As alarms began to go off globally about a novel coronavirus spreading in China, officials in Washington turned to the intelligence agencies for insights about the threat the virus posed to America.
But the most useful early warnings came not from spies or intercepts, according to a recent congressional review of classified reports from December 2019 and January 2020.
Officials were instead relying on public reporting, diplomatic cables and analysis from medical experts — some examples of so-called open source intelligence, or OSINT.
Predicting the next pandemic or the next government to fall will require better use of open source material, the review found.
"There is little indication that the Intelligence Community's exquisite collection capabilities were generating information that was valuable to policymakers," wrote the authors of the review, conducted by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
That echoes what many current and former intelligence officials are increasingly warning: The $90 billion US spy apparatus is falling behind because it has not embraced collecting open-source intelligence as adversaries including China ramp up their efforts.
This doesn't diminish the importance of traditional intelligence. Spy agencies have unique powers to penetrate global communications and cultivate agents. They scored a high-profile success when the Biden administration publicised ultimately correct intelligence findings that Russian President Vladimir Putin intended to invade Ukraine.
But officials and experts worry that the US hasn't invested enough people or money in analysing publicly available data or taking advantage of advanced technologies that can yield critical insights. Commercial satellite imagery, social media and other online data have given private companies and independent analysts new powers to reveal official secrets. And China is known to have stolen or acquired control over huge amounts of data on Americans, with growing concerns in Washington about Beijing's influence over widely used apps like TikTok.