COVID-19 deaths are more than all wars for the last 50 years combined

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more Americans in four months than all that have died in all wars for the last half-century, NBC News reports.

"COVID-19 is a wake-up call," Denis Kaufman, a former senior official at the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the news agency.

Technology solutions for the pandemic have to be creative, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Deputy Director for Research Dr. Catherine Cotell, told the news agency in a statement.

"Technology solutions for COVID-19 will require creative, multidisciplinary methods, paradigm-changing thinking, and transformative approaches," Cotell said. "Our goal is to advance ground-breaking technologies that will help the intelligence community and the country prepare for and recover from pandemic events."

The pandemic has made major changes to the intelligence community's views on how health threats can define national security, the news agency reported.

John Ratcliffe, the new director of national intelligence, told the Senate last month that he wanted to put an immediate focus on how the country's spy agencies will be "directed to the geopolitical and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as its origins," the news agency reported.

Former Deputy National Intelligence Director Sue Gordon told NBC the intelligence community is the best it has ever been.

"The question is, is it good enough for the moment in which we now find ourselves?" Gordon said to the news agency. "I think this moment exposed national security issues to which the intelligence community should consider applying itself."

IARPA is looking at technology and how it could help in the face of a pandemic like COVID-19, the NBC story said. One such possible technology would be a quick breath test to diagnose the coronavirus that could be offered at places like airports to help in tracking, the story said.