Global Situation Room President Brett Bruen on coronavirus crisis management
“When you actually look at what have we done to protect our democracy, to protect our elections? The answer is not much. And that’s partially because of the government.”
The following is a transcript of the interview conducted between GovSight Vice President Miguel Pineda and Social Media Director Vicky Garcia with President of the Global Situation Room Brett Bruen on crisis management during the coronavirus pandemic, foreign relations and election interference — plus solutions to the problems presented by each. The interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
Miguel Pineda: Alright guys, we have a great guest today: The current president of the Global Situation Room and former White House Director of Global Engagement Brett Bruen. Brett, thank you for coming to speak with us today.
Brett Bruen: Great to be with you.
MP: So, you know, given the spread of the coronavirus, countries around the world have had varying severity and varying responses. But, America is the leader of cases worldwide. So my question to you is, is the U.S. still seen as a beacon in times of crisis?
BB: No. I think unfortunately, during this particular crisis — and in recent crises — we’ve seen a real lack of American leadership. I’ve talked about it as the end of the American Era because the United States no longer is helping to coordinate and promote collaboration on key issues, especially in moments of crisis.
Instead, what we see is the Trump administration fighting with German, French-Canadian procurement officers in factories around the world so that we can get our hands first on material, whether it’s P.C.P. or potential vaccines or medicine. This is not how America should lead.
And I don’t lay all of the blame at President Trump’s feet. I think this has been a long time in coming. You go back to the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt when we said, as a country we believed in these four freedoms even at the height of the Second World War. Then you follow it through to the Clinton administration. We would protect the Kosovars only from above 10,000 feet. And certainly during the George W. Bush administration, we saw how our engagement with the world became more and more about terrorism and security.
Even in the administration that I served in, I at times found myself frustrated by a policy that did not prioritize the kinds of strong robust engagements in Syria [and] Iraq. When I.S.I.S. came on the scene — and I remember the evening that President Obama addressed the nation and said “we will help those who can escape from I.S.I.S.” But that’s a far cry from the notion of defending Four Freedoms anywhere in the world where they are under threat.
MP: Has the United States’ response affected other countries’ responses? And has it interfered in our diplomatic capabilities in any way?
BB: I think there are a couple effects. When I talk about the post-American era, what we’re starting to see are these power groupings emerge. So certainly the European Union with the U.K. for the moment. There are as well in the Asia Pacific region, powers not only in China and India, but those of Japan, Australia. And clearly the likes of Russia and some of the other groupings in the Middle East.
I point to the example in the case of Saudi Arabia of what we will see in terms of more friction between countries and their policies in this power struggle. Because when Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland dared to level some pretty mild criticism against Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, they lashed out. Closed off trade [and] travel between the countries. I mean, that is not a response we would have seen in the American era. The Saudis would have been forced, in some respects, back into the box of respecting certain standards and stability in the region. Clearly, the tragic case of Jamal Khashoggi represents another illustration of how the Saudis are trying to test the boundaries of where the rules are now written.
And this is happening in the Philippines with President Duterte — and certainly with the Chinese and the Russians, North Koreans. Even Prime Minister Modi in India is starting to rewrite the playbook. And that’s all a direct result in my view of coming into this new post American era.
Vicky Garcia: Definitely, Brett. So during your time in the White House, while on the National Security Council, you coined the term “crisis management theory.” Can you explain to us a little bit what that is? And if the current administration has been practicing it more or less?
BB: Yeah. Counter crisis communications is the idea that ahead of time you identify — and then ideally track — your most likely and most damaging vulnerabilities. For us, things like civil wars in Africa, Russia meddling on its borders, extremist groups in the Middle East, these are all very likely and potentially damaging vulnerabilities in the world that we should worry about.
And then you take the next step. Which is: let’s put in place infrastructure that we need to have ready so that we can respond effectively when those vulnerabilities are exploited. And then the last piece is this idea, which I also coined when we were there, called a countermeasure. The notion stolen from our military counterparts, of actually creating a program that could be deployed into a crisis. And would not only deal with mitigating the challenges of that crisis, the firefighting, but would be also intended to help then springboard from that moment of adversity into the next stage of where either as a country or in the corporate world as a company, you want to go.
So thinking about: If this happened, what happens after the crisis? That’s the stage which I think oftentimes governments and corporate leaders alike struggle with. Because you are so focused on pressing the reset button during a crisis that you fail to realize that there is no going back. You can’t reestablish, we cannot as a country or as a world go back to a pre COVID-19 reality. We have to understand that emerging from this health, economic, social crisis — all of us will be changed. And so it’s about finding the future. Another term that I really like to use because no matter how bad the crisis is, to quote Annie: “There is always tomorrow.” And the notion of counter crisis communications is helping tomorrow to come sooner.
