COVID spreads as select countries reopen; DoD to start random testing; ODNI nominee’s vow; Moon-mining pact in the works; And a bit more.

U.S. coronavirus cases grow as parts of the world begin to reopen. South Korea is reopening museums, libraries and conference halls today (Wall Street Journal). Belgium will reopen shops “with strict social distancing” on Monday (AFP). Germany is beginning to ease restrictions (Reuters), and the chancellor just greenlit (AFP) professional football’s resumption in mid-May. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have decided to reopen their borders to each other on May 15 (Reuters), but with a two-week self-isolation for those entering from outside. Saudi Arabia reopened its malls last week. Bahrain is reopening shops on Thursday (Reuters). Moscow’s mayor wants to reopen industrial work next Tuesday (Reuters again) while elsewhere, Russian doctors are falling out of windows inexplicably (AP). 

Meanwhile COVID-19 has come to rural America, where “African Americans and the poor are more likely to work in jobs not conducive to social distancing,” AP reports in a #LongRead. 

About the American case growth: The WSJ notes this morning “U.S. deaths [now] exceed 71,000, according to Johns Hopkins—close to 30% of the global total—as new data showed the pandemic’s devastating impact on nursing homes.”

Big picture: “Of the 10 [U.S.] counties with the highest death rate per capita in America, half are in rural southwest Georgia,” AP writes. 

Recall that Georgia is a state with more than a dozen military bases, including Fort Benning, home of the U.S. Army Infantry and Airborne — and a big hub for basic training. 

VA toll soars. On Tuesday, Veterans Affairs officials reported that at least 770 patients have died from COVID-19, up 346 from April 26. “Of those total deaths, 582 are inpatient cases at VA medical centers around the country. The rest includes veterans who died at home or at outside private medical facilities,” Military Times reports.

The U.S. military will start random testing of troops in an effort to grasp how many have the coronavirus. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Tuesday that the Pentagon knows that 4,967 troops have tested positive, but not how many might be carrying the virus asymptomatically, Stripes reports.

So far, the military is testing about half as many people as it wants to, Gen. Mark Milley said at the same press conference. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman was responding to questions about the four-tier testing system announced last week. Washington Examiner, here.

From Defense One

Trump’s Intelligence-Chief Nominee Vows to ‘Speak Truth to Power’  // Katie Bo Williams: GOP lawmakers are seeking to fasttrack Rep. John Ratcliffe’s nomination, but his careful answers did not appear to satisfy skeptics.

Fear Not the Tracing Apps, Fear How Little They Will Say // Patrick Tucker: Human-mobility data will play a big role in efforts to understand the pandemic over the summer. It will have serious limitations.

Can China Use the Pandemic to Displace the US? // Ali Wyne: Distrust of Beijing may be growing, but so too is alarm over Washington's ineptitude.

Trump’s Nuclear Policy Has Failed // Jon Wolfsthal: Recognizing that blunders and bad ideas have undermined stability and security is the first step toward recovery.

The Army Wants a Wearable COVID-19 Detector // Aaron Boyd, Nextgov: On Monday, the service issued a request for project proposals through the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium “to develop a wearable diagnostic capability."

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the creation of the Works Progress Administration to put millions of Americans back to work amid the Great Depression. 

Review how the U.S. plans to counter China’s navy and missile forces by placing troops and tomahawks “along the so-called first island chain” in the Pacific Ocean, which Reuters writes “is the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.” That strategic review comes from a Reuters special report about how the U.S. is racing to “nullify China's missile supremacy” by essentially bringing its own missiles and forces closer to China’s doorstep on that first island chain. 
What’s new here: U.S. “Marines will join forces with the U.S. Navy in attacking an enemy’s warships” in what Reuters calls a “radical shift in tactics.” As part of that change, “Small and mobile units of U.S. Marines armed with anti-ship missiles will [soon] become ship killers” armed with precision-guided missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile, according to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 5.
And the pandemic has not slowed U.S. Navy passages through the Taiwan Strait (twice in April) or U.S. military exercises in the East China Sea and South China Seas, which also happened in April. 
For China's part, the "aircraft carrier Liaoning led a flotilla of five other warships into the Western Pacific through the Miyako Strait to the northeast of Taiwan" on April 11. And the next day, "Chinese warships exercised in waters east and south of Taiwan."
Next for the Marines: The second test of a “new shorter-range anti-ship weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, from a ground launcher.” That’s scheduled sometime in June.
Other weapons that make an appearance in this special report: 

• Air Force B-1 bombers;
• U.S. Navy Super Hornet jets;
• Lockheed Martin’s new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile;
• LM's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile;
• A ground-launched ballistic missile the U.S. tested in December;
• The Army's new "supergun," with newly-tested 58-caliber XM1299 and rocket-assisted XM1113 rounds; 
• The USAF's B-21 bomber, 'which is due to enter service in the middle of this decade";
• And, of course, hypersonic weapons that we also haven't really seen just yet. Read on, here.

Older weapons will get cut first if budgets tighten and Defense Secretary Mark Esper has his way. “Frankly, my inclination is not to risk any in the modernization programs; it’s to go back and pull out more of the legacy programs,” he told reporters on Tuesday. (Defense News)
Also: Esper denies involvement in attempted invasion of Venezuela. “The United States government had nothing to do with what’s happened in Venezuela in the last few days,” Esper told reporters Tuesday.
ICYMI: Venezuelan officials say security forces killed eight armed fighters and arrested two more coming ashore near La Guaira on Sunday. On Tuesday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro showed two U.S. passports belonging to former U.S. Special Forces soldiers. On Monday, another former Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau, claimed responsibility for attempting to detain Maduro and “liberate” Venezuela. (AP)

Milley reiterates stance on coronavirus’ likely origin: “The weight of evidence — nothing’s conclusive — the weight of evidence is that it was natural and not man-made,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley told reporters Tuesday.
Notable because: “The Trump administration this month stepped up efforts to blame China for the pandemic, with top officials including President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushing the unverified theory that the virus was created by Chinese researchers or accidentally released by a lab in Wuhan, China, where it was being studied.” The Hill has a bit more, here.

And lastly today: the Trump administration is drafting a moon-mining agreement. “The Artemis Accords, named after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s new Artemis moon program, propose ‘safety zones’ that would surround future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity,” Reuters reports, citing “people familiar with the proposed pact,” which has yet to be formally shared with U.S. allies. Stay safe in your own travels, and we’ll see you tomorrow.