welcome to wednesday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd continuing msnbc's breaking news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. are we opening too fast? it's perhaps the most important question in america right now, and the president has at times sought to make it a political question. but there is new data on the spread of this virus that may cause him to rethink that strategy. the geographic and therefore political contours of the reopening debate could be shaken up.

because the majority of the states hit first and hardest have been coastal states, which president trump and some of his allies have noted tend to vote more democratic. those coastal states have now bent their curve, as you can see, collectively, which is what you see on the left side of the screen. now, compare that to the curve of non-coastal states on the right. the places where cases are rising the quickest appear to be in more rural and, yes, redder areas. the data matches what other experts are seeing as well, including those in the white house task force. this is undisclosed task force data, obtained by nbc news, and it shows that the counties with the fastest rise in cases are located in states like tennessee, kansas, missouri, kentucky, and nebraska, among others, as you can see, sort of reinforcing that curve chart that we showed you. what this means for the reopening debate, though, is unclear. but it comes at a moment when the white house and public health experts appear to be on different pages when it comes to

reopening the country. the ap has obtained unpublished cdc guidelines that were shelved by the white house, apparently because west wing officials viewed them a bit too restrictive. they notably contradict current white house guidance on reopening, including when it's safe to resume nonessential traveler. now, president trump claims the u.s. has prevailed on testing, but yesterday a bipartisan panel of senators agreed that more testing and tracing is needed to successfully open up the country economically. this afternoon, a new house panel overseeing the government's coronavirus response held a virtual briefing with public health experts, who echoed those warnings. we're going to speak to the chairman of that committee in a moment. but we're going to begin with nbc news digital senior white house correspondent, shannon pettypiece. the president is speaking with governors at the white house right now, and he apparently said he does disagree with dr. fauci's answers at yesterday's hearing, warning against reopening too soon. by the way, along with us, medically, dr. amesh adalja and the hill's reid wilson, he's

author of "epidemic: balance balan ebola and the global scramble to prevent the next global outbreak." we know the president is meeting with two governors in the last hour, colorado and north dakota on their reopening plans. and it looks like we've now gotten the first reactions from him on what we saw yesterday. >> well, he was specifically asked about whether schools are -- will be reopening and the comments that fauci made yesterday. and he said that he was surprised by fauci's response to the question from senators about whether schools will be able to open in the fall. he said it was not an acceptable answer and said, we are reopening the country. now, just to go back real quick to what fauci had said yesterday, you know, he basically said, it sort of depends. he said, we have a very large country and the dynamics of the outbreak are different in different renal regions of the country, so i would imagine that the dynamics regarding reopening schools would be very different in one region versus another.

so leaving open the possibility that some schools would not be able to open. but the president clearly sending a message in the oval office and an interview he's going to have later today with maria bartiromo saying he thinks schools should be reopened in the fall, full stop. >> well, i assume this must be in reaction to the news of the cal state system closing down statewide for the fall. that had to -- is that the motive for him being on this topic over everything else? >> well, i mean, i think that, as well as these fauci comments yesterday. and i was talking to a trump outside adviser earlier today who is in contact regularly with people in the white house who was really focused on this school issue, saying that that was very concerning and in trump world, and the outer circle here, a lot of concern about the fact that schools wouldn't be opened, because, hey, listen, when schools don't open, not only on the college level, do you have colleges and college towns impacted, but parent who is struggle to go back to work. so that's going to really hamper the whole president's get the economy going again, heading into november plans if you don't

have schools open. >> it is. and look, we're going to go down the health bucket here a little bit. but, boy, if you have a whole bunch of college towns whose economies suddenly just disappear overnight because nobody's physically there, that also serves as another problem there. but let me focus a bit on what we saw yesterday at the hearings, today, and today a little bit at the house hearings. and dr. adalja, you saw the two maps we showed, where if you sort of split the country here and take the coastal states out of our nationwide curve, it's a different story. this virus does appear to be headed into a whole bunch of more rural parts of this country. but because there's no new york city-like outbreak, it does appear as if there's a lot of people who feel as if, well, new york city is getting better, so therefore the country is getting better. >> you have to remember that this is going to be heterogenius and we're going to have rolling

