentence: After all, the next pandemic, the next act of bioterrorism, the next dangerous cyber-hack, is just a click away.
My own cynical thought comes as millions of Americans are trying with great difficulty to have a happy Easter. It is that around the world and here at home there are those who want to do us grave harm who, irrespective of their religious beliefs, are celebrating the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States.
Tracy Walder notes that “violent white supremacist extremist groups have said they have an ‘obligation’ to spread the coronavirus” and already are spreading disinformation online.
Not be be an alarmist, okay, rephrase that, to be an alarmist, while not an expert like she is it occurs to me that Trump’s incompetence puts us at other kinds of risk.
While she writes that we project “highly valuable information to the world, and to our enemies in particular” she doesn’t address in depth the possibility that international enemies may also use this opportunity to attack or take advantage of us in other ways whether though a cyber attack if only to test our capabilities to thwart it, or by an actually attack on one of our allies like Russia mounting another military incursion into Ukraine.
Donald Trump is an Easter basket for adversaries and outright enemies.