U.S. intelligence has shown that China has conducted “human testing” on members of the People’s Liberation Army in the hope of developing soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities,” the top U.S. intelligence official said Friday.
What We Know:
- John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, mentioned in a lengthy Wall Street Journal op-ed that China poses the pre-eminent national security danger to the U.S.A. “There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power,” expressed Ratcliffe, a Republican former member of Congress from Texas.
- His office and the CIA did not quickly respond to requests to elaborate on the notion that China sought to create “super soldiers” as we see in Hollywood films like “Captain America,” “Bloodshot” and “Universal Soldier.”
- The past year, two American students wrote a paper examining China’s aspirations to apply biotechnology to the battlefield, as well as what they said were signs that China was interested in using gene-editing technology to intensify human and possibly soldier performance.
- The students mainly investigated Chinese research using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” CRISPR has been utilized to treat genetic diseases and modify plants, but Western scientists consider it immoral to seek to manipulate genes to increase healthy people’s performance.
“While the potential leveraging of CRISPR to increase human capabilities on the future battlefield remains only a hypothetical possibility at the present, there are indications that Chinese military researchers are starting to explore its potential,” the students wrote, Elsa Kania, a specialist on Chinese defense technology located at the Center for New American Security, and Wilson VornDick, an adviser on China matters and former Navy officer.
- Spokespeople of the Chinese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II,” he expressed. “The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily, and technologically.”
As NBC News has previously reported, Biden and his foreign policy advisers recognize that China poses a significant threat. Still, they say they consider the Trump administration offered more bluster than substance in response.
