The new coronavirus, COVID-19, is disrupting our lives, health and financial markets. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency. Also, stocks are plummeting.
But it’s not all bad. According to Fintech Futures, the effects of the coronavirus on the local Chinese market have proven that innovation and technology are replacing banks’ role in the financial sector.
For example, new technology, such as Blockchain, is currently being used in China, “to ease the pressure on healthcare workers by speeding up medical data verification (at Blue Cross Asia-Pacific Insurance) or cashless payments being encouraged in Vietnam as a way to prevent the spread of the virus.”
Alibaba, through Ant Financial, offered $2.86 billion in loans to companies in China to help weather the storm.
The U.S. should take note.
Unfortunately, Americans are woefully unprepared to address threats like this. I wrote two years ago that chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (“CBRN”) threats—like COVID-19—are national security hazards and public health concerns. And here we are.
Successfully addressing threats like this one will require combining the “rapidly growing” and “complex (governmental) science and technology base” with the more nimble and innovative research and development capabilities of academic and industry scientists to speed up the adoption of the information technology innovations necessary to address CBRN threats.
There is a critical need to establish a nationwide integrated public health defense infrastructure, platform and services initiative to address such threats. U.S. policymakers must institute sweeping innovation policies to modernize the U.S. innovation infrastructure. My colleague, Constance Bagley at Yale University, and I introduced a multi-prong initiative for addressing the threats of CBRN attacks in our paper, Preparing for the Apocalypse.
There, we outlined that government needs to drive the innovation necessary to even begin to seriously address our current threats. The model isn’t limited to vaccines; it can be applied to financial infrastructures as well.
The government is not a profit-maximizing entity so is in a better position than private investors to deal with situations of uncertainty requiring long-term investments in radical innovation. We depend on government to keep us safe—both physically and financially.
I am confident we will get through this.
For what it’s worth, I am putting my money where my mouth is; for the next two weeks, I will be flying around the country (gasp!) for law conferences in Maryland and Utah. I’ll be discussing emerging competition and the future of American corporate law at one, and modern markets’ most difficult challenges at another.
It seems that we’ve got some difficult challenges before us. But we shouldn’t panic as we get through them. Clearly this latest threat poses serious challenges to our physical and financial health. Yet the United States has the ability to ramp up production and drive innovation.
Our history demonstrates that the American spirit of combining public and private resources when necessary to tackle national threats can convert these challenges into opportunities for global leadership.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