waves of outbreaks that occur over a period of two years until we have enough of a vaccine and enough of the population vaccinated. and when it comes to rural areas, many are not going to see anything close to what happened in new york city because of their population density. but the main overriding principle still has to be those rural places may not have that much hospital capacity. they may not have a health department that's resourced to do contact tracing. so when we start to peel back these restrictions, you have to really keep an eye on what's going on in the hospital and how overloaded is your health department with contact tracing. and that's going to have to be the key going forward. it's going to be different every place and it's important that places that didn't get hit actually fortify themselves to be able to deal with more cases. even if they're not new york city steel cases, we want to make sure that hospitals can do their normal operations. so in order to do that, you have to keep as many people with coronavirus out of the hospital as possible and make sure you have capacity for the ones that come. and that's going to be challenging in some rural areas. some places will do fine, but some places may find themselves in special, especially if they have an outbreak at a prison or a meat processing plant, that

can really put a hospital into troubl trouble. >> dr. adalja, if i asked you, what is the status of this virus in the country? >> this is something everyone has to deal with as part of their risk every time they step out of the door. we've gotten a lot better now in may than we were in march, but this isn't sting that is going to go away. this is something we'll be contending with until we get it right and we need to be careful that we don't put hospitals in a position where they can't take care of the patients that are there. i do think this is a long haul and not something that we should be declaring voie ining victory but we can think about moving forward in a careful, measured manner, looking at metrics like hospitalization data as well as the percent positive of tests to see where we are on this epidemic curve, but we have to be prepared to be doing this for some time. >> reid wilson, you spent a couple of years with a lot of experts when it comes to

epidemiology, viruses, when you wrote your book on ebola and sort of looking forward of lessons learned from that, for the next potential pandemic. okay, you spoke to a lot of people. you became an expert yourself on this. what lessons have we missed so far. >> we've missed just about every lesson that the obama administration learned in how to handle a pandemic. the -- basically, the most important thing in a -- in an outbreak like this is to democratize information. to make people aware of what they can do to protect themselves and to stop the spread of this virus. the goal in all of these lockdowns is not to defeat the virus totally. it's to get the virus's level down to a low enough place in which those contact tracing aer armies that you talked about can begin to do their actual jobs and identify the outbreaks when they are just two or three people, so they don't become major conflagrations of 200 to 300 or thousands of people. we have not demock k rcratized

information well enough at a federal level, and that's a big difference from the ebola outbreak when we had the president and dr. fauci and tom friedman on a couple of times talking about what people need to do to protect themselves. people are smart. people around the world are smart. if you tell them how to protect themselves and how to make sure that they don't contract this virus, they'll take some pretty dramatic steps to take care of their own health. we have to make sure that everybody has that information. >> reid, you had written earlier this week about sort of, almost like a marshal plan, sort of galvanizing the country. it seems like the easiest first step would be to create a contact tracing army for the country, and there seems to be no interest in the federal government to do this. we're aware that it is going to be harder now to do testing and tracing than it would have been two months ago. but it seems as if there has been no other choice. >> look, senator elizabeth warren and congressman andy

levin from michigan have introduced something -- well, they made reference to the ccc, stich the civilian conservation core back in the fdr days. and what we're seeing on a state level, some of these states are building pretty substantial contact tracing operations. massachusetts was one of the first. washington state has more than 1,300 contact tracers on staff. the state of california, 10,000 state workers have volunteered to be part of their contact tracing aere ining armies. and that's what we're going to need. if that leadership is not going to come from the federal level, it will have to come from the state level. and there are a lot of governors in a lot of places that are taking active steps towards that. an npr survey the over day shows that we pretty much doubled our contact tracing capacity on a state-by-state level in about the last two weeks. so we're on the right path, but this is a long-term problem and the leadership it looks like will have to come from the states, because it's not coming from the federal government. dr. adalja, what do you see

