John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is experimenting with “gene editing” to boost its military.
“It’s one of the things our intelligence shows that China is doing,” Ratcliffe said in an interview last Sunday. “The People’s Republic of China has 2 million strong in its military, and it’s trying to make them stronger through gene editing… “[It’s] just one of the ways that China is trying to essentially dominate the planet and set the rules in the world order.”
“There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power,” Ratcliffe said.
In 2018, He Jianjui, a Chinese researcher, used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to alter the DNA of embryos of seven Chinese couples.
In 2019, Chinese scientists indicated the Communist Chinese regime would conduct human experiments with CRISPR gene-editing capabilities to enhance the capabilities of its People’s Liberation Army soldiers.
.@DNI_Ratcliffe said that although China has not caught up with the United States as the world’s foremost superpower, policymakers should not be complacent.
He warns the Chinese government is experimenting with gene editing.
https://t.co/oMJZHz5WsK— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 8, 2020
Last year, Elsa Kania, a Research Fellow with Georgetown’s Center for Security & Emerging Technology and an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Technology & National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, co-authored an article for Defense One that stated the Communist Chinese government “is pursuing military applications for biology and looking into promising intersections with other disciplines, including brain science, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence.”
“While the potential leveraging of CRISPR to increase human capabilities on the future battlefield remains only a hypothetical possibility at the present,” she co-wrote, “there are indications that Chinese military researchers are starting to explore its potential.”
Ratcliffe made abundantly clear that should the Communist Chinese succeed in their quest to dominate the globe – superseding the United States to become the world’s superpower, it would imperil “individual liberties, freedoms” around the world. He added that “free enterprise [is] all at stake.”
Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is still reeling over getting caught executing capitalism by selling $58 dollar sweatshirts on her AOC merch website.