VG: The president issued another ban on immigration into the U.S. citing the growing pandemic as justification. Do you believe the pandemic will be enough legal justification to uphold the move? And if it were to continue for even a short period of time, what would the long term ramifications be of such a halt?
BB: Yeah, it’s a nonsensical move mostly designed to appease his political base and to falsely give them a sense of action and security. But when you actually peel back the policy, he is saying we are going to prohibit immigrant visa holders from entering the U.S.
Just so the listeners understand — and I did as a diplomat immigrant and non-immigrant visas for a few months — you are talking about people who are the parents of, children of, brothers, sisters of American citizens. And not, interestingly, those who are coming to work in the U.S. So on the one hand, saying publicly, we’re going to put the brakes on people who would steal jobs from Americans in this moment of crisis. But on the other hand, the folks that are actually being told to stay home are those that would come here because of some familial relationship and in most cases have a network of support. And take more time to work into the workforce. So it’s really not a solution of any kind other than an optical one for the president.
MP: Let’s change gears a bit here, Brett. Our relationship with China has obviously been strained before the coronavirus, even though we had just signed a phase one agreement a few months ago with them on trade. There were still talks about a phase two deal, as well as negotiations over the use of 5g technology and intellectual property and currency manipulation. And then the coronavirus hit. So what should America’s strategy with China be moving forward?
BB: I think America needs a rethink as far as our engagement both with China and then with respect to how China is very aggressively engaging with the world. In some respects I actually find myself in alignment with at least the goals, not necessarily the tactics, but the goals that the administration has laid out. We do need to crack down on things like intellectual property abuse and some of the unfair trade practices that the Chinese have been using. I’ve been over to Beijing and Shanghai to give speeches to business conferences. And I do think that for too long, we have had this great imbalance in the relationship. Us and others playing by a certain set of rules, and then Chinese companies playing by a different set of rules. So if you know there is some good to come of this, it is that hopefully we have helped to reset that relationship in some respects.
What is alarming to me is how Trump has largely abandoned the Asia Pacific region. This was a priority for the Obama administration, we often talked about the pivot to Asia. And you have a situation where Trump has essentially ceded that space to the Chinese, who are now very aggressively moving into places like Oceania; these Southeast Asian countries that had formerly been so strongly aligned with the U.S. I’ve been over [and] met with officials in Tokyo, and there’s just outright concern that the U.S. would not be present when we were needed. So China is able to play on those fears.
And then on top of it, we’ve seen it play out with COVID-19, the Chinese have really effectively worked their way into these multilateral organizations. Whether it’s the World Health Organization; I was involved with a campaign last-last year with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization that the Chinese won. They did it because they were so much better at the influence side. Some of the tactics they used, clearly, we would never use. But I think the notion that 108 countries voting on the first ballot for China want to set off alarm bells about the state of American Western influence in the world and the standards that countries are following. So there is a real notion that China, when it comes to diplomacy, has taken a great advantage of our absence.
MP: You may have mentioned this just a little briefly in your last answer. But just to clarify, going forward should the U.S. try to pursue more aggressive trade practices? Should we try to be reaching out to all of these nations that China influences too? Or is there some other way that we could better prepare ourselves?
BB: Well I would say we need to have a counter strategy. Not just the block and tackles of what Trump is trying to achieve with tariffs and some of these aggressive bullying moves. But we also have to figure out how — in places like Latin America, Africa, where China has gained extraordinary influence — what are we bringing to the table and what’s not working with what we’ve done in the past? Because often and going back decades, the Americans would come in and we would work on programs that were important, but perhaps not as visible or not as directly aligned to strategic interests. So you know, things like education programs, health programs, good governance programs, which are important. But we have to add to that. We have to include programs like the Chinese do that are very symbolic and visible, because that’s what your average person on the streets of Nairobi or Ouagadougou will see.
Secondly, I think we’ve got to figure out when it comes to trade, how do we overcome this isolationist tendency that has been creeping up — not just in the Republican Party. Let’s remember it was the rallying cry of many in the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, to trash the Trans Pacific Partnership. And this was a whole treated trade agreement that actually would have not only countered China’s influence across the Asia Pacific region, but would have increased and level the playing field for American businesses in the region.
