Welcome to the policy briefing series. The nations Permanent Research centers. They dealt the National Security and democratic governors. It led to significant impacts on important Public Policy initiatives here and around the world. As we are taking the steps that will lead us out of this crisis we will find value. They will have the potential effects of that the coronavirus has have on the u. S. In the world. As a reminder will be taking audience questions. Todays briefing is a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution. The u. S. I aib. In other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with developments. The democracy from the russian rage. Thank you for joining us today. Let me jump right into the middle of this. Several Leaders Within the communist party have claimed that the government has performed while with eight and political surprise supplies. In the reputation. I dont consider myself an expert. I dont think you need to be an expert on china. The pose of democracy. They have a lot of holes. We know it began in rouen. Radical containment. China was not transparent with its own society. It could be very dangerous to human life. One of the chinese doctors lost their life. Its very important to recognize first of all that we dont know what the death rate in china is because we cant believe any of the statistics that they produce they are all manipulated. And second of all we do know what the death rates in democracies around the world because they are transparent. That record shows a very wide demonstration. It how they are managing the crisis. In spain youve have over 500 people and 1 million population died from the virus. Over 400 and italy. Over 300 in britain. But some countries had had very little impact on human life. Taiwan has have under one death per 1 million. Its been the greatest Success Story and managing the virus. I think the lesson here is not to just take propaganda but to look and see why some democracies have been doing better than others. I want to ask you what explains at the variation. What about chinas claims providing critical aid and supply. What is the validity of that claim . They had been sending pp and face masks but facemasks but nothing at the level that they promised. Good think you thank you and so on. What they delivered is what they had promised. And people feel a little bit cheated. Lets go back to talking about the Cross Country variation within democracies of success in thwarting the pandemic. I would imagine that there are some demographic variables that had that. The differences in governance across this country. I think, if you study what countries like taiwan had done we will have a very deep dive into that one week from now when they will host at 9 00 a. M. Pacific a really extensive policy discussion of the taiwan experience in managing covid19 we will have the Vice President of taiwan in the secretary of states of science and Technology Advisor speaking to us along with several other panelists. What you learn from the taiwan experience from south korea from israel and some of these other countries like germany and scandinavia and if countries responded very rapidly and very vigorously with Public Health measures and Public Education measures they were able to get ahead of the virus and often contain it through identifying the sick and isolating them. Screening at the airport and so on. Early widespread testing made a big difference as well in a number of these countries in different ways taiwan was doing testing korea manufactured quite a lot of viral test they had been using bigger bigot data to try to track the pattern of the virus into the country in the democracies that had have success also have some other common features was strong Public Health systems. The populations tend to be healthier with long life expectancy. In lower levels of chronic diseases. One of the things i worry about in the United States if you look at the advanced industrial democracies in terms of one indicator of Public Health which is the rate of obesity the rate of obesity is 36 percent. Maybe 50 higher than many of our peer advancements. We have some work to do. And these successful democracies we are able to widely distribute facemasks in Hand Sanitizer they pushed their Public Health experts out there in front to be the authoritative voice and coordinate a response and they started from the beginning with higher levels of public trust and confidence and therefore cooperation than in some of the other democracies. I know you are an expert in the governments around the world. And the use of democratic institutions. They kind of characterize the growth of democracy around the world. With the constant struggle between authoritative regimes around the world. It was deepening and accelerating the recession in alarming ways. You have them seizing on the public emergency to become even more comprehensive and persistently authoritarian. You saw Vladimir Putin was to be expected. They stay in power into their 80s or beyond. You have hungry which would arty crossed the line to authoritarian past and measure in the parliament. They give decree power and suspended parliament and elections. The Prime Minister can now rule by decree. They had been banning newspapers. Even india has been and intellectuals. Including the brother of one of our esteemed hoover fellows. The major online newspaper. Just reporting the truth in a critical fashion. You have them seizing on the crisis to narrow freedom. And then there is another thing e we we can talk about it something we all need to ponder which is the challenge to human freedom that comes from even liberal democracies like korea and israel. Implementing these apps on mobile phones. And what happens if those dont go away after the crisis. I would like to talk about that. We are listening to Larry Diamond who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. A big part of the screening and tracing and tracking