A top U.S. intelligence official recently confirmed that the Chinese regime was seeking to develop “super soldiers” through biotech. Published research papers on the topic show that the regime has been researching this technology for years.
Director of National Intelligence () wrote in an op-ed titled “China is National Security Threat No.1” published in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 3, that U.S. intelligence has ascertained China has “conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army [official name of China’s military] in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities.”
Ratcliffe added, “There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
As early as 2010, Guo Jiwei, a professor at China’s Third Military Medical University, highlighted the importance of biology in future warfare in his book, “War for Biological Dominance.” Guo wrote: “If it becomes reality that military biotechnology can be used to improve and enhance human capabilities, then soldiers’ physical and intelligent deficiencies can be overcome and they will become �?all-round fighters.’”
Major General He Fuchu, who is also vice president of the state-run Academy of Military Sciences, said in a 2017 article: “the trend of the biological military revolution may be going from the power of intelligence to the power of brain control and the power to control life.”
In particular, defense experts have warned about the CCP’s research in biological experiments with gene-editing to enhance its troops’ combat capabilities.
In 2016, a PhD dissertation published by a PLA researcher at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences drew attention. The paper characterized -Cas gene-editing technology as one of “three primary technologies that might boost troops’ combat effectiveness.”
And during an Atlantic Council panel on gene editing in September 2016, Dr. Pierre Noel, then a non-resident fellow at the Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, said the technology could be a military threat. “It’s possible that in the future, as the technology becomes more sophisticated, countries may be able to implement gene-editing technology to design…super soldiers…with great muscle force and strength.”
Elsa Kania, an expert on Chinese defense technology at the think tank Center for a New American Security, and Wilson VornDick, a consultant and former Navy officer, also warned that the PLA was using a combination of biotech and artificial intelligence to develop “CRISPR-related advances in therapeutics or enhancement.”
They wrote in an August 2019 article for U.S. military news site Defense One that such research was part of China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion, whereby private sector innovations are leveraged to help advance the PLA’s technological developments.
One of those private companies is Beijing Genomics (BGI), which has collaborated with the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology, according to Kania and VornDick’s research. BGI also has partnerships with U.S. research institutions on human genome sequencing—which has .
CRISPR technology drew widespread controversy in 2018, when Chinese scientist announced that he used the gene-editing tech to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls, making them immune to HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). It raised concerns about the ethics of gene-editing experiments.
Lin Yan contributed to this report.