[gdubs]

It’s pretty well documented that intelligence agencies new about the novel coronavirus very early on, and we know the vaccines were completed very rapidly after the genomic information was published — so this argument is sort of off. The US appears to have had reasons for not rushing to vaccinate its military. China, by contrast, made the decision to vaccinate their troops a lot earlier.

In other words the military clearly does have early eyes on all sorts of situations - and their action or inaction on that info is a separate consideration.