So I think trade has gotten a bad rap. The fact that we were able, through I think a fairly decent bipartisan effort, [to] get N.A.F.T.A. 2.0 through the Congress, the U.S.M.C.A., is a step in the right direction. But we’re going to have to figure out a way in the next administration to pass trade agreements that go back to the more ambitious ones we had, whether it was T.T.I.P. with Europe, the T.P.P. with the Pacific. Because it makes no sense — and as a small business owner I can tell you that it makes no sense — that we’re going to have 100 different trade agreements with 100 different countries. It makes it more difficult, especially for our businesses, to compete in that space, because now they have to abide by 100 different rules. And our small, medium sized companies just aren’t able to compete. Whereas companies coming from those foreign countries look at the American market and say that’s my priority. And I can adapt to the regulations that they have, because that’s the number one market in the world. So we gotta figure out a better way. And it isn’t a unilateral way.
MP: So moving to a different world player with Russia, you famously said in 2014 that the U.S. government could have prevented Russian trolls from interfering in the 2016 election after witnessing what they did in Ukraine during their 2014 election. Can you walk us through how you discovered that? And are we at risk again for them to interfere in the 2020 election?
BB: Yeah. We continue to be asleep at the wheel despite all of the political drama here in Washington. When you actually look at what have we done to protect our democracy, to protect our elections? The answer is not much. And that’s partially because of the government.
And a lot of the blame for that lies with both the administration, but I’d also say Congress, because Congress ultimately has approved budgets that offer a paltry sum. And we’re talking $20 million a year, which in government program terms is a drop in the bucket and is not a significant effort. We spend far more than that on getting a new jet. On top of that the tech sector as well as I think many of the social media companies have offered a pretty whack a mole approach. Every time we see a new version of disinformation pop up, it is paraded out on a press release from Facebook or from Twitter saying “ah, we found 30 Iranian Russian accounts, we shut them down.” They’re going to get set up again tomorrow. There is no cool ordinated effort, there’s no unified effort across these companies. Each of them are still very much silo doing their own thing.
It is very much on a defensive posture, versus how do we get off of defense. I’ve long advocated that we need to get much more aggressive when it comes to disinformation. And that includes both the capability to track defend, but also to have a deterrent effect. Because as I look at this information and how it’s being used, the only way that we are going to get Russia or China or Iran, North Korea and the free wherever-stan army to knock it off, is for us to essentially tell them, we’re going to give you some of your own medicine. And by that I don’t mean coming up with our own disinformation, but we have a lot of information tools. Transparency: What do Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping all fear? It is that a bright light is shone on their power structure and much of their corruption. How do we get across to those leaders that it is not in their interest to back this kind of mass disinformation campaign? Because we are willing and able to strike back.
MP: Are there ways that an average American can better identify misinformation or fake news or someone or something trying to troll them? Are there ways that, as somebody who may not be an expert necessarily with journalism or technology or how these countries operate, can better identify those things?
BB: Well, the first thing I would say is we’ve got to stop this notion that somehow fact-check disinformation is an effective practice. When you look at studies, what it actually ends up doing is people retain the information that was false. Because it is by its nature more salacious, more emotional, and they forget the truth. So I’ve encouraged the folks in government, in the private sector, to look at how you create the context in which we want to have conversations around the sensitive issues. Because putting in place a lot of that infrastructure and really trying to look much more deliberately at what can be done to ensure that one, discussions about hot topics like social change, or political change, or economic issues. There is an environment in which those discussions can take place that are not as susceptible to outside influence. And I think a lot of that comes back to how we can create pillars of trusted information, trusted voices. And also, you know, work to try and diminish the effect that is sought by those who are purveying disinformation.
So, often what we will see — and we saw it with I.S.I.S., we certainly saw it with Russia — is that disinformation gets amplified. And we gotta figure out how to stop doing this. And I’ve talked with journalists a lot about this effect. Because you’ll see a situation where as we did in 2016, the Russians will hack into some account in the D.N.C., Tony Podesta’s, and they’ll spill out the information. Some of it, in fact, as I’ve been repeatedly saying, will not be accurate, especially as they’ve gotten more sophisticated. But now all of a sudden, that becomes a news story. Or, you know, the fact that they were able to spin up some viral discussion about whether or not Joe Biden was born in the United States. Now, all of a sudden, that’s a topic of conversation. We’re covering the Russian campaign to discredit Joe Biden. That’s not how you cover these issues.
The way that I think you cover these issues is to really emphasize and to inform the public about how these tactics are very similar to the same tactics we’ve seen used on other campaigns. Almost creating a tracker, I like to call it a kind of John-King-esque on CNN board where you’re creating the sensitivity to what is happening in the disinformation space so that people are able to be more sensitized to it. [In order] to diffuse, in a lot of respects, the potency of some of these campaigns by revealing some of the practices, revealing some of the messages. But not let’s label it with a big red sticker saying “do not go here.” Because as we’ve learned, from past campaigns like say no to drugs, it’s very difficult to remove the temptation when you’ve engaged in that kind of dissuasion.