right now? do you think we are going to have -- let's just talk about a college campus. are we going to have the contact tracers and the testing capacity to make it fairly easy for your average-sized university to test students anytime they need to in a quick, rapid way? >> i think it's going to be daunting when it comes to a university. when you're talking about an elementary school or even a high school, it's a lot easier than thinking about a college with all of the ancillary people that work at a college. the fact that people are coming from all over the country to go to that college. and that can be something that's going to way on college administrator's minds about how can they do this safely. do they have the ability to test all of those individuals? are there student health services robust enough to be able to deal with that? and i can see some colleges going either way. some may say, we can do a lot of this online, these are adults, they know how to learn. and some people will say, we've got this taken care of and we can do it. i think it will be state by state and depend on the local dynamics where those colleges

are located and what they can do with technology. but it's going to be challenging moving forward until we have a vaccine for places like colleges. >> did it surprise you that the entire cal state system just went ahead and threw in the towel on in-person for the fall? or is this basically -- this is the beginning of what will be likely a lot of decisions like that? >> i was surprised by it happening this early. i understand with the number of people that they have, that that might have been something that really influenced what was going on, as well as hearing about what california was doing in terms of the state level and stay-at-home orders being extended in los angeles county. that may have been something that played a role there. but i do know that there are other colleges that are planning to be open in the fall. and i think that what's you're going to see. and hopefully we do get some colleges open and we can see how to do this, because we have to find a path forward and get best practices. because the virus isn't going anywhere. if everybody reflexively closes cl colleges down, i don't think we'll ever get to pint where people think it's safe to do this.

i think we have to find some way to move forward and learn how to manage this risk because it's not going anywhere. >> this is why it's like, let's have a national effort. let's get the contact tracing army and let's do this. shannon, before we leave this segment, there is some concern in the white house about how much time that the president and vice president spend together these days. are they going to be kept -- basically, much farther apart, both physically in washington and in general because of fear of corona? >> yeah. they are going to be -- officials were telling us this yesterday, that they were going to separate for the time being. i think the president just confirmed that in the oval office, talking to reporters right now. we have seen the vice president the past two days coming to the white house campus, wearing a mask and going inside the eisenhower executive office building, which is adjacent to the white house. we have not seen him in the white house or with the president. he skipped the briefing that the president had on monday. usually, they are together.

but, yes, after his staffer was infected, the vice president said he was going to be taking some time away from the white house. he didn't come to a national security meeting over the weekend, and now there seems to be a clear separation between the two to protect the chain of command going forward. >> very quickly, shannon, i haven't heard much from the white house on the house bill. do they have an opinion or are they basically letting the house and senate have the debate and staying out of it? >> i think they are staying out of it. they had the senators over yesterday, but i think this is one they definitely think is going to be a much heavier lift than the past two stimulus bills. there's a couple of things they've talked about wanting in it, like liability protection for companies, you know, pulling back the payroll tax. they've talked about that, but otherwise, i think they're going to let this one play out for a while. >> it certainly looks like it. anyway, shannon pettypiece at the white house, reid wilson at the hall, also the author of a book that right now, go read it.

it's about sort of planning for what we're living with now and what we learned during the ebola outbreak. thank you all. up ahead, the households its first hearing on the coronavirus. they did it virtually. i'll talk with the congressman who cheered the meeting. south carolina's jim clyburn about what might be the house's next steps. and later, is china hacking american health care to thwart our covid-19 response? the latest on the unusual accusation being leveled by the federal government. tion being l federal vegornment to everyone navigating these uncertain times...

