US Intelligence Officials Say Chinese Government Is Collecting Americans' DNA (cbsnews.com) 95
schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: The largest biotech firm in the world wasted no time in offering to build and run COVID testing labs in Washington, contacting its governor right after the first major COVID outbreak in the U.S. occurred there. The Chinese company, the BGI Group, made the same offer to at least five other states, including New York and California, 60 Minutes has learned. This, along with other COVID testing offers by BGI, so worried Bill Evanina, then the country's top counterintelligence officer, that he authorized a rare public warning. "Foreign powers can collect, store and exploit biometric information from COVID tests" declared the notice. Evanina believes the Chinese are trying to collect Americans' DNA to win a race to control the world's biodata. Jon Wertheim speaks to Evanina and others for an investigation into how personal data, particularly biodata, has become a precious commodity and in the wrong hands, poses threats to national security and the economy.
Targeted biological warfare (Score:2, Interesting)
Makes things simpler to do if you can target a particular set of traits for a section of the population. Just like how covid is worse for some types of people and not others.
This info can be misused in all sorts of interesting ways if you're looking to start a war.
Re: Targeted biological warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Takes a lab assistant and $150 for a CRISPR kit, to wipe out humanity.
It's only a matter of time. Which makes me and the rest of the life on this planet happy.
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Don't be an idiot. I'm pretty sure he was talking about this [snackworks.ca].
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Re:Targeted biological warfare (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking let's entertain some alternative theories.
They're going to produce Americans, but at a much lower cost, and undercut the US.
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Why would you think that? America is one of the most diverse countries in the world and one of the most successful ones. The economic, academic, political, and immigration structures have all supported a large amount of hugely successful innovations. Saying no one wants more Americans is like saying no one wants more mutts. Some racists may prefer not to have more mixed-background people running around but I know of one very tolerant country that loves it. I live there.
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Anime Lives Matter
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I think more Americans is the last thing anybody wants. Historically they don't even want more Chinese.
Historically maybe. But not anymore [cnn.com]
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They're going to produce Americans, but at a much lower cost, and undercut the US.
I'm worried about what they'll do with those Americans. From what we've learned about their wet markets do they eat about anything.
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Re: Targeted biological warfare (Score:1)
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Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!
Monopolies (Score:2)
Isn't that what every monopoly wants? Advertisers have been trying to achieve this for years. Government has sought to brainwash us with public "education" that emphasizes compliance. At this point, most people do fifteen minutes of actual work a week at their jobs, and spend the rest scrolling through Facebook while ignoring meetings. We are the perfect cattle.
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GDP growth is not CCP's goal, it's a means to a cause.
CCP's biggest near term goal is reuniting with Taiwan ... which will almost certainly isolate them. By then they want the power, autarky and weakness of enemies to be able to protect themselves and project power.
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You mean the CCP's goal is screwing Taiwan back into China, reuniting has nothing to do with it. It's all about dick size and the fear that some free Chinese might cut the CCP's off one day.
Command economies (Score:2)
China has been losing interest in American trade as the cost of Chinese labor rises.
They have a command economy, a feature of socialist societies.
If we go away, they have no economic competition, and therefore can run the world however they please.
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But anonymously slapping them around until they lose their domestic production capacity can be immensely profitable for a while.
The old strategy is starting to wear thin as corporate America starts to understand the real costs of offshoring production and at the same time is realizing that there are even cheaper places than China they can offshore to.
Re:Targeted biological warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, good grief. Do you know why the Israelis finally gave up on designing bioweapons to use against the Palestinians? Because they found that there is no way to refine the targeting. Sephardic Jews are genetically almost indistinguishable from other peoples who live in the area.
Now look at the population of the US. My genetic makeup includes British, French, German, and probably Huron Indian. My wife is Peruvian, so that's Inca and Spanish. The people next door to us on one side are gringo and Mexican, on the other side are from Tajikistan, and across the street is a household of Filipinos next door to a family of Koreans. Down the street are Chinese, Chamorro, east African, and Dutch households.
And you think they're going to create a bio-weapon to target Americans? Get your head out of your ass.
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Dude, stop spying on my neighborhood! Or... Hello neighbor?
Re:Targeted biological warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
Han Chinese and Caucasians are a lot further removed genetically ... and there are plenty of Caucasians yet in the US. As Corona has shown, you don't need a kill weapon to devastate an enemy economically and China will almost certainly be a lot more sanguine about a bit of friendly fire than Israel.
That said, too clear an ethnic selection criteria would almost certainly result in nukes flying. To design a bioweapon to hurt America and Europe, it would probably look something like Corona.
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To design a bioweapon to hurt America and Europe, it would probably look something like Corona.
Why? This "bioweapon" would have to be the most stupidly designed weapon due to a huge dependency on American and European political obstinacy to mask wearing.