that a lot of people are using are what they might be invasive. The condition of the citizen in the implications. It seems on the one hand assessable. It does create some problems and i know you thought about the problems and ways to mitigate those problems. See my since we are defining a free society at the Hoover Institution this is a pretty important problem from the standpoint of human liberty the problem in part is that these methods work they have helped states identify where the virus is cropping up who has it and who has been in contact with them. It does automate and speed up the contact tracing. On the other hand governments can use them to monitor people for other reasons on what happens when we surrender our privacy surrender our freedom from state surveillance and then we dont get that freedom back after the crisis. I dont think we can trust governments even very liberal governments to surrender these tools after the crisis is over. Religious in ethical leaders who can monitor what the government is doing in the claims that the government is making. Get authoritative information from the mobile phone companies about how they are using these applications so that we can have a full and frank discussion within the society about how much freedom we want to surrender, and when that surrender should be terminated and returned to the people. The free democracy you mentioned has been successful in managing this south korea taiwan israel. Very aggressive tracking and tracing techniques involved. How did they navigate the civil liberty, the democratic government associated with that. Well, i think that this is very much a matter of debate now in korea, where the current president moon has a lot of popularity and, at the moment, strong support. In israel, you know, israel is the very kind of independent minded so society and people are concerned that the message that has been used by the israeli and Intelligence Organization to track terrorist are now being used to track the virus. I think that this is ongoing. I think may be the problem is less serious and taiwan because they had such enormous success and containing the virus very early on and in reducing the infection rate to pretty close to zero. Of course, it is in easier thing to do if you are an island state. Nonetheless, it requires strong diligence and early reaction. I think the compromise of individual freedom in the temporary emergency has not been such an imposition on people. Larry, i dont know how much you know specifically about the absent technology that allowed tracing, but i have a couple questions that are interesting. Joseph suggests that these apps, or technologies, could be built with selfdestruct system so they would automatically expire at a certain point. Sixweek x out, eight weeks out. Balancing that with surveillance issues. Making the following claim, the google, apple effort around contact raising his claim to protect individual privacy. Do you know much about that. I do not know how they do it. I know that they do it and one way to ensure greater privacy is to use immediate neighborhood bluetooth connections. Yeah. To identify who you are in contact with, rather than the more centralized cell phone system. Some of the apps are limiting the exposure, in terms of freedom, by relying on the more neighborhood immediate geographic connection of bluetooth. With respect to the selfdestruction, i loved that. I think that definitely all legal and technological steps towards inc. Is eclipsing liberty have to have sunset clause attached to them. It can be a time related one, or it can just be an independent review board having the authority to order the mobile phone companies to implement the selfdestruction button when the crisis has passed. Got it. Great idea. Great ideas. I want to come back to the challenges that the pandemic is imposing on democracies. I have a couple really good questions about what they are doing to authoritarian regimes. James asked the following question, when it comes to broadbased crisis such as covid19, due to the regimes and economic structures have an inherent advantages over open Government Economic structures. If such an advantage exist, how can countries neutralize or mitigate that competitive advantage . Covid impacts on the regimes of cuba and venezuela, have there been any and, if so, what are they . How are they reacting to the pandemic . Okay. Well, it is impossible to claim that there is an intrinsic authoritarian advantage for managing a pandemic. When you see how many democracies have done a pretty admirable job of doing so. Frankly, in terms of immediate and transparent reaction to the first signs of crisis. A much better job than china has done, without the cost, in terms of human freedom. Korea, taiwan, singapore and so on, countries that have had more success, they did have the 2003 experience of the sars epidemic, and they learned from that about the need for a lot of the measures that i spoke of. But, the claim of intrinsic advantage for authoritarianism simply does not wash. The second question, again . What is going on in places like cuba and venezuela . You know, it is very hard to know what is going on, with respect to covid, in countries like cuba and venezuela because we do not have honest reporting of information. Because, in venezuela, the population has been so devastated by hunger and malnutrition that, you know, it is hard to know who is dying from what. I will say, it is interesting, as you look at these infection rates, there is a website where i have gotten the data that informs my earlier points, it is intriguing that countries in the equatorial region, the cuba and venezuela are either in or they border, countries that are more in the hot and humid climates in the global south have not yet been hit with anything like the level of epidemic that europe, u. S. And so on have been. Is that because of their climate , is it because they just have not been in the