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this select committee was not established to cast blame on past failures, foreign or domestic, or to search for the virus' origin, but rather to pursue future success. >> welcome back. that is house south carolina democratic congressman, jim clyburn, launched the house's select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis first briefing today.

experts heard from outside medical experts who gave their perspective on testing, tracing, and containment policies to track the coronavirus. it was called a briefing, not a hearing because they witnesses and members appeared over video conference. the full house is expected to meet to consider a sprawling coronavirus panckage that total more than $3 trillion. and has already been met by years from republicans in the house senate and been called dead on arrival by some inside the trump administration. congressman jim clyburn, the house majority whip joins me now. congressman clyburn, let me start with this. considering that not all the members of this committee seem to be happy that they're on this committee, how do you think today turned out? >> i think okay. thank you so much for having me. but i believe the committee was fine. we expect for there to be some

partisan posturing. we heard the comments made when the committee was first established. but this committee is attempting to track what the truman committee did back in 1941, when we were about to launch efforts into world war ii, harry truman, then a junior senator from missouri, looked back and watched what had happened after world war i and decided one committee being proactive was much better than having 16 committees being reactive. and that's what we're trying to do here >> all right. so what do you want this committee to do. the experts had were health experts, some with experience in government. what were you hoping to accomplish with today's hearing? >> well, you know as well as i do that there's tremendous angst taking place in the public about

where this virus is, how the people who are contracting it are being treated. whether or not there's something untoward about the proliferation of this virus in black and brown communities. the death rate is four times in african-american communities than in white communities and there's a big problem so we had the health experts in here to tell us about what we need to do for testing, for tracing, isolating, and treating. that is going to be very, very important. and i started this committee with that kind of briefing, because that's what the ranking members said was the most important thing to him. so we used his comments to say, let's start off with looking at that and what we can do to determine how this money is being spent. this is going to be money that's going to be spent already we've appropriated almost $2 trillion.

we are introducing -- we introduced on yesterday, we'll be voting on friday, legislation that may be as much as $3.5 trillion. the question is, is that money going to be spent efficiently, effectively, and equitiably? we don't want to see all the money going in certain zip codes and not others. >> are you going to produce regular audits, regular reports? what will be the end product that citizens can view and see to find out, okay, hey, this was on the up and up, this wasn't. is it like, do you consider yourself an auditor, i guess, is what i'm asking. >> i don't know. well, before i came to congress, i served on the audit committee of the board of a bank, so i know a little bit about auditing. but what we are going to do basically is try to determine

whether or not all of the people who get the money are legitimate. well, already we know that some people have sent the money back. in fact, our first business was sending the letter out, turned out to be five corporations all public corporations, by the way. each one of them got over $10 million, or at least $10 million. and we said to them. it looks to us like you were not deserving of this money. you should send it back. and if you think you are deserving, please send us the reasons that you think you are. one of them immediately sent the money back. $10 million. and it's going to cost $2 million for a year for this committee to operate. and already, we have retrieved $10 million. so i think the committee has already determined its worth. hopefully, the other four, if they don't send the money back, they will make the case as to why they should have it. we don't want anybody not getting money who would deserve

it. >> let me talk about the logistics of this meeting today. steve scalise, your ranking member -- colleague on here, he said the remote meeting runs very counter to the message that we can safely rope. congress should be leading the way. we should not be the last back. what do you say to that? >> i would say to mr. scalise, we listen to the attending physician. the attending physician drives this. he tells us what we think -- what he thinks we ought to be doing. i'm pleased to come back. i'll be going back tomorrow. so this is not a problem for us. the problem is whether or not congress ought to be coming back when we have not done what is necessary to have the testing, tracing, isolation and treatment done for those people who keep the capital open. i told speaker pelosi that i'm not comfortable coming back to washington when the white house says, we'll give you a thousand kits so that members can be tested. i want those people who are

scrubbing the floors, opening the doors, polishing the furniture, moving it around. i want those people to get in line first. and then i want our staffs to be second in line. and i think the members of congress ought to be third in line. i'm not going to jump the line in front of those people that work hard every day, trying to take care of their children, and trying to keep food on the table. and we getting out in front of them. so that's why we are back there. when they make the kits available for all of those people, then that's when i want to come back. >> all right. and the final question i have for you is on what we're seeing with the big bill that you guys introduced yesterday. and on one hand, you're getting hammered on the right. it's a liberal wish list. but you also have some progressives upset, for instance, you didn't include congresswoman pramila jayapal's idea of trying to have all

