“The CCP is executing a plan to build a DNA database on every man, woman, and child on the planet. The database includes Americans, whose DNA they’re collecting with large cyber hacks, corporate acquisitions, and other methods.”
So observed Congressman Mike Gallagher in opening remarks that must have gotten the attention of attendees.
Gallagher chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which held a hearing the other day on the CCP’s scavenging of DNA data. The hearing came a day after the Senate Homeland Security Committee advanced a bill to prohibit giving federal dollars to Chinese biotech companies deemed a risk to national security.
Funding follies
If a ban must be imposed, this must mean that it is currently possible to give federal dollars to Chinese firms, including tech firms, including biotech firms, deemed a risk to national security.
Cybernews reports (March 8, 2024):
The legislation—titled The Prohibiting Foreign Access to American Genetic Information Act of 2024—would prevent any “at risk” biotech company, and their subsidiaries, from receiving US taxpayer dollars through federal contracts, grants, and loans….
Biological data, such as DNA sequences, can be exploited for military purposes, used to invade privacy, engineer pathogens to target populations or food supply and violate human rights, according to the bill….
According to the US intelligence community, the CCP has [made] concerted efforts to acquire human genetic data through biotech companies, including the BGI Group (formally known as the Beijing Genomics Institute), WuXi AppTec, MGI Tech and Complete Genomics, a life sciences company that has developed a DNA sequencing platform….
The legislation prohibits federal contact with the biotech companies listed above, among others, as well as their affiliates and any companies that use their equipment or services, although pre-existing contracts have been exempted from the bill.
Why is it possible for the federal government to fund these Chinese firms to begin with? Do a great many constituents of American politicians have a vested interest in making it easier for China to conquer the world? Can’t we enact a much more sweeping ban on federal funding of foreign organizations that either already act against or could easily be bribed or forced to act against the interests of the US and its citizens?
But it seems that reasonable legislative protections from bad actors often have to be secured a little bit at a time, no matter how urgently necessary.
Dippy diplomacy
If we can’t get prompt action here, perhaps we may at least hope that the rote complaints of the Chinese Communist Party—which has announced that US concern is fact-disrespecting, ideologically biased, excuse-abusing, unreasonable, unjust, unfair, discriminatory, and groundless—will fall on deaf ears.
“The US side should respect the basic facts, abandon ideological bias, stop abusing various excuses to suppress Chinese companies unreasonably, and provide fair, just, and non-discriminatory treatment to Chinese companies in their operations,” huffs Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu, who also puffs that accusations of theft by China of American genetic information are “groundless” and “another example of the US making up excuses and using all means to suppress Chinese companies.”
All due respect, zero, shove it Liu.