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The obvious (Score:2)
All they have to do is target those of European heritage.
The rest will have nothing to unite them, and will fall into line.
Same plan that was behind the Hart-Celler Act, when you think about it.
no let's play global thermonuclear war! (Score:2)
no let's play global thermonuclear war!
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It is also the exact data required to better treat any medical condition. However in an era of corporate promoted cold war for profit, every thing is turned to evil.
Get over it you fucking morons. End the end they will be able to use DNA and AI to model human cellular existence and forecast any kind of bio molecular interaction. The more you map human DNA and how it interacts with all the conditions of interaction, the sooner you will be able to create a synthetic virtual human to test everything on. (thos
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Here is one problem (of many) with that concept of trying to eliminate specific genes that help shape minds: https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... [theatlantic.com]
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causin
That is such an American way of seeing things. (Score:5, Interesting)
"win a race to control ..."
Says more about US culture than about any other country's culture.
I don't know the Chinese spies' probably nefarious reasons (and neither does US "intelligence"), but I do know now, that this is what US intelligence wants to "win at".
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Re:That is such an American way of seeing things. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't think there is evidence of China wanting to dominate and control other countries? Even if you -- for some awful reason -- think they have moral authority to conduct their oppressive campaigns in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong; and you also excuse their totalitarian control mechanisms like "social credit" schemes or extreme censorship; and you also specially plead about Taiwan; and you further pretend that China is not aggressively trying to move its border with India; mainland China has a long record of bullying neighbors across the South China Sea. North Korea's regime only continues to exist because China wants it as a client state and a buffer.
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Tortures in Guantanamo (as well as torture camps in other countries to bypass law).
Social credit schemes (Twitter, Facebook and everyone else will deplatform you if you don't follow the herd).
Bullying countries across not just sea but the ocean ("don't do business with Cuba/Iran/..., or raging war under "weapons of mass destruction" pretext).
Yes, I would still prefer to live in USA than China, but don't whitewash the USA.
Re:That is such an American way of seeing things. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not trying to whitewash the USA, I agree on Guantanamo, and there are tons of other things that we need to fix here.
But Social credit schemes are not equivalent to the social media platforms. Being blacklisted by your government at all levels is quite different than some private company not wanting to do business with me. I don't use Twitter, Facebook, etc etc and get along just fine in life.
Now if /. kicked me off for my opinions, my world would end. But lucky for me, they, like the rest will probably only kick me if, you know, I do something like storm the capitol building. Since I have a second brain cell, I know that my actions would have consequences and thus will not do something so stupid. If you brought up our felony or pedo laws as being similar to social credit schemes, then you have somewhat of a point. At least there are groups trying to fix those and that's not illegal here nor are they being blacklisted by any level of government.
Bullying countries? I will give you the invasion side. We don't have a leg to stand on there. But "sanctioning" isn't bullying. That's us taking our ball out of the game. It just so happens that our friends and allies also want to play with us rather than whomever we don't want to. Sorry, but its not bullying if the popular kid doesn't want to hangout with someone and in turn no one else wants to. And no, the popular kid isn't telling other kids to go beat up on anyone. Ignoring someone isn't bullying. All the left alone countries are welcome to make their own games, partnerships, allies, and move on. This is what they do. But they should stop blaming the US for their own problems because they aren't disciplined enough to solve themselves.
Operation Choke Point (Score:2)
This one sounds like a nightmare of ideological government:
https://www.chron.com/neighbor... [chron.com]
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China engages in social change by bullying too.
Or have we forgotten how the NBA practically banned a coach for saying bad things about China? China threatened to cancel the NBA after all.
Or what happened with Activision/Blizzard cancelling a prize award to a winner because they were talking about Hong Kong? You know it was bad because the people narrating th
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North Korea's regime only continues to exist because China wants it as a client state and a buffer.
A significant reason for North Korea's ongoing existence is the cost of merging it in with one of it's neighbours.
South Korea is the obvious country to merge it with, however that would decrease the GDP of each South Korean by a third. There would be a huge cost over an entire generation to educate and drag North Koreans into the economy. (As a comparison, East German was 3x poorer than the West, North Korea is 22x poorer than the South.) South Korea has developed an interesting generational split, the olde
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You should see some of the other bullshit that Fatherland Security puts out. I used to have to read their bulletins occasionally, and what steaming piles of horse manure they were! The funniest thing about them is that they don't worry about the real threats, just the 'security theater' stuff that will get them an increased budget.
Hol' up (Score:3)
We fought two wars against the Chinese.
These are the people who tried to take over most of Asia in the 1960s.
They executed tons of their own people, starved many more, and have made it clear that their ambitions include conquest.
Whatever the US did, and I'm not really a fan of US foreign policy, it pales in comparison.