payrolls or try to cover almost some payrolls for some businesses. so what do you say to the lest that feels as if -- well, if you're doing a laundry list bill, let them have some more on it, too, since this is going to be a long, drawn-out negotiation, anyway? >> well, i like our bill myself. paycheck guarantee is great. and i think doing it this way is an efficient way to do it. in fact, i think it's the most efficient way to do it. but we have to pay for all of these things and when you're passing the bill, trying to take care of state and local governments, that's primary with us. trying to take care of those people that we named the bill after. those heroes, those essential workers, the people i just talked about. when you're trying to make sure that they're taken care of, then you look at the other things. and we have just got to the point where the bill just got too big. now there are things in this bill that will lay a foundation for us getting to what miss

jayapal and others will want to get to. and i'll include myself in that, as well. >> congressman jim clyburn, the house democratic whip, thanks for coming on, sharing your views. you want remote voting or proxy voting. what would be your preference? >> well, i'm going along with proxy voting right now. i think that when you moving away from tradition, you need to do it incrementally. >> yep. that's -- that's usually the way congress works. you guys are incremental with your change, which in some ways is -- a lot of people would say, is a wise way to move. anyway, up ahead -- thaurnk you sir. up ahead, the growing unrest over the calls to stay at home in michigan. protesters are set to descend on the state capital again tomorrow i'll ask michigan governor

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welcome back. right now, michigan governor gretchen whitmer is waging a multi-front fight in her effort to confront the coronavirus in her state. one fight is with some of her constituents who are planning another large protest against her strict stay-at-home order. tomorrow in the state capital of lansing, this was the scene earlier this month when protesters, some of whom carried guns demonstrated outside the michigan capital. the other fight whitmer is waging is with her own legislature, which is suing her over whether she overstepped her

authority in issuing this order. this all comes as michigan, who has the seventh most cases and fourth most dates of any state in the country appears to be flattening its curve, as you can see on the screen there. and mugge's democratic governic governor, gretchen whitmer, joins me now. so governor, let me ask you, where do you feel like michigan is right now. and you were cautiously optimistic monday. where are you today? >> i'm still cautiously optimistic. we have a six-phase plan to reengage our economy, as we continue to build up our public health apparatus through more testing and tracing, plan for isolation when we do see, you know, positive cases come. we also have got this reengagement where we assess risk in inherent and different sectors of our economy and mitigate that with the appropriate protocols. so it will be like turning a dial. we'll continue taking steps forward, as long as our numbers continue to decline. but this aggressive stance we

took early on has worked. and by and large, the people of michigan have done the right thing and contributed to the success that we've had and saved a lot of lives along the way. >> are you -- what gives you -- what -- why are you convinced that everything you did has worked? i say this because, i think you're probably right, as well, but a lot of people are wondering, well, okay, some states, they see the state comparisons and they'll see one state was really strict and look at their numbers. and another state wasn't at all. and the numbers will look exactly the same. so there's plenty of people out there going, they're not sure whether this strict lockdown was worth it or not. what do you say to those folks. yeah, well, and of course -- and of course, you know what, this is a novel virus. we're learning something about it every single day. this is -- there's still no cure, there's still no vaccine. as dr. fauci from, you know, the national level to dr. janelle k. dunne from here at the state level would tell you, this is the most important tool we have

is to stay away from each other. this virus can't come from me to you if we aren't together. so social distancing is absolutely crucial. our modeling shows that by this point, if we hadn't taken these actions, we would have lost another 3,200 people in the state of michigan. that is unconscionable that, you know, the thought that not doing something would have resulted in that kind of death. i know that it's been painful, i know that economic pain, the anxiety, the fear of not being able to open up your business again or the lost job is real for people. and yet, not getting our house in order on the health front just begets a longer and more painful experience on the economic front. >> how concerned were you when you saw the report, and i'm sure you got your own data, that cell phone data showed that less than 50% of the state, basically, abided by the stay-at-home order. and of all the states with

