The hantavirus outbreak, and the mpox epidemic before it, highlight how the United States faces a variety of threats that originate overseas. It also underscores how military tools alone cannot protect Americans from such challenges, whether infectious disease outbreaks or destabilizing intra-state conflicts that generate mass migration, as in Haiti, or complicate access to critical sea lanes, as with Sudan and the Red Sea.

We could increase the U.S. military budget tenfold, but no number of precision military strikes can neutralize deadly microbes, suppress terrorist recruitment, or stabilize important regions affected by conflict.