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The book takes a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the role national security intelligence agencies played in supporting national governments'response to COVID-19.Spanning the ‘Five Eyes'intelligence countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), this book offers the first cross-comparative analysis of what intelligence agencies need to focus on in responding more effectively to future emerging health and biological security threats risks and hazards post-COVID-19. The volume addresses three principal issues. First, it investigates what roles the Five Eyes intelligence communities played (along with other key stakeholders, such as public health agencies) in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it assesses the challenges of and lessons learnt from these intelligence communities'engagement in managing aspects of the pandemic. Third, it explores how the Five Eyes might play more effective roles in managing future health security threats and risks, whether those are intentional (bioterrorism and bio crimes), accidental (laboratory releases) or unintentional (pandemics) in origin. Overall, this book offers a coherent and holistic research agenda that seeks to improve understanding about the role of national security intelligence in managing health security threats and risks post-COVID-19.This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, health security, public health and International Relations.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book investigates the way that the molecular sciences are shaping contemporary security practices in relation to the governance of biological threats.In response to biological threats, such as pandemics and bioterrorism, governments around the world have developed a range of new security technologies, called medical countermeasures, to protect their populations. This book argues that the molecular sciences'influence has been so great that security practices have been molecularised. Focusing on the actions of international organisations and governments in the past two decades, this book identifies two contrasting conceptions of the nature or inherent workings of molecular life as driving this turn. On the one hand, political notions of insecurity have been shaped by the contingent or random nature of molecular life. On the other, the identification of molecular life's constant biological dynamics supports and makes possible the development and stockpiling of effective medical countermeasures. This study is one of the few to take seriously the conceptual implications that the detailed empirical workings of biotechnology have on security practices today.This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, bio-politics, life sciences, global governance, and International Relations in general.

This textbook examines non-traditional forms of security and expands the notion of security to include non-state actors and non-human actors. Proposing an expansive view of non-traditional forms of security that go beyond traditionally recognized issues of threats to state and national territory, this new textbook rests on the following premises: traditional state-centered threats, such as nuclear proliferation and espionage, remain a concern; old and new threats combine and create interlocking puzzles—a feature of wicked problems and wicked messes; because of the global erosion of borders, new developments of unconventional insecurity interact in ways that frustrate traditional conceptual definitions, conceptual maps, and national policies; unconventional security challenges which have traditionally been seen as'low politics'or'soft'issues are now being recognized as'hard security'challenges in the twenty-first century; many of the so-called'new'threats detailed here are in fact very old: diseases, gender violence, food insecurity, under-development, and crime are all traditional security threats, but deeply modified today by globalization. The chapters offer local and global examples and engage with various theoretical approaches to help readers see the bigger picture. Solutions are also suggested to these problems. Each chapter contains discussion questions to help readers understand the key points and facilitate class discussion. This book will be of great interest to students of international security studies, human security, global politics, and international relations.