stay-at-home orders, basically your constituents were the -- were the most likely to not abide by them. >> i think, you know, as we look at "the new york times" mapping, i think it's important to really understand the data. and we are analyzing it, as well. but movement in and of itself does not spread the virus. it is the congregation, it is dropping the social distancing, it is not wearing the mask. i think people in michigan have seen that these actions that they have taken have produced better results that we are in a stronger position today. and that maybe that's given us a false sense of confidence and we have to keep that in check. we have to make sure that we stay vigilant here, but what we see in terms of the numbers is -- gives us reason for cautious optimism. now, to the extent people drop these social distancing and we see our numbers increase, we're going to have to move back. and i think that's the concerning irony of all of these

gather erering eings at the cap the more people come together, the more covid-19 will spread and spread into places in michigan that it's not currently. and that's the sad irony here, is the more times that happens, the longer we'll have to consider things like a stay-at-home order and none of us wants that. >> what's your theory as to why you're taking more protester incoming really than anybody else? is it organized? do you think this is organic or not? >> chuck, if you look at poll after poll, the vast majority of people believe that we're doing the right thing. it doesn't mean everyone's happy with it. i know that. i'm not happy to have to be in this moment. but most people believe this is the right thing to do. we saw how scary it was in the early days. many of us have lost loved ones. i lost a dear friend of mine in

the last 24 hours and it is heartbreaking. and no one wants to lose a loved one to covid-19. yet, we also know that when these events happen, they are political rallies. make no mistake about it. it's not just people that disagree. this is an organized effort. they bring confederate flags, which is not something you see in michigan very often. they bring swatstikas and long guns. they bring their anti-choice propaganda. and i think this is more about a political rally than anything. and i think it has festered and supported by political groups, and i think it's unfortunate, because we should not be political in this moment. every one of us should be able to recognize, we're not one another's enemies. the enemy is a virus. and it does not distinguish based on party or state line. we all have to be, you know, on the same side together to fight this virus. and the more quickly we can do that, the better off we're all

going to be. >> 110,000 people in the big house. when is that going to happen again? >> chuck, everyone wants to know the question, we're all big football fans here in michigan, and my daughter is a rigds freshman at the university of michigan, so i'm getting it in my own household wanting to know -- >> is she going to be on campus? how about that? >> i know! >> is she going to be on campus? >> i can't tell her. we already know we've missed traditional graduation ceremony and it stinks. but we've got to follow the science and the data and we have to make decisions based on facts. not emotion, not tweets, not political pressure. we have to do the right thing in this moment and make the best educated decisions we have so we avoid a second wave. that would be more devastating than this first experience. >> the reason i'm asking you about michigan, you saw the news with cal state, and i know you don't -- i don't think you have the unilateral authority about the university systems, but i am

curious, do you expect michigan state, university of michigan, you know, to have students on campus this fall? >> well, what i know is that these universities are led by some of the finest minds in both k academia as well as in science and medicine. both presidents have been a part of my michigan economic recovery council. i know that they're worried about the same things we're talking about here and we're going to make decisions that are in the best interests in the health and safety of our students. but these are financial universities and we've got to make sure we get this right for the long run, as well as this class of 2020 that wants to go to school. >> you didn't give a very -- i don't know whether to see if you're trying to avoid saying for sure, but are you optimistic or pessimistic about kids on campus in the fall? >> i'll just say this, chuck. you know, it's going to be a tough call. and anywhere that we congregate in masses is going to be

inherently dangerous when you have a virus like covid-19. and so we have a vaccine or a treatment, a protocol that will help people who get inflicted with covid-19, it's probably not going to be safe to have masked groups congregating. and i'm going to listen to people like dr. cal dunne and dr. fauci. i am going to pay attention and work with these university presidents to make sure that we keep people safe, because that's the most important thing in this moment. >> sound like you're going to have a lot of lobbying inside your house when it comes to ann arb arbor, that's for sure. governor gretchen whitmer, democrat from michigan, thank you for coming on and sharing your views. i appreciate it. >> thanks, chuck. up next, the cyber wars in the age of coronavirus. the feds warn that hackers linked to china are targeting u.s. biomedical research. stick around. s. biomedical reseh stick around probiotic and the gastroenterologists who developed it. align helps to soothe your occasional digestive upsets twenty-four seven. so where you go, the pro goes.