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I see, so you've been getting the CIA's and NSA's memos. Care to share or are you just talking out of your ass (yet) again.
Who's leading? (Score:1)
"Evanina believes the Chinese are trying to collect Americans' DNA _to win a race_ to control the world's biodata."
"...a precious commodity and in the _wrong_ hands, ..."
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And yet we still lead in the space race. How the fuck did THAT happen? Guess we still have a handful of brilliant people after all.
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You realize that America takes more immigrants than any nation on the planet, right? Did the Germans lead us to all of the other technological leadership that the US has (or had) over the years? I'm asking as a direct descendent of German immigrants.
Cold War II (Score:1)
It makes sense. According to the documentaries I've seen about the original Cold War, the Russian spies were always collecteing DNA from James Bond.
Mister President, we must not allow a DNA gap! (Score:2)
Strangely lovely.
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We're going dark on DNA!
Preparation for hacking? (Score:2)
In IT, there is a trend to use biometric identification for access to confidential data. If that extends to DNA one day, having DNA data from potential hacking targets would be useful.
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That scenario is pretty much out the window, DNA can be collected during the most casual of contact or harvested from almost anything you've interacted with. Physical geometry like fingerprints or iris patterns are chaotically created and unique even among identical twins.
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So what you're saying is that DNA itself is chaotic neutral?
Chinese Doctor COVID House Call (Score:2)
Ah, well that explains it then.
Two Chinese guys came by and claimed they needed to collect an anal swab from me to check for COVID.
I'm really glad I refused, because now I know that they were actually after my DNA!
H.L. Mencken (Score:2)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
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Oh great, there's hobgoblins now?! I thought 2021 was supposed to be different!
What are our hobgoblins? (Score:2)
Drugs?
Satanism?
Inequality?
White Supremacy?
COVID-19?
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They're not all imaginary... With how many actual crises are going on (ever increasing as population rises and resources shrink) it's easier to just redirect the alarm from those than to create entirely new ones. It's easier to flag an imaginary crisis as imaginary than it is to flag a "solution" to a real crisis as having ulterior motives.
This H.L. guy lived from 1880 to 1956... His perspective is outdated.
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Outdated?
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H. L. Mencken
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So, both Dems and Reps are in on this one? Got it, here's your tinfoil hat back.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
Occam's Razor (Score:2)
How many US companies and agencies have access to the DNA files of citizens? If the Chinese have been able to successfully hack the OPM, successfully break in to RSA in order to compromise their token system [as used for multi-factor authentication] and a bunch of military contractors to get access to stealth technology, then would it
Occam's Razor (Score:5, Informative)
The simplest answer here is that they want to research genetics in order to develop new drugs and therapies. There is big money in that.
However, they may have multiple aims. Apparently the firm providing these tests has connections to the Chinese military:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
It turns out that China is in fact working on genetically-targeted weapons:
https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
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This data is new. Most Americans have not, yet, got their DNA sequenced by anyone. The people coming in for these Covid tests are, for the most part, not found in existing databases.
*uhuh* (Score:2)
Like how these DNA companies share our data with US law enforcement - and I am a Canadian.
This narrative coming out of the US is more than just hypocritical, it's farcical.
Familial genetics (Score:2)
And yet, this is how they are catching all of the serial killers and closing cold cases.
https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/2019... [iu.edu]
https://www.ohioattorneygenera... [ohioattorneygeneral.gov]
https://www.wired.com/story/de... [wired.com]
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I thought Trump was out of the Whitehouse by now?
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And yet, the US government still sees China as a threat. Go figure
Chinese copy (Score:1)
Here we go again (Score:1)
Right. (Score:2)
Putin claimed a while ago that the USA is collecting the DNA of Russians. Seems that both are just trying to scare the population.
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Seems like you'd prefer to believe Putin is all.
In other news... (Score:1)
Seriously? (Score:1)
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Why? For the same reason the US is collecting it. Because DNA is the mother of all personally identifiable data. It's the source code from which your behavior, biology, and everything else that comprises your existence derives. It's a way for someone to determine your strengths and weaknesses you don't even know you have.
It's being used, today, to tailor medical treatments to particular individuals, and can be used to make attacks with the same specificity. In the coming decades as more of the function of t
The reason they collect it (Score:2)
This is not about developing bio-weapons, this is about profiling and the market for risk prediction and management.
Years ago I remember reading an article on Slashdot about how the Chinese government was creating a database of shadow profiles for American civil servants and military personal. Which wasn't that suprising, since knowledge is power.
From that perspective DNA is very valuable. Your genetics can potentially reveal a lot about you and you offspring, such as your likelyhood to get certain illnesse
There's an easier way to collect American DNA (Score:2)
Have the Chinese heard of something called the "sewer system"?