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In the US alone, the horrifying costs of the pandemic can be measured in the millions of Americans infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 and the many hundreds of thousands confirmed dead with or from COVID‐19 to date (Johns Hopkins University, 2022). The deadly havoc unleashed by the COVID‐19 pandemic has occupied center stage around the world since 2020. The paper concludes by addressing the crucial role of executive leadership as an underlying factor in all three perspectives and discussing why the US president is ultimately responsible for ensuring a healthy policy process to guard against the pathologies implicated in the federal government's sub‐optimal response to the COVID‐19 crisis. The analysis highlights the extent to which the factors identified by previous studies of policy surprise and failure in other security domains are relevant for health security. Through an empirical exploration guided by three explanatory perspectives-psychological, bureau‐organizational, and agenda‐political-developed from the strategic surprise, public administration, and crisis management literature, the authors seek to shed light on the mechanisms that contributed to the underestimation of the coronavirus threat by the Trump Administration and the slow and mismanaged federal response. This article examines the Trump Administration's inability to mount a timely and effective response to the COVID‐19 outbreak, despite ample warning.