Should the world be helping China make bioweapons?
A British Member of Parliament who has been sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party for opposing its brutal treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is now calling attention to a threat that he says the British government is failing to oppose: China’s access to genetic information in the UK (The Telegraph, “Britain is ignoring China’s most sinister threat yet,” Iain Duncan Smith, April 5, 2024).
Like other advanced technologies, genomics, when used legitimately, can help create new drugs to fight diseases like cancer. However, its dual-use potential means it can also be used to create targeted bioweapons or pathogens. Indeed, worryingly, the CCP has already used genomic data to profile ethnic minorities whilst using human embryos for performance modification.
The United States has now woken up to this threat, and recently introduced landmark legislation hampering the ability of foreign adversaries to collect the genomic data of US citizens. The bill, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, prohibits Chinese genomics giants, such as BGI Group and MGI Tech, from accessing federal contracts.
Yet again, the UK’s position in this debate is a mess. Last year, the Government admitted BGI was a “danger point” in the UK’s science and technology ecosystem, yet it continues to allow BGI access to our genomics sector.
BGI Group may be a nominally private company, but, Smith notes, it “operates the Chinese government’s key laboratories and national gene bank” and has worked with the People’s Liberation Army “to develop pre-natal tests sold across the world and from which gene data is returned to China.”
Smith adds that public contractors in Britain work with Chinese genomics companies while “still having access to sensitive contracts with the Ministry of Defence, National Crime Agency and Porton Down.”
The title suggests that BGI’s activities represent China’s “most sinister threat yet.” There’s a lot of competition for this superlative. But the threat is sinister and the British government, like other governments, should stop enabling this and all the other sinister things that China is doing.
Also derelict are the UK firms who provide weaponizable genetic information to CCP-tied companies and whose principals cannot be oblivious—unless they work to make themselves oblivious—of the nature of the Chinese state and the bad things that can be done with this data.
