The onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a grand challenge that resulted in an instantaneously spreading catastrophe, is a rare opportunity to explore the global interorganizational network of international actors—comprising multinational companies, intergovernmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. We contend that understanding the properties of this global network, and how they have emerged, can be useful for adapting to current and future grand challenges such as societal and environmental crises. Using a unique GDELT big dataset from the world’s media, we extract and analyze the reported interactive dynamics between international actors before and after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the COVID-19 outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern. We find that the global network was conflictive before the pandemic and, instead of becoming cooperative during the ongoing crisis, is evolving into a sparser and much more conflictive one. We discuss the implications of our discoveries on the theoretical and empirical understanding of the global interorganizational network and collective action to adapt to grand challenges.