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OPINION:
Last month, President Trump’s Food and Drug Administration moved to protect Americans’ genetic data from communist China, closing a Biden-era loophole that allowed federally funded clinical trials to share sensitive data with America’s adversaries.
The FDA’s decision is a timely reminder of the Chinese Communist Party’s intent to dominate therapeutic and military applications of biotechnologies enabled by genetic data.
Sweeping federal and state action is needed to counter China’s weaponization of biotechnology. The CCP’s strategy is built upon funneling U.S. intellectual property and genetic data into China’s military. Thus, Congress and federal agencies must sever the flow of American genomic data to China, and states must rapidly adopt genomic protection laws like those recently enacted in Nebraska and Louisiana.
Warning signs around biotechnology have been flashing for nearly a decade. In President Trump’s first term, the Department of Homeland Security warned that Chinese laws compel Chinese “academic institutions, research service providers, and investors” to violate U.S. health care data protection laws.
A year later, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center issued a rare public message telling Americans, “Your DNA is the most valuable thing you own,” and explaining that China’s collection of American genetic data poses “economic and national security” risks.
In 2022, the Defense Department sanctioned the Beijing Genomics Institute, China’s national champion of genetic sequencing, for aiding the Chinese military’s weaponization of biotechnology. The Commerce Department followed by adding several of the institute’s units to its export-control blacklist for their role in CCP surveillance. Since then, the bipartisan leadership of the House Select Committee on the CCP has urged the Pentagon to sanction more Beijing Genomics Institute affiliates and subsidiaries, including U.S.-based companies.
Earlier this year, the CCP Select Committee wrote a letter to the secretary of commerce insisting on greater protections of American genomic data against the CCP. The bipartisan congressional National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology went further, recommending that the government treat biological data as a “strategic resource” and “ensure that China cannot obtain” it from the United States.
China’s intent to weaponize biotechnology is no mystery. A Chinese general who ran China’s National Defense University wrote that the most effective bioweapons are “designed to attack people of a specific racial or ethnic background.”
Indeed, the CCP Select Committee cited this extraordinary risk in a recent letter opposing “the trend of U.S. biopharmaceutical entities working with PLA medical institutions to conduct clinical trials.”
American genetic information must not fuel China’s weapons development. Thankfully, the new FDA directive will cut off the fruits of tens of billions of dollars in annual federal funding from ending up with China’s military at the expense of American health and security.
Congress must go further and finally pass the bipartisan Biosecure Act to prevent federal funds from going to CCP-linked companies such as the aforementioned Beijing Genomics Institute and WuXi AppTec, which has received CCP support to dominate the testing and production market for new drugs.
Federal agencies should eliminate funding of Chinese medical and research institutions, which are all CCP institutions, and prevent the sharing of personnel between U.S. and Chinese labs and universities.
State policymakers must also protect their residents’ genetic information from the CCP.
• Michael Lucci is the founder and CEO of State Armor. Jacqueline Deal is an advisory board member of State Armor and president of the Long Term Strategy Group.
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