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welcome back. china has been notoriously tight-lipped about what they know about the coronavirus, but

they have apparently not been shy about gathering our information. the fbi and cisa, the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency released a joint statement today asserting that chinese hackers have been targeting coronavirus research labs in an attempt to, quote, identify any illicitly obtained intellectual property and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing from networks affiliated with covid-19 related research. that warning came as a warning to the labs that china's efforts could jeopardize their work, urging them to take cybersecurity measures to protect their data from future hacks. our chief foreign correspondent, richard engel, spoke to a chief cybersecurity expert in england about what these hackers have been after. take a listen to what he found. >> the state actors, are they attacking health care systems to steal information or to harm them and hobble societies of their adversaries and enemies? >> i have not seen attempts to disrupt health care. but we are seeing attacks on

some university research into covid-related matches and we're seeing interests in strategic health bodies and so forth. so i think it is more the risk around how our response to covid is working. the race is on to get vaccines. the race is on to get better data. people want to know what other countries are doing in this crisis. that's the sort of thing we're seeing from the state actors. >> and richard engel joins me now. so richard, china hacking intellectual property. it's like, since the internet was invented. that's what china has been doing, it seems like. that isn't a surprise. i guess the bigger question i have is, american pharmaceutical companies are warned and labs are warned this is happening. and the government is saying, hey, secure your stuff. should the federal government be doing this? should this be considered critical infrastructure now? >> well, we did see that warning also from the fbi and i think it was put out publicly to tell

companies that they should be on the lookout. and that official that i spoke to hear in the uk, he is a top official from the british equivalent of the nsa. they don't speak on the record in public very often. so i think there is a lot of concern, the fact that we saw this joint statement in the u.s. i was able to speak to this top british official. and they're not just pointing the finger at china. iran has also been accused of trying to hack into a company. so the -- what i was told was that it's not that we're seeing more hacking. it's not that the overall level has increased, but before, while china or other state actors might be looking at energy companies or specific political parties, now they're focusing their attention on scientists, research groups, and also criminals are trying to take advantage of this covid moment, because while before they would be pretending to be nigerian

princes or things like that, now they're selling fake tests or trying to convince people that they can get money as part of a government small business support scheme and things like that. >> but, richard, this is all part of what appears to be, i guess, a perverted version of the space race, right? we had the cold war space race between the soviets and the americans. now it seems as if it's the americans and the chinese that are competing for sort of world hero to save the globe from the pandemic and that is -- that is certainly motivating on the chinese side. is that fair to say? >> i think there are a lot of comparisons to the space race. one is the prestige that you just talked about. there's a military component to this, because if you are able to tap into what other countries are doing, finding out more about how the virus has exposed weaknesses in their communications systems, in their

critical infrastructure, things that hadn't been considered critical infrastructure in the past, like supermarkets or food delivery are now considered -- have now been much more exposed, how well they work. and of course, there's a financial component to this. because whoever is the first to create a vaccine or a transformative drug has the potential to make an enormous fortune. and to rewrite the narrative. so if china is now being blamed internationally by many people, certainly by the trump administration, for unleashing this virus and then lying about the early data, you can imagine how they would be able to spin it if they were the first to come up with, by any means possible, a vaccine and they could say, not only did they contain it, but then they cured it. >> well, and richard, didn't we just sort of answer the question, what's motivating the chinese here on not being very transparent? they want to keep whatever they

know to themselves. i mean, have we now answered why the chinese are not sharing what they know with the world? >> well, to a degree. it was the chinese that initially put out the formula for this virus and put it out publicly. and that has helped a lot of these current research efforts. i just spoke with a virologist today who -- here in the uk who was praising china for taking the data that they had very early on and saying, this is the virus that has just come up. now, should they have done it earlier than they did? they still did it in the early days and that data was important to help create some of the viruses that are in trials now. but do they want to hoover up as much information for all the reasons we just spoke about? absolutely. >> yep. >> yep. that's for sure. richard engel, reporting for us across the poppend. thank you, sir. be safe.

