'Germ Games': NIH emails reveal the military strategy behind pandemic planning

New emails show how pandemic preparedness was reframed through a military lens at Davos in 2016, with senior NIH officials drawn into the discussions.

Behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, senior figures from the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed a new approach to pandemic preparedness: large-scale simulations modelled on military war games.

Newly obtained internal emails show how the idea — referred to as “Germ Games” — gained rapid momentum and drew in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).