China's army of super soldiers: How Beijing is ruthlessly amassing the world's biggest DNA database - much of it harvested from millions in the West

With a plump, barrel-shaped body and eight stubby legs, the water bear may not be a beauty – but it is almost indestructible. With few of the ethical constraints that govern genomic research in the West, China has made the greatest strides towards that terrifying goal All Chinese companies are compelled by law to share data and support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts The head of GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, has warned that synthetic biology and genetics, alongside artificial intelligence, are technologies in which China is seeking to dominate in order to gain control of ‘the global operating system’. The US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence has warned that the system may be ‘a global collection mechanism for Chinese government genetic databases, providing China with greater raw numbers and diversity of human genome samples as well as access to sensitive personal information about key individuals around the world.’ BGI has worked with the Chinese army on at least 12 research projects that include efforts to improve ‘population quality’ and on genetic research to combat hearing loss and altitude sickness in soldiers, according to a review of research, patent filings and other documents obtained by the Reuters news agency. Policymakers in the West are only just waking to the disturbing economic and military dangers of CCP control over the very building blocks of life When it comes to gaining an economic or military edge, the size and diversity of genetic data is crucial The Covid-19 pandemic proved especially useful for the mass collection of DNA within China, but Beijing was also able to export testing facilities in the name of helping fight the virus globally, donating mobile labs to 20 countries on four continents, including Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. The clumsy and crude poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter by Russian spies using the nerve agent novichok in 2018 would look amateur compared to the nightmare of perfectly tailored and hard-to-detect genetic weapons The US’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned: ‘Vulnerabilities in specific individuals revealed by genomic data or health records could be used to help target these individuals.’ The fear is that the data reveals how different population groups have differing susceptibilities to diseases or other disorders.