we'll be right back on more with what the president just said moments ago disagreeing with dr. fauci on his hearing testimony yesterday and directly krigz critici criticizing one of his answers. you'll hear it after the break. s you'll hear it after the break alright so...oh. i'll start... oh, do you want to go first? no, no i don't...you go. i was just going to say on slide 7, talking about bundling and saving...umm... jamie, you're cutting out. sorry i'm late! hey, whoever's doing that, can you go on mute? oh, my bad! i was just saying there's a typo on slide 7. bundle home & auto for big discosnouts. i think that's supposed to say discounts.

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to ewhether you'reting these uncaring for your. family at home or those at work, principal is by your side. we're working hard to answer your questions. like helping you understand what the recently passed economic package can mean for you. we're more than a financial company. we're a "together we can get through anything" company. now, more than ever. welcome back. we are just now getting our fist look at the president's q&a today with reporters at the white house, which happened a few moments ago. it was tape playback, as we call it in this business. and as we mentioned, the president dismissed dr. fauci's warnings about reopening too

quickly, and accused him of playing all sides of the debate. take a listen. >> dr. fauci yesterday was a little cautious on reopening the economy too soon. do you share his concerns? >> about what? >> about reopening the economy too soon, some states. >> look, he wants to play all sides of the equation. >> when you say dr. fauci is playing both sides, are you suggesting that -- >> well, i was surprised -- i was surprised by his answer, actually, because, you know, it's just -- to me it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools. >> let's go back to nbc's shannon pettypiece there. shannon, you had hinted at this, but i have to say he certainly is implying as if somehow fauci says one thing to him and another thing to them. any evidence of that? >> well, we don't know what fauci has actually been saying to the president about schools, but the answer that we believe

the president is responding to is when fauci said that the reopening of schools is going to have to be done on a regional basis. well live in a big country. there is not going to be a one size fits all answer oreopening schools. the president is saying we're reopening this country, and that means reopening schools too. i think we're seeing some this tension that i have been hearing from trump's allies over the past few days and weeks about fauci now coming out into open from the president in the oval office. >> well, we saw that the quote, fauci fatigue phrase, and he got some of the rand paul's challenging of dr. fauci yesterday got some praise from some of the president's favorite allies on cable television. is some of that possibly driving the president on this? >> well, you know, you mentioned fox news, which is often this echo chamber between the president and the network. and there was a big push last night i would say by the primetime hosts on fox news to attack fauci and to try and

criticize him. i know i've been hearing from some of the president's close allies for a while now criticism of fauci, and the concern by them that fauci is the one steering the ship here. they feel fauci is not going to be the one who decides when skooms are reopened, it's going to be the president. and even jared kushner in a "time" magazine article the other day said it's people who are elected officials are the ones who are going to be making these decision, not necessarily one scientist. >> i think dr. fauci himself also agreed on that during the back and forth with senator paul. shannon pettypiece doing double duty for me, started the show, ended the show, thank you. much appreciated. at least it's a decent day on the north lawn. >> any time. i'm here all week. >> that's all for us tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." i appreciate you tuning. in "the beat" with ari melber starts after this short break. t. their successes... and...their hardships.

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welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. we have a packed show tonight. the president colliding with his own top health officials again, breaking with dr. fauci. these are new comments. they're getting trump in some hot water, but they're important because we want you to have the medical fax. brand-new pressure on attorney general barr accused of undermining the rule of law to help more trump associates to undermine the most serious consequences of the mueller probe. it's a story that would on any night a big deal. and in washington, house judiciary c