“’If the national security staff apparatus around the president is doing its job right, it should be able to coordinate different elements of the government,’ said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump…

“Michèle Flournoy, a former defense official who has long been considered a leading contender to lead the Pentagon in a Democratic administration, said Americans were likely to expand their notion of national security to include protection from future pandemics, meaning that national security budgets would be stretched to cover new initiatives.

“’That’s going to set up a tougher competition for those dollars,’ she said. ‘And that will be even more difficult in the wake of the economic situation that this crisis has engendered…’”

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