global transmission belt quite as much . It remains to be seen. It is noteworthy. I will say that iran has been hit pretty hard by this. Again, we do not know what the real rates of infection are, because he would leave Iranian State authorities in terms of the accuracy of reporting. We know there have been no infections in north korea. Yes. Except maybe [laughter] may be. I want to go around, i want to get back to democracy and talk about the way the pandemic is affecting the pillars of democracy. Free press and the media. What kind oppressors are being played in democracy generally as a result of the pandemic and vibrance in the important part of democracies. Well, i think that what we are finding now is a heightened need for an effect give vigorous independent press. Now, we would like it to be one that does not further feed our political polarization. We want a contest of perspectives. We will have media, print media, online media, Television Media that will have different editorial orientations for jobs. Pluralism is crucial. What we do not want is government threatening that pluralism or threatening investigative reporting with laws like what hungary has passed that threatened fiveyear prison terms for any false reporting about the covid19 pandemic. Who the heck is supposed to determine what is false reporting and what are inconvenient facts the government and authoritarian or liberal governments dont want their people to know. Again, i will say, india has become, i think, an important friend of the United States. The relationship with india is a very important one. President trumps trip there was a positive step for the United States. We do need to be careful not to get the Prime Minister a completely free pass while he intimidates critics and tries to suppress media independence in this crisis. That is a very dangerous potential trend that could develop an india. Yeah. Let me ask you one more question about the media. I asked george this yesterday. You know, one of the responsible acts of the media in these kinds of circumstances as to moderate scientific information about Health Consequences and the policies that can mitigate the development of the consequences. Our free society is better able to manage at . How do you balance the need for Accurate Information and consistent information with the need to have a pluralistic wild west discussion about what is going on. Well, i think that our major publications, whether their editorial line is in one direction like the wall street journal or the other direction like the New York Times, they have done a reasonably good job of trying to inform their readers of what is in the realm of scientific possibility. We did not know about hydro chloroquine until recently the evidence for it does not look very promising. Media reporting, properly identified it as speculative, at best. Now we are hearing the reporting that rendered severe, this antiviral drug is showing some very Promising Health effects. I think the media has been pretty wise and responsible and reporting the range and possibilities when we may have a vaccine. A public expectation, but allowing for the real prospect of a hopeful and early breaks breakthrough. Any reporting that is inconvenient, any reporting that could cast them in a bad light is suppressed. When you start suppressing reporting, you actually handicap your ability to fight this virus china you take for granted, but this is the way they operate, and the world is paying the price. I think germany will not wind up suing china for damages, but, you know, in a certain moral respect, i think that the whole world has a right to do so. Whether the virus emanated from a wuhan wet market or whether it escaped from a wuhan instituted virology lab, either way, chinas incompetence and suppression of the truth from the beginning contributed the spread of the virus. I will just say this, because it has been so important. The Success Story of the democracies like taiwan, korea and israel. Transparency, transparency, transparency. Early, truthful, authoritative reporting of what is happening an intelligent responsible interpretation. They can question it if they want, but moderation of it by the media has been very crucial in battling this virus. Tom, that brings us to the social media where it is much more like the wild west and here i have some hope that facebook is going to be more responsible and venting some of the information on its website. Facebook is moving pretty soon now towards the creation of an independent review board for some of its editorial decisions. I think that that could help in moderating this content. David asked the question, are you concerned about the danger that the companies will be censoring actual useful information, as opposed to conducting legitimate editorial activities . This brings me to the review board. Lets say facebook decides to take down some post challenging a scientific claim by the government or floating a scientific idea that facebook decides is quackery so they take it down. The thrust of davids question is, isnt that dangerous, the value of where we are headed now with facebooks voluntary decision to create this independent review board is that the facebook user, if they have their cereal taken down, could file an appeal to the new independent appeals board and then they would assess that, and there be a noncorporate body of individuals, kind of weighing the evidence in making the decision. Interesting. Lets move onto another Important Pillar of democracies and that is voting. The pandemic has affected our physical ability to conduct fair and wide voting in elections. I have a question from michael which is, are there any best practices for conducting elections during this Public Health emergency . I think that the clear best this that is at hand, and that most election experts think we should help to rapidly develop, in terms of support, technical and financial support, for state and local elec