VG: So with your experience in all these sectors, whether it’s public or private, and going more towards the private sector. You’re the president of the Global Situation Room, as we mentioned earlier. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about how your organization came together and what you specialize in specifically?
BB: So we’re a specialist in complex communications, which in part is a euphemism to talk about our practice with crisis and risk management. So we help companies, high profile individuals and large organizations, occasionally governments, to navigate through the development of these counter crisis capabilities. We will run crisis trainings, we will prepare leaders to be more effective in managing crises — and they will actually go out and help when needed to respond to crises.
The second area we focus in is thought leadership. So when companies, organizations, want to drive a global discussion, we really find ourselves helping; as my colleague Joe Hannah, who started with Barack Obama out in Iowa, was head of media advanced for him for eight years, says it’s about developing a movement. And we are seeing how companies, particularly, became much, much more influential. It’s been on display during COVID-19, that companies and organizations are the ones taking faster and bolder action. That’s where we help.
And then lastly, we engage on the world stage. So when companies and organizations want to do something global, whether it is in the case of one of our clients last year, a country that was running to lead the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Or if it’s a company moving into a new market, we help them to understand how you take your brand or your message from one country and spread it across multiple countries. With the same resonance and relevance which often is missing. I famously use in some of my trainings the example of how Mattel decided: We were going to create a big Barbie store in downtown Shanghai. And it was Barbie Bar and Barbie Spa, Barbie everything. Only the problem was that the target consumers in Shanghai had not grown up with Barbie and the idea of sitting around with a plastic doll at a bar or in a spa really wasn’t relevant.
VG: So taking your experience and more so your … I feel like the Global Situation Room’s morals and their values as a company. You’ve taught crisis communications at Georgetown and you’re on the board and multiple prestigious universities, so after seeing so many young media business professionals graduate and enter the workforce prior to the coronavirus, do you think media professionals today graduating should focus their crisis communication skills more now than ever before?
BB: So I’ve been telling my students at Georgetown that I don’t think anyone should graduate with a degree, especially not an M.B.A. or master’s in public policy, without having taken several courses and demonstrated a mastery of crisis management. Because I’ve started saying risk has gone regular. We are living in an age where the speed, the scale, the sophistication of these risks are such that we simply cannot continue to practice crisis management 1.0, which is batten down the hatches and weather the storm. We need to be able to get out and engage in its uncertainty and upheaval. That’s what I see as an increasingly required skill set for those that are graduating from both graduate schools as well as undergrad.
MP: Well, Brett, we don’t want to take up too much more of your time. We just want to end with this one question. We ask everybody who comes on what first sparked your interest for politics and government and obviously foreign relations. How can someone who’s interested in these subjects get more involved and hopefully be where you are today?
BB: I chose to enter the Foreign Service in August of 2001. When I saw in the New York Times an ad saying, “This man wants to talk to you about a really important job,” and it was Colin Powell, who was at the time Secretary of State. I was an intern at the U.N. in New York, and when I went back to school a couple weeks later, the Twin Towers came down. We had as interns all gone every Wednesday to Windows on the World. And I was looking for a way to put the world back together. So what kind of seemed like a far off notion of becoming a foreign service officer became very much a mission. And I did it for 12 years, I chose, at every opportunity, the most difficult, most dangerous place I could go. Because I felt like that was where the need was greatest. I really reluctantly got pulled back to Washington.
I think that it’s important for those graduating today to think about what their mission is. And that doesn’t have to necessarily be going into government or even into a civil society organization. You can make contributions — and I firmly believe and tell executives today that companies can and should play an increasingly important role in world affairs. And we’re seeing them do that.
So for those that are graduating, thinking about how you can drive the kind of change that you see as a possibility for the world. Ultimately, as we’ve all experienced over these last few difficult days and weeks, we take a lot of things for granted. And there’s still a lot in the world that needs to be addressed. So when you’re coming up with a great start-up or when you’re working at a great company, think about how it can help to achieve more than just a great bottom line. But it can achieve greatness for more people as they try to lift themselves out of poverty and lift themselves out of despair. Because, what we have seen during this crisis, and I work with a large public relations agency as a partner that has been able to show, if your company invests in its people during this crisis, 75% of them say we’re going to stick with this company. We’re more likely to stay here for the long term. 78% of consumers say we’re going to stick with a brand that actually acted responsibly. And this is going to become the new normal for companies, so they have to get ready for higher expectations game.
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